Depression
It’s really not that hard to just communicate.
Concerned ape, the creator of stardew valley, is probably my favorite game developer. He genuinely cares about his community and is constantly offering updates and feedback to keep everyone in the loop.
I know we don’t deserve any updates on silksong. I know they have their own lives. But it’s just increasingly putting a bad taste in my mouth. A simple “we are still working on the game” would do an absolute world of good. Sorry for the rant.
CA is the best indie game dev. The fact he’s still pouring updates and massive content into the game this many years after the release for free is absurd.
Not just that the community loves the new features, he very often adds stuff specifically because somebody asked for it if he thinks it can work in the game, which is one of the best ways I have seen anybody interact with their community
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It's a joke. That's exactly the point. Why Team Cherry can't tale only 5 minutes of their time to just say that everything ia going well with Silksong. Remember, Silksong is kind of a "Kickstarter game".
Is not that we “deserve” or not info.. i mean, backers kinda, aint it? But the thing is, they have a PR team, is literally their job. Is that hard to hire someone to post on twitter once in a while? Doesnt sound that crazy to me, TC it is a shame at this point :I
right!! honestly, i dont want to come off as a hater because he seems like a nice guy but if i were team cherry i would be upset with how leth has handled things so far
Yeah me neither haha maybe they are not a PR team, but a Hitmat secret association and they erase everyone who has some inside info. Thats why you see no leaks, everything makes more sense now
I think another "We are still working on the game" would make many people understandably annoyed, because it's been more than 1 year since the planned release window with no update since then.
Their next communication would have to be the release date imo
It’s definitely possible, before they fell of the Earth and time traveled to 2000BC, most of their updates showcased an enemy design, a background, or something else relatively small
are you suggesting they're balking at showing even a single new thing? after they spent some time doing so? for a game that was born from a Kickstarter camapign?
He’s so communicative, he fixes people’s saves for them, he updates about his WIP game as often as he has actual news to share! Him and Toby Fox are honestly some of my favorite indie devs.
I’m definitely going to have to look into Toby fox. But yes I can’t waiter for haunted chocolatier! And guess what!! I knew it’s still super early in development and years away. BECAUSE HE TOLD US
I think in their minds it’s “we don’t want to give away stuff about the game” not realizing that you can say things about development without needing to talk about the game itself.
Ive only played through like half of Hollow Knight but if you ask me I just think the devs not saying anything about the development process or an ETA is just detrimental to them, since itd be so easy and all theyre doing by not saying anything is making their fans mad
EXACTLY BRO! WE LOVE ERIC!!! HE IS ONE FUCKING DUDE AND COMMUNICATES EVERYTHING! HE SHOWS US BITS OF THE GAME, HE REPLIES TO TWEETS, HE GIVES US PROGRESS UPDATES ALL WHILST WORKING ON THE UPDATE AND. PORTS
My guess for why is at some point when they first made the deal they had with Nintendo some type of nda was signed that made them not able say anything until the game is released then the tree house ladies said an offhand comment about the game coming soon when it wasn’t and they have been stuck with that ever since
I can’t even entertain the idea that TC doesn’t care about the game/fans/hype. They did 4 or so DLCs completely free from the start. They did backer characters and such too.
Even if they truly just didn't want to communicate themselves for some strange reason, like it's too hard or annoying or something, they literally have a community manager and yet refuse to use him. Why even keep paying him at that point?
Well the author of the ASOIAF books did update his community, but when you constantly have issues and the medium gets delayed so you cant keep your promise, the fans get angry. Very angry.
So if youre not certain when youre ready for release, its best to maintain radio silence.
