137 replies to this topic

[DieselCat]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this idea of going with the Amazon servers one of the big problems that needed to be changed because it caused many issues with the game _

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[DerMax]

Nice find, Burns. A very interesting watch.

[Akrium]

DieselCat, on October 22 2014 - 07:55 PM, said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this idea of going with the Amazon servers one of the big problems that needed to be changed because it caused many issues with the game _

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Since the servers themselves were not performing up to what a lot of us wanted (community wise) they started looking into alternative options because they must have seen the issues as well. But mean while they spent their whole time building an infrastructure for AWS. As all the core mechanics to the game were based around AWS and the options it gave.

To what extent of what needs changed to allow for servers that are not AWS and to run smoothly with everything else... I have no clue what all would need changed if anything at all. And that could have proven to be a huge issue in the end. As some things they wanted to get done (like clan support) may not work well either with the backbone they currently have. And to get it out may have required a change as well.

[Odinous]

and just to add to what Akrium said,all this needs a lots of time to be done.

[BurnsHot]

alpha78, on October 22 2014 - 04:57 PM, said:

So basically, they built skynet in order to support AWS and in doing so sacrificed the game development, community development and marketing efforts.  I'm curious what portion of their expenditures this network architecture experiment cost relative to actual game development/marketing/PR.
It would be a shame if such a great game concept/design was lost due to an overzealous network architecture project.
Now I understand the "technical debt".  Thx for posting this.

What you and everyone should understand is the Focus was always Meteor Entertainment not Adhesive Games/Hawken.

Mitch Lasky, from Benchmark Capital, wanted to build his own game publishing company (Meteor Entertainment). He and Mark Long believe in this "new" idea of transmedia for publishing games and was looking for his own League of Legends Tittle to launch his Game publishing company.  When he saw the Hawken concept video on YouTube, he reached out to Adhesive Games/Khang Lee.  He approached Adhesive Games several times to try and convince them to go with his NEW/Unconventional way of publishing (Transmedia) before they actually agreed.  After Lasky signed on Adhesive Games, Lasky put Mark Long in charge of Meteor Entertainment and the company was created.

All the money up to this point has come from Mitch Lasky's Venture Capital (A Series Funding) and soon more Venture Capitalist joined in (B Series Funding).  I believe most of the A series funding was Benchmark buying Hawken's IP (Intellectual Property).  Do the founders of Adhesive Games/Hawken even own IP rights to Hawken anymore_  Any funds left over from the A series and all of the B series was funding Meteor Entertainment.  If their idea became a big hit, then company would eventually be sold off for huge profits know in the Venture Capital industry as a "successful exit".

Mark Long projected that Hawken would reach 10 million players in its first year, but we know that did not happen.  It is clear that the Publishing arm of Meteor/Adhesive has collapsed and it collapsed quite a long time ago. My guess is early or mid 2013.

The Technical Debt my have been real mid to late 2013 or even early 2014 but someone else already mentioned that its become just an excuse to distract everyone from the real issues and I would agree with this statement.

I believe the real issues is the failure of Meteor, more specifically, their Transmedia approach to publishing.  Hawken's low player retention and low free to play monetization is the crux of the problem and I can imagine a blaming game between Meteor and ADH as to who's fault it was.  For example, was Meteor's implantation of Transmedia,  the graphic novel, the live action movie, and web comic series just weak sauce_ They left the rest up to social media and hoped it would go viral.  Also, who decided to ignore the player's feedback and roll out the ascension patch_ Was it Meteor or ADH_

My best guess is that there are factions within what remains of ADH/Meteor who are arguing over the future direction of Hawken, how to grow the player base and how to attract more funding.  With Meteor Entertainment gone, that means Mitch Lasky and his Venture Capital funds are gone and ADH/Meteor is left to fend for itself.  Instead of a "successful exit", Lasky quietly exited Meteor stage left.

I've read that Adhesive's original goal was to publish the game and then maintain it as a service for several years to come.  IMO, The game has been live (published) since 12/12/12.  They just never took down the beta tag.  They are probably past the Publishing phase and are set to move into the maintenance and service phase.  With the Venture Capital money all used up, I believe Adhesive Games is searching for more funding so they can enter the Maintenance  and Service stage of Development.  Unless they get an infusion of capital then there will be no Dev updates to talk about and that is the reason for current Silence, not some NDA put in place.

That's my take on the current situation of Hawken based on what I've read and pieced together.

tl;dr: Meteor Entertainment "transmedia" Publishing was a "rich Boy's toy".  Meteor Entertainment failed, the rich boy got bored and tossed it to the side.  ADH/Hawken left to fend for itself.

Edited by BurnsHot, October 24 2014 - 07:32 AM.

[DerMax]

BurnsHot, on October 24 2014 - 07:28 AM, said:

tl;dr: Meteor Entertainment "transmedia" Publishing was a "rich Boy's toy".  Meteor Entertainment failed, the rich boy got bored and tossed it to the side.  ADH/Hawken left to fend for itself.

I came to the exact same conclusion in my research. Excellent post, Mr. Burns.

[Zaxik]

Logged in just to leave a like here, that's a great post BurnsHot and probably the closest to the truth than any other post on this subject here on forums. And none of that has to be the end of Hawken, BTW.

[alpha78]

BurnsHot, on October 24 2014 - 07:28 AM, said:

alpha78, on October 22 2014 - 04:57 PM, said:

snip

What you and everyone should understand is the Focus was always Meteor Entertainment not Adhesive Games/Hawken.

words...

Understood.  You can actually pretty much surmise that much from the first few minutes of the video you posted.

