Life Is Strange: Double Exposure Wins GDC Social Impact Award, But Everyone Got Laid Off

So that sounds pretty bleak... however, I kinda wonder if this wasn't also a political statement. I mean, the game got a 4.3 on metacritic, and obviously that's not just review-bombing because if it had been a commercial success, the studio wouldn't have been closed. I think it undoubtedly didn't deserve to be shut down - but when a game wins a "social impact award" when clearly no one bought it... what society is being impacted?

I know everyone's gonna hate - but isn't this the literal definition of a self-licking icecream? That's part of the problem - everyone is so wrapped up in culture wars that you can't even call a spade-a-spade without people cancelling you. And no - I've not played the game, so I don't know anything other than it clearly was a commercial flop. I can't remember any hate campaign against this game either, so... I'm genuinely confused what impact voters thought they were having?

life is strange used to be an indie game and sold well when it was a £15.99 game. once it went to premium price point people just wait for a sale or subscription.

it certainly hasnt helped every game in the series has been on gamepass and ps+ extra so people are just waiting for it to turn up on there

Your new mobile ads are ruining this site for me.

They will override the entire page with a page ad or video.

@trev666 don't get me started on how subscriptions will be the eventual downfall of gaming (along with 300- 500+M budget blockbusters that seem incredibly adept at dumping money down a massive dev-black-hole). I'm sure there are plenty of people that love the game - but as you said, if they're not buying it, then it's hard to show how much people want it.

It's sad but I feel like this has been happening with Square Enix Published games especially the Western developed ones for a while now. They had issues with PCF with Outriders because they signed a bad agreement with MS that benefited SE but not PCF.

They marketed and sold LiS DE horribly with that early access nonsense. Heck the fact that they forced a very good one and done game to become a franchise of diminishing returns.

Heck when they had the western studios they would usually put all the scummy business practices in those games (remember how badly they screwed up MD)

Considering it failed to sell, it's more of a political statement than a social impact. I don't know anything about this game, but the series seems to have made a turn for the worse with more expensive games that sold less and less

These games are ideal fodder for the subscription services. Not many are interested in paying full price for playing as angsty alternative teens.

This article reads like it's blaming Kotaku for the current state of the industry!

What a shame. Double Exposure is a great game, made by a really talented bunch of developers who are often looked down upon from hardcore fans of series.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
I haven't played this game, but I did play the LiS where the 2 brothers were involved.

I remember all the talk about them adding the 'gay' scene to the camp/farm episode, and the positive message therein.... Then you work out that to get to that choice over the hetero option it is more difficult, has greater consequences (iirc), and worst of all, goes no where near as far in terms of what is shown on screen, and feels very watered down in comparison (no pun intended if you have seen the game). I actually thought the game pushed a negative message.

It wasn't as bad as the Cyberpunk Romance debacle though, where through limited choice certain 'options' were limited to awful characters!

I think the fact that it was a “social impact” award, rather than a “best game”, or some type of “most popular/commercial success” award etc, shows why there is nobody there to receive it. It didn’t review fantastically, didn’t sell fantastically…I’m not even sure what great social impact it could have had in those circumstances.

I’ve played (and got the platinum) for 4 of the games in the series I think, but this wasn’t even on my radar given the so-so reviews and massively inflated price.

That’s on both the devs and publisher unfortunately.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Kind of weird to bring cultur wars and the such into this discussion.

Indika, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Hellblade II were all more deserving of a nod, and didn't even get nominated. You could even make a case for Neva, which also wasn't nominated.
Honestly, 1000XRESIST would have been the perfect winner. It tackles all kinds of modern topics in a thought provoking way, without ever getting preachy.

@Jireland92 Apparently the winners don't.

This series went down hill after the first

If a game wins a social impact award but no one bought it, is anyone there to receive the award?

Guess we know the answer. And how much of a meaningful “social impact” can it have made when no one bought the thing?

Seems slightly sus.

