4 ms·

I guess somebody found a way to get the Silksong controversy onto Hackernews. Can't say I'm surprised. My take is, it's a good game and I'm enjoying it. I susp

I guess somebody found a way to get the Silksong controversy onto Hackernews. Can't say I'm surprised. My take is, it's a good game and I'm enjoying it. I suspect the only reason it's generating so many takes is that it was so spectacularly overhyped that it cannot possibly live up to how much it has been built up. And that enthusiasm, which started within a specific niche fanbase, has spilled out onto the internet at large in such a way that that is unsustainable. I bet if we all wait a year, the back and forth will die down and we'll be left with a game that gets similar acclaim to Hollow Knight. People subconsciously think about hype on the same 1-10 scale as a review, but hype can drive a video game score well into the teens or 20s. Then even a 10 feels like a disappointment.

echelon 1y ago
I have no idea what this game is, and I'm pretty insulated from gaming news, culture, etc. The amount that this name, franchise, or whatever it is has been showing up on my feed is absurd. Reddit, YouTube, Google news, Hacker News. It's everywhere. What the heck is Silksong and why is it saturating the attention sphere? It's on my feed more than Trump and Ukraine and geopolitics and the latest AI fundraises. How did it manage to do this? What's the formula? Or is there simply a lull in the cycle?
- matusp 1y ago
  It started as a meme by a small but loyal Hollow Knight fan base on reddit. They had this ongoing joke about waiting for Silksong to release. As subreddits do, they were repeating the same joke for years. For some reason, this admittedly pretty lame joke escaped into mainstream. That is basically all there is to it.
  - michaelsbradley 1y ago
    Well that, and someone made a long-running “daily news” on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@dailysilksongnews https://youtube.com/@dailysilksongnews I enjoyed Hollow Knight an awful lot, and checked-watched DSN nearly every day since it started. But I never visited the subreddit.
- spacebuffer 1y ago
  8 Years ago an indie studio released Hollow Knight, and it became a critically acclaimed game. ~ a year later the team announced a DLC called silksong but silksong grew so much that they decided to turn it to a full sequel. The game went through so much delays that it's release became sort of a meme
  - diggan 1y ago
    > The game went through so much delays that it's release became sort of a meme Tiny correction (AFAIK): It was never really "delays" as there was no release date until ~3 weeks ago, when they announced it'd be released in a month. But yeah, development time was long.
    - Groxx 1y ago
      it has been a rockier history than that - it was playable at E3 in 2019, and there have been multiple teased (but not specific) release dates along the way. e.g. the Wikipedia has some of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Knight:_Silksong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Knight:_Silksong to be clear: I'm not complaining at all, I'd much rather have a good very-delayed sequel than a bad one. but the "it's releasing again" -> "it's delayed again" memes do have reasonable origins.
- mjr00 1y ago
  It's the sequel to a game (Hollow Knight) which is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. It had a long seven-year development cycle, with "Silksong release announcement at (upcoming event)" becoming a meme, leaving people wondering if it would ever come out. Last month the developers randomly dropped a release trailer with "by the way it's coming out in 3 weeks". It came out and has been a hot topic because, while an excellent game, it's significantly harder than the original, causing a lot of debate.
  - OskarS 1y ago
    > It's the sequel to a game (Hollow Knight) which is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. I would say this is overstating it a bit. Hollow Knight was critically lauded, grew an intense fan-base, and often considered one of the best in its genre (the awkwardly named group of "metroidvanias"), but it's a bit much to say that it has the reputation of "one of the best of all time". It's not, like, Tetris or Super Mario World. Also, and this is just my personal opinion, but I'm about a dozen hours into it, and so far I haven't found it THAT much harder than the original. Maybe it's because I've played Hollow Knight and gotten used to the controls by now, but I remember struggling a lot with lots of parts of Hollow Knight, about as much as I'm struggling with Silksong. Enough people have been saying it so I suspect I might just be misremembering. Excellent game in general, by the way, really enjoying Silksong so far.
    - mjr00 1y ago
      > I would say this is overstating it a bit. Hollow Knight was critically lauded, grew an intense fan-base, and often considered one of the best in it's genre (the awkwardly named group of "metrovanias"), but it's a bit much to say that it has the reputation of "one of the best of all time". It's not, like, Tetris or Super Mario World. You are welcome to your opinion, but it is literally on a Wikipedia page called "List of video games considered the best."[0] There's no definitive list, of course, but broad consensus is it is one of the best of all time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered_the_best https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered...
- jheitmann 1y ago
  Sibling comments are giving good answers about Silksong in particular. But, a more general point to keep in mind is that gaming by revenue is an order of magnitude larger than movies. In that light it's a little strange that gaming news/events don't hit the general attention sphere more than they do.
  - echelon 1y ago
    > gaming by revenue is an order of magnitude larger than movies. Gaming might make more money, but celebrity news dominates the attention sphere. It's also heavily weighted by gender, age, and socioeconomic status. Pop culture has wider, more even penetration. Granted, there is waning generational attention being put into film.
- pharrington 1y ago
  >How did it manage to do this? What's the formula? The formula is making incredible art that you're passionate about, giving or selling it to alot of people, and getting lucky enough that word of mouth takes over from there. In other words, there is no formula.
balfirevic 1y ago
> I bet if we all wait a year, the back and forth will die down and we'll be left with a game that gets similar acclaim to Hollow Knight. Sounds great, because I think it doesn't get much better than that.

