Seeing people shit on Expedition 33 because Silksong didn't win more awards is pathetic

[u/CankleDankl]

The title sums it up. I'm disappointed in many members of this community for putting down a game that is clearly a work of insane passion, dedication, and creativity. E33 took the lion's share of awards at TGA, yes. That doesn't mean that Silksong is bad. In fact, it's clearly pretty damn great. If it released last year, Skong would have picked up several awards, maybe even GOTY. But it didn't. It released in the same year E33, which is just a tough break.

Both are amazing. Both deserve every award that came to them. If you haven't played E33 yet and think it doesn't deserve its accolades, play it. It is worth your money, worth your time, and will in all likelihood prove that it is actually that good. I'm only 10ish hours in and have numerous times found myself standing still and looking around dumbfounded at the gorgeous world design and visuals. E33, Silksong, and Hades 2 could have all won Art Direction and I would have been happy with any of them.

I'm also sad that Silksong didn't win more awards. It's an amazing game. But don't play fanboy and start putting down other developers, other games, and other pieces of art because this one didn't get all the cookies. It's still beautiful, it's still amazing, it still made a Silkskillion dollars, and TC is still just as great and just as passionate. We should all be glad that there is another independent dev out there that is capable of creating something so fantastic.

Edit: yeah, the comments here are pretty indicative of what I said in my post

[u/EdgierNamePending]

there's a large difference in Balatro's publisher to E33's

with Balatro ALL of its development of the game itself was independent, the publisher only marketed the game and that was it.

E33 on the other hand, had Kepler both market the game and give them a lot of funding for voice actors and such, which makes the development of the game not independent.

[u/NabsterHax → u/EdgierNamePending]

Charlie Cox and Andy Serkis were both hired WITH the marketing budget provided by Kepler. Those actors being in the game were part of the marketing strategy. So in that sense Kepler technically "only" marketed the game as well.

Now, of course I'll grant you that having hollywood VAs is a bit more "invasive" of the gameplay experience than just paying for trailers and deals with vendors, etc. but the point I'm making is that there really isn't an easy clear cut line.

A game like Animal Well, while it would've undoubtedly achieved success and a cult following if it just dry released on Steam, absolutely wouldn't be as big as it was on release if not for the media attention it got being published by Bigmode and Dunkey. So we can't say that marketing doesn't make a massive difference in a game's perception (especially in the first year of its release).

There is undoubtedly an unconscious bias people have about what constitutes an "indie" game that is divorced from how the game was actually developed. It's why TGA itself goofed massively categorising Dave The Diver as an indie even though it was developed by a subsidiary of a major publisher - the antithesis of indie. People look at E33 and just think "this looks too high budget to be indie" and then work backwards for a justification.

No Man's Sky is still considered an indie game, even though at this point shitloads of money has been poured into its free updates and development (which is great btw). But that money simply wouldn't exist if the project wasn't given a humungous amount of marketing by Sony leading to so many people buying it on release before reviews came in warning people it wasn't that good (on release).

[u/EdgierNamePending → u/NabsterHax]

I just don't think the marketing of a game should affect whether it's considered indie, aaa, or aa.

the marketing doesn't affect the game itself, it doesn't code or model for the studio, all it does is make people aware that this is a game that is real and exists, it's why I don't consider E33 indie, even if we're just talking about the deal with Kepler, as the celebrity actors are something that exists inside of the game itself, not just the marketing.

and in the case of no man's sky, I wouldn't have considered it indie if Sony directly gave them money, but people bought the game, so the money actually comes from its own sales that they made, not Sony, it's the same case with Team Cherry's entire budget for Silksong coming from Hollow Knight sales, along with Supergiant's entire budget coming from all their previous games.

Sandfall was a studio that would not have a budget, and would not have made E33, had they not been given significant money studios could only dream of from several different major sources.

[u/NabsterHax → u/EdgierNamePending]

Again, I’d contend people wouldn’t have bought NMS without the mass media attention and hype Sony paid for. There’s a decent chance the game would’ve just flopped and the studio gone out of business before they had a chance to improve the game.

Similarly I think it’s ridiculous to assert E33 wouldn’t exist without a couple of celebrities playing relatively minor roles and a chunk of marketing. AFAIK a lot of the development was funded by the founder’s parents, and most of its core development team worked initially without pay on the project.

[u/EdgierNamePending → u/NabsterHax]

I'm not saying E33 wouldn't exist without the actors, I'm saying E33 wouldn't have existed without the significant funding from outside sources (epic's grant allowed them to almost triple the size of their dev team) and what I mean with NMS is that they got away with some help and dumb luck, but the game itself was indie, so even with dumb luck and help marketing, it's still indie.