It’s here. It’s real. It briefly broke Steam. If you even casually follow video game news, you already know I’m talking about Hollow Knight: Silksong. The bug-tastic metroidvania has captured the public’s imagination like few indies before it, displacing everything except Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 on Steam’s list of most-played games. It is a phenomenon, and in that regard, singular by modern standards. But while they didn’t always post these kinds of numbers, Event Releases like this used to be more common. What happened? On this week’s Aftermath Hours, we discuss Silksong’s long shadow.
This time around, we’re joined by former Polygon writers Ryan Gilliam and Cass Marshall, who just launched a new worker-owned video game website, Rogue. It’s like Aftermath, but Polygonier. We ask them how the project came together, how things are going so far, and what their pie-in-the-sky goals are for the future.
Then, after extolling the virtues of structures that don’t force us to always heap attention on the big game of the week, we heap attention on the big game of the week: Silksong. It’s finally out, and as expected, it’s more Hollow Knight! In other words, it’s good, but also very reminiscent of the first game in structure and feel. This puts it somewhat at odds with other Event Releases like Elden Ring, which garnered similar attention to curious non-fans at launch, but managed to offer them something legitimately new compared to Dark Souls. Will the un-Knighted masses bounce off this one, or will they find something to love despite a lack of attachment to the original? And as the video game industry continues to fragment, how many more all-consuming launches like this do we have in us? Finally, we invent a cool uncle who plays Warframe (Warfruncle).
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can join forces with Rogue and Rascal and create a monolithic organization with a catchy name – something like… The Gamer Network. Yeah, that sounds good.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Nathan: As I’ve been playing Silksong and kind of feeling like “Yeah, OK, more Hollow Knight,” I’ve been thinking about how there will be tourists, essentially – people who want to see what all the fuss is about. And I think when that happened with Elden Ring, because it was a pretty substantially different offering from a Dark Souls game – at least in terms of openness and your ability to tackle things as you want to and fight a miniboss over here if you start to hit a wall in one area – [newcomers were able to find points of entry and understand the appeal].
Silksong, on the other hand, doesn’t feel that different from Hollow Knight. If you had problems with the original structurally, or if you’re someone who’s not predisposed to enjoying this kind of game, I’m not sure you will enjoy this one either. I think those tourists might have a different experience of this than they would something like Elden Ring.
Chris: But the difference between Elden Ring opening up relative to the Souls games is, Hollow Knight wasn’t an ask. It’s not a particularly complicated game in terms of what it’s asking the player. Part of its appeal is that it was accessible. I guess what I mean to say is: We had more cultural moments in gaming pre-2020 and even before then where it was like “We all agree that this is an important game that we are all playing.” There was more of a consensus reality in a way that has been harder to recapture as the industry has collapsed.
I think it comes up in these little spurts; Helldivers was a pretty good example, and it also benefited from being a cheaper game. Clair Obscur was another, and it also benefited from being a less expensive game. It’s the FOMO thing of gaming, and that’s been harder to get as time has gone on – and as the industry has become wildly unstable for the people who work in it. I think it’s the thing people want to talk about when they talk about triple-A games: this inescapable vortex of spectacle that everybody has to play if they want to be literate. Not that you have to in [Silksong’s case], but this feels like it’s capturing–
Nathan: This feels like A Moment.
Chris: It feels like a moment! And we don’t have a lot of big moments like that. Everyone is in their little corner, everyone has their little niche, everyone has their thing they’re doing. It’s hard to capture a big game title like that.
Cass: I feel like there’s just going to be [fewer and fewer of these as time goes on]. Silksong and then GTA VI coming up are the two big launches that almost feel like the end of the big launch. There are so many games coming out all the time, and so many games are re-launching themselves or doing 2.0s, new seasons, or whatever; it’s getting to the point where, once you get past these landmarks, what could possibly be bigger?
Nathan: Maybe Elder Scrolls VI? But yeah, these things are becoming less and less frequent to the point where they will eventually probably just become extinct. All the games we just mentioned have years and years of history behind them in terms of anticipation and mystique.
Chris: I would disagree a little on Baldur’s Gate 3. Because Baldur’s Gate 3 had this history, but I don’t know many people who loved it that actually cared about the history. There’s an entire group of people who are new to that game [in the series]. That’s what made that such a weird hit. You could say it was the early access [period], you could say all that, but–
Nathan: I know what it was. It was the bear sex clip.
Chris: It was the bear sex!
Nathan: There are Google analytics that show this. Baldur’s Gate 3 was a curiosity, and then that one clip hit, and suddenly tons of people were searching it. After that it was just an upward trajectory.
Chris: And so what we gotta do – game developers, listen here – if you want your game to be successful, you just have to have sex with something. Doesn’t have to be a bear.
Nathan: But probably not a person. There are enough games with sex with those in them.
Ryan: Everything needs some sort of attachment to it. Because in addition to the bear sex – which was very important – Baldur’s Gate was a moment not just because it was some big game everyone was talking about, but because it felt like the height of Critical Role, the revitalization of D&D, and this giant video game coming together in a way where everyone could experience it. At Polygon, we had people who were on the entertainment team or something – who didn’t play a ton of games every year – but could in their offtime get into it because of D&D. Everything needs something like that. It’s hard to imagine games that are just big video games [in a vacuum] like GTA VI continuing forward.
