I’m loving Silksong so far. I’ve only had a couple hours to play it since it was released, which I believe makes me the slowest person to play the game. I’m not sure how anyone beats a 30-hour game within 24-hours of its release, but they’re far better than me and I can accept that fact. It’s impressive enough when I complete a long game at all.

The closest I’ve come to speedrunning something that fast was my marriage. There weren’t any cool achievements, but I did get to see my mom look really disappointed, which is itself not outside of the realm of possibility for people who beat Silksong incredibly fast.

But, word-count-filling anecdotes aside, I think it’s worth celebrating Silksong as a success. Not just because it’s a great game (although it is). I think it’s worth celebrating that Team Cherry obviously respects their audience.

Making Games Feels Impossible These Days

This isn’t to say that other developers hate their audience. I mean, I’m sure some do! And I’m sure some don't respect their players further than they can squeeze microtransactions out of them. I also do respect that a lot of developers aren’t able to completely make their own decisions in terms of promotion or release.

As this industry disintegrates like cotton candy dipped in a stream, it’s easy to forget that a lot of the companies that make these games are under a lot of pressure and a lot of financial strain and sometimes need to make choices that are, uh, just a little anti-consumer. Although I want to emphasize the ‘sometimes’, because it both doesn’t completely excuse it and it’s too easy to give a pass to companies charging extra for major content available at launch when they don’t have to.

And the fact that those same issues can be immediately fixed due to fan backlash often shows a side of the industry more concerned with slipping things past the customer goalie than doing the game justice.

Silksong Isn’t Trying To Take Your Money, That’s Why It Deserves It

So, yes, the video game industry is complicated. We are all individual universes inside our own minds, etc. But something that always impressed me about Team Cherry was that it never seemed like it was just trying to juice customers or overpromise anything. As much as Silksong trailers became a running joke about The Game Awards and Nintendo Directs, the company never seemed to overpromise.

Maybe they underestimated when it was coming, but I can’t remember any interviews where they claimed anything but the final product we got. This wasn’t a Duke Nukem Forever situation where they made grandiose claim after grandiose claim while basically just making the game over each time there was new, shiny tech.

If anything, Silksong underpromised and overdelivered. We were excited about the game because we liked Hollow Knight. Even when there was merch and crossovers, it never felt like a BIG SALES EVENT or GET IT NOW OR YOU DON’T LOVE HOLLOW KNIGHT. They were simply cool little bits and bobs. You never got the sense Team Cherry was twisting juice out of this franchise or just hoping the fandom could let them coast.

And, if you remember, Silksong was originally supposed to be DLC for that game. Now, a shadier company making this decision might have turned that DLC into its own small mini-release just to charge a bigger price. But Silksong isn’t an expensive game and, by all accounts, it is much, much bigger than the original Hollow Knight. Not only that, it somehow lives in the Hollow Knight universe, feels familiar to Hollow Knight players, yet resists just being a direct copy with some new levels.

A Symiobitc Relationship

There are so many ways Silksong could’ve been a cheap cash grab. There are so many ways Team Cherry could’ve pushed the game out of the door as ‘good enough’ or - worse - do endless interviews in which every promise was bigger than the last.

I like the Borderlands games, but the run-up to the new one features so many interviews filled with PR speak that both promise it’s more of the same but also completely different. Even the discussion of the price of Borderlands 4 felt a bit like an attack on fans who weren’t cool enough to want to spend more money than before.

And, look, I understand that promo for literally anything can suck. And I know that development cycles are an expensive hell, and not everyone has the luxury of a prior big success to keep them afloat. But with Silksong, it seemed that the biggest promo Team Cherry got was from keeping fans happy and not pledging to deliver the goddamn moon.

It never felt like Team Cherry was mad at fans for asking for the game. It never seemed like Team Cherry was making fun of people for hoping it was a reasonable price - which, by the way, it is. And at the same time, which is a bit of a magic trick, Team Cherry never just sat back and waited for the fans to come to them. It was a symbiotic relationship, not an antagonistic tug-of-war over a game release.

One last time, I’m aware launching a game isn’t easy. I’ve been there and it wasn’t even my money on the line. But that’s why Silksong’s release is so impressive. Not just the numbers. But even the way it was done. The fact that we got the final release date when they were absolutely serious about it - not half a year away with a massive delay on the horizon. Part of the reason the launch has had so much fanfare is because, ironically, it was done with little fanfare.

We didn’t have to suffer through months of intense events or following the bread crumbs on some deeply annoying ARG promo thing or watching lost movie stars walking on stage to discuss their bit part. Team Cherry announced a game, took its time, didn’t antagonize its audience, and released a game to massive sales and thunderous applause. What a concept.