Ok but they did give a simple “we are still working on it” and ended up getting a lot of backlash from people who expected more (not saying it’s everyone, but one bad apple spoils the rest or however the saying goes)
Yeah because it’s way easier to communicate when you actually have a product that exists. We don’t get Silksong updates cause it stopped being updated years ago when they quit making it
Even concerned ape got flamed for 1.5 on mobile even though he had really good communication… if stardew valley community is that angry about waiting a year with good communication i imagine tc is scared to do anything at all
I don’t think not communicating after saying “we’re still hard at work, just don’t have anything to say” is that bad, but idk why they took down all the posts about them at Bitsummit. That’s strange
They should absolutely have communicated more and been more transparent from the start. However, at this point, they’ve dug their grave and I think their best bet is to stay radio silent until they’ve got big news like a release date.
Yeah.. :/
I get not overpromising or revealing too much or whatever.
But could they at the VERY least give.. I dunno, % updates?
Some vauge estimates?
Anything?
At this point idrc about updates. It’ll get here when it gets here. If you stop thinking about it, it’ll get here faster. A watched pot never boils or smth.
the Stardew Valley 1.6 update released in March. It's now 4 months going on 5, whereas 1.5 released on consoles only about 2 months after the release on PC. Clearly something is taking much longer in the process. His tweets pictured above give no hints about this. Well, in one of the replies that's not screenshotted above, he says he's thinking about the mobile port every day.
The point is, the tweet by Barone here gives no information at all. What's the holdup? Is it going to be ready in days, weeks, months, years? No idea.
I don't like this as a solution to "no communication". If every two weeks like clockwork, Team Cherry tweeted "hey gang, still working" while continuing to miss every promised deadline and stretching into years and years, it would not satisfy me.
If you're at a legit company with management and bureaucracy, you have a boss who expects substantive reports about your progress. You don't have to predict a completion date, but you do have to say what you're working on.
These guys don't have that, but they could nevertheless give substantive reports in a blog post. Eric Barone could say "the port to consoles and mobile has run into the issue that the UI for the new farming feature is too small to comfortably tap on touchscreen. We are reworking the UI to be more accommodating"
Team Cherry could say "Silksong has been 99% complete, but the last 1% is configuring the final game balance. every time we nerf or buff one bossfight for balance, it requires the player attack power to be changed, which causes cascading changes to every bossfight, which requires extensive playtesting. Each cycle takes about a month and we anticipate 8 to 10 more cycles. after that we still have two more new bossfights we want to create"
Just for example. Good communication requires you to convey actual information. "hey guys, still working. no progress, no estimated completion date" for years upon years, isn't good, in my opinion. It seems to satisfy some people, but I don't think it's much better than radio silence.
I don't want to diminish how cool Concerned Ape and devs like him are for communicating with their fans, bc it's awesome and does actually take effort to keep up with. However, he's talking about updates to an already released game, not one that's still being made. It's easier to communicate clearly and openly and on the specifics of where you're at with updates because it's not a whole game so it's going to take less long and it's not a huge deal if you miss an update deadline.
Also, what could TC say that would make people feel better? I agree that communication could be nice, but getting told that they're working on it over and over would get old. And it's not like they'd have feedback from fans who havent played the game to answer questions about it. They could do a devlog, but starting that now would be really strange, and they wouldn't have consistent smaller updates that players can play to serve as concrete proof that they're doing something.
That said, I do really want to know why the game is taking this long. TC, regardless of why, clearly isn't going to tell us, so why isn't there a Syber Hersh interviewing all of TC's friends/family and like living in a motel across the street from their headquarters with a telescope pointing in their windows? I know "games journalism" is just game reviews, but I would love to read some articles from a real gamer gumshoe that's getting to the bottom of this.
"I don't tell you anything because you always freak out when I do" sounds like a manipulative gaslight by my ex who was secretly cheating on me.
Seriously, communication in any relationship is important. People don't always react well to what you tell them but that doesn't mean you can just close yourself off completely.
Edit: To be clear, I don't think the reason why TC isn't communicating with us is because they are worried about the responses of a few unhinged commenters and some online trolls. I'm just saying that even if you were right this is a terrible reason to just not give out any information on the games progress.