echelon 1y ago

I have no idea what this game is, and I'm pretty insulated from gaming news, culture, etc. The amount that this name, franchise, or whatever it is has been showing up on my feed is absurd. Reddit, YouTube, Google news, Hacker News. It's everywhere. What the heck is Silksong and why is it saturating the attention sphere? It's on my feed more than Trump and Ukraine and geopolitics and the latest AI fundraises. How did it manage to do this? What's the formula? Or is there simply a lull in the cycle?

matusp 1y ago
It started as a meme by a small but loyal Hollow Knight fan base on reddit. They had this ongoing joke about waiting for Silksong to release. As subreddits do, they were repeating the same joke for years. For some reason, this admittedly pretty lame joke escaped into mainstream. That is basically all there is to it.
- michaelsbradley 1y ago
  Well that, and someone made a long-running “daily news” on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@dailysilksongnews https://youtube.com/@dailysilksongnews I enjoyed Hollow Knight an awful lot, and checked-watched DSN nearly every day since it started. But I never visited the subreddit.
spacebuffer 1y ago
8 Years ago an indie studio released Hollow Knight, and it became a critically acclaimed game. ~ a year later the team announced a DLC called silksong but silksong grew so much that they decided to turn it to a full sequel. The game went through so much delays that it's release became sort of a meme
- diggan 1y ago
  > The game went through so much delays that it's release became sort of a meme Tiny correction (AFAIK): It was never really "delays" as there was no release date until ~3 weeks ago, when they announced it'd be released in a month. But yeah, development time was long.
  - Groxx 1y ago
    it has been a rockier history than that - it was playable at E3 in 2019, and there have been multiple teased (but not specific) release dates along the way. e.g. the Wikipedia has some of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Knight:_Silksong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Knight:_Silksong to be clear: I'm not complaining at all, I'd much rather have a good very-delayed sequel than a bad one. but the "it's releasing again" -> "it's delayed again" memes do have reasonable origins.
mjr00 1y ago
It's the sequel to a game (Hollow Knight) which is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. It had a long seven-year development cycle, with "Silksong release announcement at (upcoming event)" becoming a meme, leaving people wondering if it would ever come out. Last month the developers randomly dropped a release trailer with "by the way it's coming out in 3 weeks". It came out and has been a hot topic because, while an excellent game, it's significantly harder than the original, causing a lot of debate.
- OskarS 1y ago
  > It's the sequel to a game (Hollow Knight) which is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. I would say this is overstating it a bit. Hollow Knight was critically lauded, grew an intense fan-base, and often considered one of the best in its genre (the awkwardly named group of "metroidvanias"), but it's a bit much to say that it has the reputation of "one of the best of all time". It's not, like, Tetris or Super Mario World. Also, and this is just my personal opinion, but I'm about a dozen hours into it, and so far I haven't found it THAT much harder than the original. Maybe it's because I've played Hollow Knight and gotten used to the controls by now, but I remember struggling a lot with lots of parts of Hollow Knight, about as much as I'm struggling with Silksong. Enough people have been saying it so I suspect I might just be misremembering. Excellent game in general, by the way, really enjoying Silksong so far.
  - mjr00 1y ago
    > I would say this is overstating it a bit. Hollow Knight was critically lauded, grew an intense fan-base, and often considered one of the best in it's genre (the awkwardly named group of "metrovanias"), but it's a bit much to say that it has the reputation of "one of the best of all time". It's not, like, Tetris or Super Mario World. You are welcome to your opinion, but it is literally on a Wikipedia page called "List of video games considered the best."[0] There's no definitive list, of course, but broad consensus is it is one of the best of all time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered_the_best https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered...
jheitmann 1y ago
Sibling comments are giving good answers about Silksong in particular. But, a more general point to keep in mind is that gaming by revenue is an order of magnitude larger than movies. In that light it's a little strange that gaming news/events don't hit the general attention sphere more than they do.
- echelon 1y ago
  > gaming by revenue is an order of magnitude larger than movies. Gaming might make more money, but celebrity news dominates the attention sphere. It's also heavily weighted by gender, age, and socioeconomic status. Pop culture has wider, more even penetration. Granted, there is waning generational attention being put into film.
pharrington 1y ago
>How did it manage to do this? What's the formula? The formula is making incredible art that you're passionate about, giving or selling it to alot of people, and getting lucky enough that word of mouth takes over from there. In other words, there is no formula.

balfirevic 1y ago

> I bet if we all wait a year, the back and forth will die down and we'll be left with a game that gets similar acclaim to Hollow Knight. Sounds great, because I think it doesn't get much better than that.