Turns out I didn't need to worry about finding the Hawken E3 party. First, it was in the Luxe, a grandiose hotel in the same plaza as the Los Angeles Staples Center. Second, the electronic billboard directly below the Luxe insignia read "HAWKEN" in bold white letters, a building to the north had the game title and Machinima symbols emblazoned in lights across one side, and a bumping party overflowing with people in Hawken swag spilled out onto the Luxe's second-floor balcony.

Welcome to the opulent stage of high-profile pseudo-indie development.

Hawken, its developer Adhesive Games and parent company Meteor Entertainment, are not representative of the standard indie community, but they carry that already nebulous label in a vague, but real, way: Meteor is the publishing arm of Adhesive and it has only one client and one focus, Hawken.

"First of all, we're no EA," Meteor Entertainment's Paul Loynd told me at Hawken's June 5 E3 party, hosted by Machinima. "And we only have one game. This is our thing. We're excited to be working on Hawken."