Discussion IGN: How Hidden Nazi Symbols Were the Tip of a Toxic Iceberg at Life Is Strange Developer Deck Nine

[HockeyBird]

How Hidden Nazi Symbols Were the Tip of a Toxic Iceberg at Life Is Strange Developer Deck Nine - IGN

According to over a dozen current and former employees, Life Is Strange developer Deck Nine’s management has long let a toxic work culture fester at the studio, including protecting multiple abusive leaders, encouraging crunch, and allowing bullying of individuals advocating internally for more...

www.ign.com

Great reporting by IGN. I'm still reading through the article but it's all around a fucked up situation. Nazi dog whistles. Harassment from bosses. Shitty behavior from publisher Square Enix.

"Another source elaborated, “Square always put a lot of pressure on our people, so that toxicity started to bleed into our environment too.”
Others I spoke to expressed frustration at Square Enix for a different reason: it was far too hands-on with the script. Sure, Life is Strange is a Square Enix’s owned IP, but sources told me Square Enix seemed oddly reluctant or outright hostile to the diverse themes and ideas that Life Is Strange fans love. For instance, multiple people recalled an incident during True Colors development where Square Enix told multiple developers it didn’t want Life Is Strange to be thought of as the “gay game.”

 

[Vookatos]

While I've not played any game from the series, this reaffirms my view that Square might be my least favorite japanese publisher. From their yearly "we love NFTs/AI" posts to treating everything that's nor Final Fantasy or DQ related like shit.
Shame, becuase I'm quite interested in FF7 Remake series but they're pretty much at Ubisoft levels of "I don't want to give them any money"

 

[Bonejack]

Didn't expect that load of shit at the studio that worked on a Life is Strange game.

Shocking, to be honest.

 

[meatbag]

Sure, Life is Strange is a Square Enix’s owned IP, but sources told me Square Enix seemed oddly reluctant or outright hostile to the diverse themes and ideas that Life Is Strange fans love.

EDIT: Whoops, pressed the Post button too soon.

Anyway, I'm on the same page as @Bonejack here. Disheartening to hear that they were hostile to a game they were publishing themselves.

 

[Koren Lesthe]

"We don't want this to be known as the 'gay game'"

Reminds me how batshit insane Microsoft went when the main character to be featured on the cover of Fable 3 was supposed to be a black woman.

 

[PixelKnight]

Jesus that studio’s management sounds incompetent. How do you just ignore that one of your own staff is putting that shit in the game

 

[Zellia]

That made for grim reading. All the best to the people who fought against all of this. I hope they one day get to pursue their passions in a place free of Nazis, bigots and creeps.

 

[Koyota]

Jesus that studio’s management sounds incompetent. How do you just ignore that one of your own staff is putting that shit in the game

Can someone help me with how change control would work that they are unable to see who edited or created assets?

Unless the only people noticing it were folks that had nothing to do with art / text.

I help run and manage internal programs at a company, even at my small scale internal only I have complete visibility on who and when edits were made to assets.

 

[PixelKnight]

No idea. And if they genuinely don’t know somehow, then surely the first thing to do in the meantime is to move to a system where they can see, as it seems like someone internal is sabotaging years of work?

 

[DittoM]

“We don’t want to be known as the ‘gay game’”

Genuinely who did Square Enix think the target audience for these games were?

 

[Wockio]

I really encourage everyone to read this all the way through as it goes way beyond even nazi symbols. It paints such a grim picture of the western videogames industry it's almost hard to believe.

 

[HockeyBird]

“We don’t want to be known as the ‘gay game’”

Genuinely who did Square Enix think the target audience for these games were?

They don't want to be known as the gay game but they are sure fine collecting that gay money.

 

[VolcanicDynamo]

The last paragraph, a quote from producer Madeleine Tate, hit hard:

“I worry that True Colors and Before the Storm are important to the queer community, and I just worry people will think they can’t play these anymore,” Tate said. “But every good thing we got in those stories was fought for hard by female writers and queer writers, and games aren’t made by one person…If you’re marginalized you have to love games so much more to make them because you have to put up with so much more shit.”

What the industry does to the marginalized in particular is sad and frustrating.

 

[Aurc]

What the hell. I'll be reading through the full article later, but Life is Strange 1 and Before the Storm are easily the gayest games I've ever played (with LiS2 also allowing you to pursue a non-hetero route), so the concerns about LiS being known as "the gay game" are absurd to me. It's like trying to take the jumping out of Mario.

I only ever played an hour or two of True Colors, and it's disheartening to see this stuff come out about Deck Nine's culture, but the paragraph VolcanicDynamo quoted directly above is at least reassuring.

 

[Mer.Saloon]

Goddamn that was a sobering read.

Hearing from Gariss' was the most infuriating, and self centered piece of bile I had to endure. And then the stuff that happened aftwards. Jeez.

