Could Silksong Ever Live Up to the Hype?

During the past few days, people have been lining up for hours to get their hands on a 15-minute demo of Silksong at Gamescom. People over the internet, including some outlets, touted the “it’s real” horn with their previews, when in fact, Silksong was playable for the first time in 2019. This new demo is largely the same, and some people have painstakingly examined the differences between the two versions. But it’s more catchy to say, “I’ve played Silksong, it’s real,” especially when the meme wasn’t as pronounced in 2019. After all, it had only been a few months since the project’s announcement.

It’s rare to see an indie game accruing such a massive following, the kind typically reserved for blockbuster titles with millions upon millions of dollars budgeted to marketing. In a way, it’s commendable—the Daily Silksong News channel, for example, has posted a video for over 1,679 days. Generally, social media tends to create bubbles that rarely reflect what’s happening outside of them. But the increasing devotion of the past seven years have emphasized just how noxious social media and hype cycles have become.

It’s intriguing to look back on the time I played Hollow Knight. While I had already started freelancing more steadily, I wasn’t at the point where I had to keep up with new releases continuously. I took my time with it. I did write an essay for Heterotopias Zine, in which I examined Hallownest through the lens of ant-farms. But it was commissioned at the start of July 2018, and I didn’t file it until September. Granted, this was mainly because my editor had a backlog of pieces to go through, but I always recall that time fondly—how I was able to slowly chip away at the essay, take the time to read studies and papers, and find parallels between real-life architecture and Team Cherry’s bug-infested world. My work was much, much better because of it.

Things now are, well, different. Aside from the odd longform piece, I can rarely afford to take time to sit on a draft. The demand for everything feels more immediate. Most sites desperately want to secure coverage while a game is still in the spotlight. Each new relevant release brings opportunities for this, especially to freelancers like myself who rely on them, but the time pressure is significant. This is even more relevant with Silksong, as Team Cherry told Bloomberg that it doesn’t plan on sending out early codes for the game. A two-week window was already daunting. Now, everybody will be off to the races to try and get whatever comes to mind published on the page. There will be critics who will give themselves the courtesy of taking their time. But for those who can’t afford to miss out on the initial buzz, it’ll be a rush, heightened by the fact that Hollow Knight was tough and obtuse, and the sequel is likely following suit.

Albeit different sides of the fence, the sentiment almost acts in tandem with marketing cycles and obnoxious campaigning for upcoming releases, even from those who aren’t getting paid to promote a game. People are desperate to quantify and categorize. While Steam forums are usually another bubble—one with 1,400 threads and counting—it’s interesting to see how Silksong’s reflect these trends in one place. People are considering that waiting for two weeks after waiting seven years is “a slap in the face.” They’re mad at the radio silence, despite having read the reasons why in the Bloomberg interview. They keep comparing the number of bosses and making approximations of how big the map is going to be compared to Hollow Knight. Some lament the fact that you can’t pre-order the game, despite being less than two weeks away from release.

There’s less time than ever to sit down with art and appreciate it for what it is, evoking conversations about its cultural place rather than turning it into a bullet point list. Rather, it’s an algorithm race, fueled by a desire to exhaust a product as quickly as possible. Again, these are all bubbles—your experience might be different than mine, or the ones being portrayed in forums and subreddits. I’m sure a lot of people will treat themselves to Silksong and take their time with it, away from the buzz of social media and content creation. People who don’t get fixated on comparing review scores and refreshing the Metacritic page to see whether the new release is a GOTY contender or not. People who will eventually move on, rather than speedrun the game in a week and start pressuring Team Cherry for news about DLC. In this bubble, less than two weeks before release, the lead-up to the sequel doesn’t sound like a new song. It sounds like a familiar tune.

1. The joke of the co-founders seemingly being unaware of Jira is funny. I remain skeptical that there were no hardships during the development, however. Independent studios aren’t exempt from mismanagement nor working overtime. Oftentimes, the excitement around a passion project can flip and become a case of whoops, I stayed up late working because I’m having too much fun. As of now, the Bloomberg report is the only recent interview with the devs, so take this aside as just my personal speculation (and perhaps cynicism). I want to believe that it’s possible for developers, those in a very privileged position at least, to simply have fun. But I’m skeptical all the same.

2. At the very least, an upside of the communal devotion is that there’s no shortage of fan art to look at. Here are some examples. On a semi-related note, more artists should migrate to Bluesky already.

Diego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist from Argentina who has learned English thanks to videogames. You can read his work in places like Polygon, the New York Times, The Verge, and more. You can also find him on Bluesky.