Silksong update
After almost 2 weeks, I've finally gotten to The Last Judge in Silksong - a boss I've been assured is about halfway through most people's playthrough of the game.
I'd heard previously that the game has three acts, and I haven't even triggered Act 2 yet. The game is huge! There were a couple days last week where all I did all day was play Silksong, pretty much. One of the reasons I started going to weird parks for no reason was to prevent myself from playing Silksong all day.
When Silksong came out, a lot of people were treating it sort of like an "indie GTA", and making release decisions to avoid its last-minute release-window announcement. I worked on a game that made those release calculations. Having got through half of the game so far... I both do and don't feel that the worry was justified.
For games in similar genres, targeting similar audiences, I do think that it was probably understandable to reschedule your release to dodge this game. It's absolutely massive, very cheap, and capable of soaking up a truly insane number of hours from the average player. I'm not good at 2D combat games, but I am pretty decent at them, I think, and I'm willing to keep playing many of them until I actually get close to finishing - which is more than most people bother. It's certainly soaked up more than 20 hours from me so far (though my Steam hour count is inaccurate, so I'm not sure how much I've actually spent on it). If this is the kind of game you like, it can certainly obliterate a couple months of your free time. If I wasn't laid off, this would be month-and-a-half, or even two-month game for me.
If it was understandable for people to delay... was it wise? Depends on how long they delayed their launches by, I guess, and how much danger they put themselves in by doing so. It was probably stupid for people to delay enough to require layoffs or real risk to their studios, since this is the kind of game you'll never escape comparison to. Enthusiasts will probably still compare you to Silksong a decade from now. This is a comparison you can't run away from. It's like Hades in that way - high-quality enough that genre freakos will be using it as a yardstick forever.
The more I play the game, the more I suspect that some very large slice of the people who bought it won't be finishing it. It's very, very demanding, and I've now seen several bosses that are potential "quit playing" moments for many players. It's possible that someone launching an "easy" metroidvania after Silksong could have done something with that to benefit themselves (though crafting that launch messaging would have been insanely difficult).
And even in the case of the players who bounce off this game... on the PC in particular, you're still competing with it forever. Like every other cheapish game PC gamers tend to buy on a whim, it'll remain in their Steam library as an option for them to pick back up for the rest of time.
So, what's the point of putting your studio at risk to escape the long shadow of a direct genre competitor? If your game is legitimately low-quality, there's no shadow short enough for you to get away from. You can dodge the press attention blast zone, but not the game. And these days, press beats are shorter than ever.
So, yeah... I have no real firm conclusions to provide, but these are the vibes swirling around in my head right now. Here's hoping I don't bounce off The Last Judge!