The Price of Hollow Knight: Silksong | Unpacked
This week's episode of Unpacked is now available!
Comments (6)
Doubt it was intended this way, but the low price was a genius move to help mitigate blowback against the most meme-hyped game I can remember. Instant goodwill. Most indie devs don't have to deal with that level of pressure.
I'm fairly sure that I've heard some of the devs you mention as having successful recent Metroidvania genre launches say that they felt like they had to reduce the price of *those* games because of expectations Hollow Knight had set for consumers back when it released at a mere $15. I also definitely balked at the $50 price tag on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, in part because I was comparing it to Hollow Knight or other indie offerings like Nine Sols -- the pricing of leading competitors is definitely a relevant thing to consider.
Yea, there are some game genres where there's kind of an expected price. I think Metroidvanias are one of them. I think Prince of Persia and Metroid Dread would have sold way, way better if they were priced closer to the ones I mentioned in the video.
...It is business. But i think its nice when you make something you have fun with and enjoy making. And you want to share it with the world. Better than an 80 dollar reskin that was made of monotony and crushed dreams. 20, 25, 30, 5, 10, if its a good game and i enjoy it, ill buy and ill play it.
I think Silksong's impact on the indie space will be minimal. It'll introduce some people to the indie space and they'll find more titles they enjoy, but it won't be that many and it won't really do more than that. People who don't want to buy indie titles won't have their minds changed by Silksong and they're not going to demand more from their indie games just because of it. A couple might but they are a very small minority and would complain about something else if it's not the breadth of content on offer. I've said this a million times but I think the more harmful aspect of Silksong exists independently of its price, its developers, or dev time in that it sets a very unrealistic standard of success for content creators to expect from indie developers. They think indie games don't do well because AAA competes with them when all they're competing with is gamers' time and money. Indie titles often sell poorly because they don't look expensive enough to sell to John Average Gamer. And I wouldn't even call that expectation "harmful" because while it's certainly false and will set an unrealistic standard, it's not going to cause anything other than disappointment when other games fail, if they're even paying attention. It makes a very uncommon thing seem very likely but that's about it
Happy Friday Second Wind Team, and anyone else reading this!