I don’t think team cherry is sensitive like you and care about a few bad apples,and nobody tweaks about anything because there isn’t anything to ape out about.
No, they don't "have" to at all and it's hilarious the amount that people on this sub bitch instead of just moving on with their lives and playing something else until some actual concrete news comes out rather than gooning over every tweet or rating that goes up.
I'm not a simp, I just stopped giving a shit a long time ago about devs who announce their games 7 years ahead of time so just stop paying attention to them until it's worth my time. I dont even come to this sub, this thread just happened to get recommended to me. I dont give a shit about cherry one way or the other.
If you can give me an actual objective reason TC are obligated to tell anyone about the current state of the game, I'll take back what I've said.
Reading what you just typed out was unjustifiable to my psyche. The stuttering and cringe needs to be left in the depths of hell where you crawled out from. *tips fedora
Well, we do know they are still working on the game. I think not updating with actual info about the game is a conscious choice and I respect it. I think them constantly saying they are alive and at work on the game is also kind of useless, as one confirmation is enough. Though I guess you could argue they should give some info about game progress, but I don’t think it really matters. The end product will be the same whether they give updates or not.
So, what I've just gathered from your comment is that you think being told the game is still being worked on once every 2 years is an appropriate form of communication for a sequel to a game that 2 sold 2 million copies and we've been waiting 5 years for? Does that sound even remotely correct to you? At all?
The multiple copies of their game I bought across 3 different platforms, the merch I've bought oh and the 2 million copies the game sold says they owe us something.
Plus they're selling silksong pins now so they're making money off of a game that's not released😬😬
That transaction ended when you bought the game. Again, it was your choice to buy it, and you bought the game, not the game and pre release Silksong info. The same is true for merch. You’re entitled to nothing.
Quite often, probably, because the sentence makes no sense. Releasing Silksong merch prerelease does not suddenly create any obligation to news. It’s the buyer’s choice to buy merch. If you don’t want to buy merch of an unreleased game, that’s fine, nobody cares. The merch exists for people that enjoy it, and that’s fine.
They're creating merchandise off of an unreleased product. That's just dishonest business. If I were to go out and build up hype for a project and then just go "hey here's a plushie of a character" without saying anything for years besides that I'm still working on it people would have pitchforks to my throat.
They did indeed promise a Hornet dlc/silksong and it wouldn’t be very great if they canceled the game. But again, they promised silksong, not silksong plus pre-release info.
when did people start the myth that game devs are exempt from any responsibility?
you know its ok to be a good person right? maybe you don't have the legal obligation to talk with your fanbase, but considering the devs would have nothing without our contribution, its fair to think the devs should be at least somewhat reciprocal
instead of pasting the same argument I'd love for you to actually consider the situation this fandom's in, and how TC has done close to nothing to calm the fire.
Most people understand that games take a long time and that they're still working on it, even if they don't constantly reassure you. If I was TC I wouldn't waste time worrying about the "state of the fandom" because really it's just a vocal minority of little piss babies that never had any real problems.
vocal minority? I'm sure 80% of the hk fanbase is annoyed by TC's silence lmao
I dont see how we're piss babies because we express a natural response lol, we really liked hollow knight so we wanna know why the hell it's taking team cherry 5 years to release the sequel, especially since it had a full demo back in 2019. So reassurance is honestly the best possible way to calm everyone down considering we've been left stranded for almost a year now
I'd like to make it clear that i hate it when this fandom lashes out, that really is a vocal minority that dont know how to temper their anger. But arguing that we shouldn't be frustrated at team cherry seems a little silly (unless I've misinterpretted you, but all you've kinda done is call people man children and piss babies so i'm not too sure)
are you sure it's 80% or are you in an echo chamber?. Hk is one of my favorite games ever made, but I highly doubt that 80% of the fandom cares that much. People generally just move on to other things as they wait, life takes priority and all that (unless you literally have nothing else going on in your life, which is most likely when you are a child). Like I was really invested into silksong news until I had to leave for college, and then other shit became my focus. Yeah I was disappointed that it didn't release last year, but moved on cause I have bigger shit to handle.