I hope the team who remain at Deck Nine who are struggling the best, and any closeted Nazis still there a swift boot.

 

[Shoulder]

The last paragraph, a quote from producer Madeleine Tate, hit hard:



What the industry does to the marginalized in particular is sad and frustrating.

I wish I could say this is only something that occurs in the video game industry, but unfortunately it happens in every industry.

Human beings can be really shitty human beings to each other.

 

[Magic-Man]

“We don’t want to be known as the ‘gay game’”

Genuinely who did Square Enix think the target audience for these games were?

Wasn't Life is Strange one of the first games to feature a queer protagonist? And it's not like it's a secret either. I don't get Square Enix.

The last paragraph, a quote from producer Madeleine Tate, hit hard:



What the industry does to the marginalized in particular is sad and frustrating.

This quote also hits different when it comes to the nature of video game boycotts. It's why I've grown to not support any of them. Some artists spend years of their lives on these games. To have their work cast aside because of shitty people at the top feels meaningless and depressing. It makes you question the point of all of it.

 

[Clov]

It's terrible what marginalized people have to put up with to try and work in the industry. Horrific behaviour not only from higher up staff at Deck Nine, but Square themselves. Such a bleak and depressing picture.

Wasn't Life is Strange one of the first games to feature a queer protagonist?

Perhaps it's one of the first larger scale, modern games, but really we have always been here.

This quote also hits different when it comes to the nature of video game boycotts. It's why I've grown to not support any of them. Some artists spend years of their lives on these games. To have their work cast aside because of shitty people at the top feels meaningless and depressing. It makes you question the point of all of it.

I've grown to support them completely; the artists have been paid, they won't get paid more if I buy it, and I'm under no obligation to do so in the first place. On the contrary, if I buy a game where say, I know for a fact that my money will go to someone who will then directly fund political efforts to criminalize my existence, then I'm shooting both myself and anyone else like me in the foot. But to each their own!

 

[BotenAnna]

Wasn't Life is Strange one of the first games to feature a queer protagonist? And it's not like it's a secret either. I don't get Square Enix.

I assure you games where player choice dictates protag sexuality or also have characters with explicitly queer themes predate 2015.

 

[Megafan96]

"Another source elaborated, “Square always put a lot of pressure on our people, so that toxicity started to bleed into our environment too.”

Man, the workload was just so awful, you guys just aren't getting it...we  had to draw those hate symbols associated with the eradication and hatred of groups of people or else, we might think our coworkers are like, gay or something.
I couldn't give 2 shits about the life is strange series, never has been my cup of tea, but as a gay and trans person of jewish descent, this is like a 0-100 touch of death combo.

 

[IsisStormDragon]

Honestly soul-crushing to read.

Hoping the best for everyone who had to deal with this shit. They deserve so much better.

 

[Galgavias]

Always astonishes me how if you pitch a game with a protagonist who isn't a straight white cis-gendered male to game executives, they always make a face like they've taken a cricket ball to the unmentionables, then respond like you've asked them to build a ladder to the moon. Hope the devs who struggled on these projects are in a better place now

 

[Djehuty]

Square enix is my favourite disaster company, they have not had a win since octopath 1 and I am here for it.


All of their franchises are dying or dead.
Litteraly nothing is growing and when it looked like they could square did some stupid shit and undid all that. shame for all the devs there that the management is incompetent to this degree.


The gay game is insane, they’re acting like that isn’t a large part of the next generation of gamers.

As a studio you gotta recognize at some point that your 50 year old male audience won’t be around in 20 years buying your games.

Cause once that audience ages to the point where they can’t play games SE is a house of cards waiting to fall apart

 

[Mendinso]

Wasn't Life is Strange one of the first games to feature a queer protagonist? And it's not like it's a secret either. I don't get Square Enix.

Since we're on the subject of Square Enix games...

Asellus, one of 8* protagonists from SaGa Frontier.

Bi/pansexual half-human, half-mystic, who's entire story is about figuring out where she belongs in the world, and ends up falling into a relationship with White Rose, another Mystic, and Gina, a human girl, who ends up from the moment she met Asellus, falling for her. Asellus' entire story is entirely the queer experience, feeling lost in the world, figuring out one's identity, and ultimately making a call in where she wishes to be.

(Ending spoilers)
One of the endings also features Asellus and Gina together as well.

A game from early 1997. So this definitely predates this by quite a number of years.

*Fuse's story got cut out in the initial PS1 version, so it was originally only 7 available with minor remnants left in the Japanese release, but was restored in the HD Remaster. Asellus, interestingly enough, also had more content restored in the HD remaster, most of which was semi-functional still on the PS1 version, just dummied out, not-fully-functional, or just just had text with no event data shared with it.