Balatro and Hollow Knight: Silksong “shouldn’t exist,” according to industry analyst Joost van Dreunen. He elaborated that, “They don’t make rational sense financially, and yet somehow they are deeply loved.” Their commercial viability is an undeniable fact. However, the scale of their success baffles industry conventional wisdom.
Van Drunen is professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and a strategic advisor for the community development agency ELO. In an interview with GameIndustry.biz, van Dreunen discussed how the shifting macroeconomics of video games is creating space for smaller projects to become massive successes. He compares the shift to the way television challenged the Hollywood business model. Free-to-play games like Candy Crush compete with, and even undermine, big-budget blockbusters like GTA or Call of Duty. Yet, there are an increasing number of games that skirt outside either model, such as Silksong.