What I think is still unclear is if part of the "exit" was to sell ADH (assuming MTR "owned/owns" ADH) or maybe just the game title to another developer to recoup some of the investment.  It's quite feasible that ADH found a new publisher and they're currently working to shed "skynet"   and go back to running Hawken as a traditional game using a more scaled back backend and ditching AWS.  Or Hawken was sold to another dev/publisher all together and they're working to redo the back end to work in a more traditional way.

I'm leaning toward something like this being the case.  Otherwise, I think they would've killed the game already.  Since it's still up and somebody is paying for the servers (server count is fluctuating with player count), someone must be working on the game somewhere.  Time will tell.

[DerMax]

Gentlemen,

Please keep in mind that, of this list, according to their LinkedIn accounts, 11 people still work at Adhesive Games Ltd. 20 people of that list don't work for Adhesive anymore, and the status of the remaining 5 people is unknown (at least to me).

Edited by DerMax, October 24 2014 - 09:02 AM.

[zorin1]

DerMax, on October 24 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

Gentlemen,

Please keep in mind that, of this list, according to their LinkedIn accounts, 11 people still work at Adhesive Games Ltd. 20 people of that list don't work for Adhesive anymore, and the status of the remaining 5 people is unknown (at least to me).

But that does not include any new people that were hired.  It would be safe to say that they had some turn over and new hires.  From what I have seen, there does not seem to be a customer service any longer.  When I would file an issue before, I would get an email back from a live person asking me questions.  Now, I get just a canned response.  Also all their canned messages are out of date and refer back to thing that no longer available. Lots of their documentation  on the web site is outdated and number updated with the changes that were made.  So my guess is that all these people are gone or so few that they don't have time to work on that stuff.

my two cents.

[StubbornPuppet]

Like I've said before, in a heavily abridged version of BurnsHot's post, "Why on earth would anyone tell us that there will be no more development or updates for Hawken_  Especially considering that there is nothing to be gained and plenty to be lost from exposing that."  If they make a public statement that no more will be done, several hangers-on and potential new players read it and call it quits.  That means, any small amount of money they are making from microtransactions goes away and thus leads to hastening us all to the end.

I think I'll go buy some Meteor credits tonight and do my part to help push off the end a bit longer.

[DM30]

StubbornPuppet, on October 24 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

Like I've said before, in a heavily abridged version of BurnsHot's post, "Why on earth would anyone tell us that there will be no more development or updates for Hawken_  Especially considering that there is nothing to be gained and plenty to be lost from exposing that."  If they make a public statement that no more will be done, several hangers-on and potential new players read it and call it quits.  That means, any small amount of money they are making from microtransactions goes away and thus leads to hastening us all to the end.

I think I'll go buy some Meteor credits tonight and do my part to help push off the end a bit longer.

I'm wondering if, with the low player population, revenues from microtransactions are even at a break-even point for running costs. If they are then this is a completely valid point, but if not I would (possibly naively) imagine that shutting down as quickly as possible to stem the bleeding would be in their best interest, including telling people of that shutoff, even if just as a courtesy.

So, IS the game still making money and just delaying before calling it quits for a few extra bucks_ Or are they losing money keeping it alive, but are holding out in the hopes that whatever work they may be doing will turn things around_ No idea myself, but just something that always pops into my minds whenever I see posts like this.

[Gunmoku]

BurnsHot, on October 22 2014 - 11:53 AM, said:

For those who are still interested, here is a video explaining in more detail the "Rabbit Whole" that was created to serve up and publish Hawken to the masses.

Seems like their entire effort to build the backend of the Publishing using Amazon AWS either fell apart (too many unforeseen problems) or they were beat to market by the likes of NVIDIA's GRID(NVIDIA's cloud gaming platform) and Meteor just gave up on the idea of becoming their own powerhouse publishing company.  This is all in conjunction with the low player retention and monetization.

I now believe that the $28 million or so dollars are all used up to get them to where we are now and they are currently seeking another round of Investment Funding to continue the maintenance and "Service" aspect of the game.

See, now this is evidence.  Concrete_  Not necessarily, but it's the biggest clue to the puzzle that is Hawken right now.

I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia themselves invest directly in Adhesive to be a guinea pig for their services and technologies like GRID and APEX Phys-X.  Even Amazon themselves are getting heavily into the gaming business directly, so it could be possible even Amazon talks buyout / subsidiary terms with Adhesive.

[Fantus_Longhorn]

BurnsHot, on October 22 2014 - 11:53 AM, said:

"...which was a bit 'Cart-before-the-horse', which this company seems to do quite a bit."

True that.

[SS396]

BurnsHot, on October 24 2014 - 07:28 AM, said:

Do the founders of Adhesive Games/Hawken even own IP rights to Hawken anymore_  

I think that right there is the best question anyone has ever even thought to ask.  How much of what Lasky paid into does he own and is he the reason why theres so much silence.

[DerMax]

SS396, on October 26 2014 - 02:10 PM, said:

BurnsHot, on October 24 2014 - 07:28 AM, said:

Do the founders of Adhesive Games/Hawken even own IP rights to Hawken anymore_  

I think that right there is the best question anyone has ever even thought to ask.  How much of what Lasky paid into does he own and is he the reason why theres so much silence.

https://twitter.com/...282075673669632

[PepeKenobi]

hopefully back on topic...... I have been conversation with a couple of friends today on HAWKEN and we agreed on that what the game needs would be a is just couple more maps ((plus those bugfixes, extra immersion factor and little balancing I mentioned in here before.... ))

Glad to hear that on the many dev' status thus understanding that they're keeping into the loop alive & kicking

[SS396]

DerMax, on October 26 2014 - 02:43 PM, said:

https://twitter.com/...282075673669632

Yes, I've seen that, and it does little to confirm or deny exactly how much Lasky owns, and has control over.  Just cause he's not there anymore does not mean anything.