The Silent Hill franchise is one of the earliest and most psychologically terrifying game series, using deceptive plots and twisted monsters to lure the player in and play with their perception of reality. The disconcerting atmosphere of these games felt inextricably linked to the graphics and sound fonts of the PS2, so when Konami announced their intention to create a Silent Hill 2 Remake, devoted fans were skeptical.
However, the project had a few advantages over the many other recent remakes. Firstly, Konami learned from the successes and failures of other remakes to see how best to satisfy both old and potential new fans alike. Secondly, Silent Hill 2 Remake was developed by Bloober Team, well known for their work on other horror titles like Layers of Fear and Blair Witch. For Konami, Silent Hill 2 Remake is a chance to prove to gamers that they understand what made their classic titles great.
In this article, we look at how Silent Hill 2 Remake performed on live-streaming platforms, including its initial reception and how well it stacks up against other survival horror games – both originals and remakes.
Silent Hill 2 Remake Generates Hype with Its Classic Storytelling
Like many other recent games, Silent Hill 2 Remake had both early and official release dates on the th and 8th of October, respectively. For the purposes of our analysis here, we’ve tracked from the 6th of October (when many streamers started airing the game).
Silent Hill 2 Remake capitalized on the hype of its status as a classic video game to draw in a massive live-streaming audience. In its first week, Silent Hill 2 Remake generated just under 16M hours watched with an aggregated peak viewership of 404K across all platforms. This is a stunning turnout for a slow-drip horror game, suggesting that viewers were truly sucked into the storyline with their favorite streamers. Additionally, the massive airtime of 315K hours suggests that a plethora of streamers were interested in the game rather than a few big-name creators.
Of course, with such a flawless reputation, viewers were no doubt eager to check out the game. But Silent Hill 2 Remake was also heavily promoted at Tokyo Game Show 2024 which took place just a few weeks ago, putting the remake front-of-mind for many gamers. A few other factors no doubt helped to drive hype. Releasing during Halloween is a tried-and-true advertising method as viewers engage with the spooky season. Some fans also showed up with the intention of lambasting either Konami or Bloober Team (companies that have faced criticism in the recent past). These dissenters were quickly quieted however by the atmospheric, modern retelling of Silent Hill 2’s story.
The same logic may apply to many of the top streamers who checked out the game, being either fans of Konami and Silent Hill, or wanting to provide their two cents on the adaptation. Spanish streamer IlloJuan was by far the most popular Silent Hill 2 Remake streamer with 603K hours watched – almost double that of Brazilian streamer alanzoka in second place with 312K hours watched. The top 10 was incredibly diverse, demonstrating the game’s global appeal. The top streamers for other languages included Elajjaz (English, 254K), Windah Basudara (Indonesian, 206K), and 풍월량 (Korean, 168K). Note that these last two creators also streamed on platforms other than Twitch (YouTube Gaming and Chzzk, respectively).
Konami Proves The Silent Hill Series Can Match Resident Evil
Not only have there been plenty of popular survival horror games in the past several years, but many of them have also been remakes. The most recent release hoping to capitalize on its status as a classic horror title was the Alone in the Dark remake, but a stilted execution and its more niche popularity failed to deliver on live-streaming platforms. So how does Silent Hill 2 Remake stack up against the competition?
Silent Hill 2 Remake managed to come third among survival horror games on live streaming with the aforementioned 16M hours watched, putting it roughly 1M ahead of the Resident Evil 2 remake at 14.9M hours watched. This is a fantastic performance, and one that wasn’t predicted by skeptics who felt that Silent Hill’s more methodical gameplay and storytelling would lack appeal compared to Resident Evil’s more action-focused approach. Still though, the game did fall short of the more action-heavy survival horror games like Sons of the Forest and Resident Evil 4’s remake (both with roughly 27.4M hours watched).
Of course, this raises the question: What did Silent Hill 2 Remake get right about updating the original title? A recent report by Room 8 Group looked at the qualities of 7 successful game remakes that captured the heart of the original game. A lot of remake success comes down to modernizing gameplay and art style, but art style is arguably more crucial for popularity on live streaming. Viewers want to see polished, atmospheric worlds and characters from these remakes, especially since they’re made by AAA studios with the budget to push hardware to its limits and the talent to devise creative art direction. Of course, gameplay matters too: Modern viewers don’t want to plod through dragged-out storylines or watch streamers fumble with clunky movement controls, regardless of whether this pacing suits the game’s ludonarrative ambitions.
Twitch Chat Supports Silent Hill 2 Remake with Positive Engagement
Looking at Twitch chat can provide some insight into how viewers felt about a specific game. In the case of Silent Hill 2 Remake, chat sentiment on Twitch saw twice as many positive messages compared to negative messages (13% vs. 6%). Viewers were also engaged with the game overall, with 22.3% chat participation among 3.3M Unique Registered Viewers (URVs).
Among these messages, a few keywords stood out that one would hope to see in a horror game stream’s chat log, like “scary” (19.6K), “monster” (14.9K), “creepy” (7.7K), and even “eww” (3.2K) – no doubt referring to the game’s many grotesque enemies. But one word stood out as a sign that Silent Hill 2 Remake had captured the heart of the original game: “Fog”, with an abnormally high 10.4K messages. Anyone who has played Silent Hill 2 before will know exactly why fog was mentioned so many times – as one commenter put it, “the iconic Silent Hill fog. Love it”. As mentioned above, capturing the “atmosphere” (2.2K messages) of the original game in a remake is crucial to satisfying OG fans, and the graphical capability of current-gen hardware rendered this fog beautifully.
With Silent Hill 2 Remake, Konami has proven they can honorably recreate their beloved franchises. This was important to prove, with the upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater expected to face intense scrutiny from fans of Hideo Kojima. Silent Hill 2 Remake’s success also signals to AAA studios that the trend of remakes and remasters is well and truly alive. Hopefully, developers can at least try to innovate within these narrow constraints, while bringing retro games to new audiences via live streaming.
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