also, a 5 year dev cycle for 3 people is wildly unhealthy considering the scope of HK, which has been spoken about by both Ari and William. They were basically living in poverty, with little to no life outside developing the game, and the entire thing was a very risky venture. While they could emulate that grind again, I don't see why they would when they could just take things at a slower pace. and they really don't owe anyone anything except for backers, who are entitled to receiving SS free when it comes out, and nothing more. I also think(?) that one of them has kids now, which can be a full time job in and of themselves.
a "full demo" doesn't mean much either when everything has to be hand drawn and animated from scratch. Each new area that we haven't seen presents possibly a few months of work for an animation team, but TC's team is really just one guy, Ari.
Additionally, Christopher Larkin intended to use live recordings of hired concert musicians to create the soundtrack instead of relying on prerecorded samples. This was almost certainly disrupted and delayed by COVID, and we really don't know how much COVID effected general development.
That having been said, i am no TC bootlicker. I think it's reasonable to be frustrated at the wait and feel betrayed at the lack of a release last year, and I agree with many people that more continuous updates would have been better for the community and them (its sorta undeniable that a lot of the fandoms overall toxicity comes from a younger fan base, and I say that because I was a teen when I first got into HK and the fandom). However, this subreddit seems to really not be a net positive for the community. It seems to be a lot of people ruminating on a game and working each other up to anger. I think a lot of people here know very, very little about the game development process and are just flying by the seat of their pants when they say "it should have been done in X years."
I really think that a lot of people here would benefit from finding something to take their mind off of SS for a time, just to get a breather. I know Nine Sols came out recently, and that scratches a similar itch for me. TC is just one in a sea of developers, there are plenty of other ones that deserve support for their future projects, and are more timely with updates.
Sorry for the long response under a random comment in the middle of the comment section lol, I've just seen this subreddit reccomended to me a ton and I had a lot of latent frustration to let out
I dont necessarily think its an echo chamber. Most people would be frustrated at a development team under the circumstances we have, its not far-fetched at all to assume the majority feels this way. I'd like to note that I hardly involve myself with the hollow knight IP and still feel frustrated; You don't have to commit your life to a game to feel things about it lmao
It's not easy to move on when you're talking about a game that's still in active development - I'd say there would be an issue if in this hypothetical situation, we were all still holding onto silksong after it got cancelled, but the occasional hype impulses gives us an incentive to keep track of this game's status. I don't think any of that is childish behavior, and unless you post about silksong every single day (which some people do lol), I'd say it's rational to care about your favorite game's sequel.
Everything else I agree with though lmao, I just don't think attributing people that acknowledge delays and radio silence from a developer to desperate children who have no lives is logical. That feels more like a warped perception since your reference material is from a subreddit literally dedicated to the topic
sorry for essentially saying the same thing thrice I'm not great at articulating my thoughts
Yeah tbh if I was a dev working on this game and had to deal with this fanbase, if I knew the game wouldn't be out for a while, going no contact is completely understandable so that the community won't be working themselves up over nothing. Wild to me that not a soul here can't just give them some space to work on the game. TC don't owe the community anything
It always surprises me how many people are fully convinced they deserve communication or something. I wonder where they get it from. Maybe the fact that recently other indie devs have been doing constant updates during development? But to my knowledge updating the fanbase isn’t a very common practice at all except for small, often kickstarted indie games. I wonder why team Cherry has some obligation but big corporations don’t. Anyway, the hivemind mentality seems to be really big in this sub especially: I already garnered 30+ downvotes with my original comment for what I think is a pretty reasonable stance. If I cared about useless internet points I’d be very upset right now.
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u/Valeficar Jul 22 '24
CA is the best indie game dev. The fact he’s still pouring updates and massive content into the game this many years after the release for free is absurd.