PAX East – Hawken Update Impressions

By Jonathan Doyle (Ardua), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

It’s a matter of faith for me that Heaven is a giant Mech. Granted anywhere you get a giant mech, like all over Hawken, you get other giant mechs trying to blow you up.

 

 

Maybe my idea of Heaven is really Sci-Fi Valhalla. 

 

 

In the meantime, we’ll just have to satisfy those desires with what is on offer in the real world. At PAX East Hawken made sure to offer a double helping of the future.

 

 

Medic!

Coming in the April update for Hawken is a new mech that doesn’t rely on the twitch gaming skills of the current giant robot jockeys. The Technician is coming to heal you up and debuff the opposing team.

 

 

Packing “weapons” that slowly regenerate other mechs on their team or buff them up in combat will be familiar to anyone who has played the Team Fortress 2 Medic class. Just now instead of being German and with a pigeon, your medic is a giant robot that can also strip away enemy armor and slowly whittle down their health. 

 

 

The Technician promises to shake things up in Hawken as a result. Not through straight firepower, of which it effectively doesn’t have any, but through the added layer of strategy and by bringing in more players who otherwise would not have been comfortable with the gameplay previously.

 

 

People were of course tight lipped about other mechs that will be coming in the future but I think it’s safe to say that they will be looking to create even more strategic and open options to keep things fresh and fun.

 

I’m not Heavy, I’m Big Built.

The other fantastic thing we got to see was physics! Yes, physics.

 

 

Hawken, in partnership with Nvidia, had a demo both in our interview and down on the floor demonstrating a potential future of the game. Fully destructible environments!

 

 

 

Is your enemy hiding behind a building? Go through it! Are you jump jetting onto a bridge? I hope it’s not been shot up because if you’re too heavy you will break through it.

 

 

Admittedly if they could release this with the Technician, and I stress that they cannot yet as it is well.. rather complicated and needed some hefty hardware, I’d give the big shake up to physics, not the new mech class. Maps as they exist will/would have to be reexamined and redesigned to deal with the fact that the big guys can now charge right through walls or otherwise ruin the landscape to deny cover and opportunities to their foes. 

 

 

Maybe we’ll get it one day and bring sci-fi Valhalla that little bit closer. 

 

Walls? Where we’re going you don’t get cover from walls.

 

How to do a Successful Kickstarter Campaign at PAX East

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Elder Scribe

 

 

As I waited in line for the Official Kickstarter panel I didn’t expect to see a campaign go from start to finish in less time than the panel took. But that was exactly what happened. Max Temkin of Cards Against Humanity fame was on hand with his next card game Werewolf. There he walked us through the behind the scenes steps on Kickstarter, and with the help of Cindy Au, Head of Community and Luke Crane, Project Specialist for Games at Kickstarter the campaign was launched. With the backing of panelist Freddie Wong and the room full of attendees the $200 goal was easily reached in just a few minutes.

 

 

The wonderful thing I learned about a Kickstarter campaign is that the hardest part is coming up with an idea. The Kickstarter site is very straight forward and customizable to fit your needs. And once the campaign has started regular updates are important. People want to know how things are going. But at the same time they don’t want to be spammed to death with every tiny bit of news.

 

 

Length of time is also important. Freddie Wong, as well as the other panelists suggested that 30 days was plenty of time for most campaigns. It gives people time to have the initial hype, for there to be a bit of a drop in the excitement, and finally to build back up again at the end.

 

 

Rewards are also a hugely important factor to consider. For the Werewolf campaign there is only one tier and one reward, the cards. Sure he could have done shirts, or coffee mugs, but the more you start adding in the more your costs go up, so the more expensive and complicated things get. The best rewards are things that would happen as a result of the creation process. Like a digital version of a coffee table book.

 

 

Stretch goals were another thing that were talked about in quite a lot of detail. Especially how stretch goals can be a bad thing. The panelists talked about how sometimes stretch goals can change what it was they originally backed and how there have been times when it has changed them into something they really didn’t want to back anymore. At the same time though, stretch goals are an awesome way to keep people excited about the project and even get them to donate more than they had originally dedicated.

 

 

So, what does all of this have to do with MMOs? Well as we all know Kickstarter is becoming an alternative source of funding for a lot of games these days. It seems like every week a new MMO is popping up. And sometimes it isn’t just a new game, sometimes it’s a documentary based in an MMO. And that brings us to Crowd Funds, a new column on OnRPG. Each week we will highlight a crowd funded MMO or MMO related campaign from sites like Kickstarter, Indigogo, GameLaunched, and Gambitious. We will talk to developers, backers, and follow campaigns through the entire process from beginning to end and bring it all to you here. So check back each week for more crowd funded fun.