A new report sheds light on toxicity and conflict at Life is Strange: True Colors studio Deck Nine.
A new IGN report has revealed a dire and disturbing look inside Life is Strange: True Colors studio Deck Nine, revealing among other things a strong reluctance from publisher Square Enix to embrace the game’s underlying themes—to the point that it told the studio it didn’t want Life is Strange to become known as the “gay game.”
The first Life is Strange game, released episodically through 2015, was developed by Dontnod, as was the sequel, Life is Strange 2, which came out in 2018. Deck Nine created the 2017 prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and the 2021 followup, Life is Strange: True Colors. It’s a bit of an unusual situation—kind of like an Infinity Ward/Treyarch back-and-forth, but for narrative adventures rather than military shooters—but all of the games in the series have been acclaimed for their adept storytelling and characters.
True Colors, the most recent addition to the series, is a critically-acclaimed game about a young woman named Alex whose empathic abilities enable her to feel and even absorb the feelings of others around her. It’s heavy stuff, but also very well handled: “It’s a story that lets a young queer woman unashamedly cry, scream, and experience joy free from shame, and that’s something incredibly special,” we said in our 86% review.
Pride felt the same way, calling it “the must-play queer game of 2021,” while GLAAD awarded it the Outstanding Videogame at the 33rd GLAAD Media Awards. Fair to say, then, that it’s a pretty queer game.
That apparently was an outcome that Square Enix was for some reason eager to avoid. The publisher was very hands-on with the script, according to the report, and was also very reluctant to embrace the game’s underlying themes: Multiple people said Square Enix told developers they didn’t want True Colors to be thought of as the “gay game.”
It’s bizarre but also ironic. Life is Strange: True Colors won numerous awards for its narrative and performances, and is properly celebrated for its unabashedly positive representation of queer characters. The idea that Square Enix would come at developers with “don’t say gay” is baffling, and speaks to either a complete misunderstanding of the game, or an intentional hostility toward it. Either way, it seems remarkable that True Colors ultimately emerged as strongly as it did.
That’s especially true given the other challenges faced by employees of Deck Nine cited in the report, which includes allegations of toxicity from senior developers and indifference toward it from management, weeks of crunch driven by tight deadlines and small budgets, and the appearance of racist memes and Nazi symbols in a new Life is Strange project. Deck Nine also suffered layoffs in February, leaving the studio with just over half the headcount it had during the development of True Colors. It’s an impressive detailed account of a studio that’s struggling but producing admirable work regardless—you can read the whole thing at IGN.
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