@Herculean the reference to culture wars was meant to reflect the current environment for discussing games - where there's a lot quick judgements, and likewise a lot of blowback/inferences for games not being well received. As I said - don't know if the game was good, but I didn't read much about it as it was released. I know a lot of fans of the series still liked it, but my reading of it was that even a lot of fans were pretty ambivalent.

My point was - it's hard to have social impact if it's not impactful to society; though in truth, I'm not sure how "social impact" is actually meant to be interpreted. I certainly don't equate social impact with "most successful"; but I wonder how it is decided then?

Edit - I'm sure there were a lot of deserving games (once again - not sure what the category really means). I think if the award was for "positive social message" or even "best diversity and inclusion award" then that might at least be obvious. I'm sure it would be divisive, but at least you could appreciate the judging criteria. I'm pretty sure that GTA6 will have the largest social impact of any game in 2025 (even if it gets delayed to next year) - but I'm guessing that won't win too many positive representation awards (though - who knows...)

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Yea, we probably kinda agree.

My opinion would be that a relatively low selling game could be the winner of this category, if it made more impact on each person that played it. Maybe it's a game about the job of a nurse, and only 100 buy the game, but they all change their career to become a nurse, because the game made them see the job in a totally different light, that would be a great contender for this category.

But I think this game did neither. It didn't make a small impact on a lot of people, and it also didn't make a large impact on a few people.

Man, so many underachieving games that have resulted in layoffs, closures, or the threat of them.

I don’t know what the answer is for all these failures. It’s a dog-eat-dog industry right now, and it feels like all producers are operating on razor thin margins. It’s more competitive than ever before, and only becoming more so with emerging markets pumping out quality products on top of the traditional studios.

Although gamers/consumers do benefit from having so many options, I wonder if the long term effects of multiple failed projects and layoffs do end up hurting our options in the long run. I can’t speak to Double Exposure’s social impact since I’ve not yet played it, but I’ve played the rest of the series and one of the things I found refreshing about the games has been the non-traditional social settings and character studies. We have plenty of ‘stab-stab, pew-pew, jump-jump’ games out there, and I want to have games that explore human emotion, social trials, and systemic conflict. The indie space should keep some of this alive, but we are going to continue to see fewer and fewer big budget games that take on alternative themes and gameplay options.

😔 💔 If it were up to me, I'd layoff the suits & rehire the creatives. Also, no Golden Umbrellas - the creatives don't get them, why should they?

@somnambulance so I tend to let my curiosity get the better of me (or more likely a nascent - or not so nascent - OCD)... but this is the stated criteria for the award: "Finalists will be recognized for a game that advancess[sic] equality, justice, intersectionality, and/or sustainability, and workss [sic] to positively impact the lives of its players in a meaningful way". Still not entirely sure what that means - but I suppose at least it doesn't stipulate how many players it will impact.

The game isn't good then if it make the developers jobless, make good product and get rewarded, and vice versa.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Link doesn't work, at least for me as it’s written right now.

But if that quote is from the actual site…wow, they need to hire some proofreaders.

@OmegaStriver No lie. These screen-taking-over ads are killing my navigation on mobile for sure.

@dskatter stand by. Technical difficulties. Corrected... lots of search fluff in the URL. Now it should work.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare There we go, thank you! And…oh wow, they REALLY need to hire a proofreader. That site is ridiculously filled with errors.

You’d think an entity that wants to be taken seriously wouldn’t have so many obvious mistakes on their site. That’s…that’s really sad.

@OmegaStriver Duck Duck Go. Zero ads.

@dskatter - I was just impressed by the Game of the Year Award criteria: "the overall quality, impressiveness, and enjoyability of the game"... impressiveness is such an under-used metric these days. Anyway, I'm sure the website is written by staff doing their best - but for an industry-dev representing body, it's not necessarily a good look. These things happen though... like copying URLs into hyperlinks.

@OmegaStriver Glad, I'm not the only one who has a problem with all of these ads. They're starting to become obnoxious like the ones IGN has.

This is a shame. I haven't finished the new game yet but I am enjoying it so far. Strange to think of a social impact award, but I think it applies in this case. I'm an old (50), straight white man (who was actually raised in a white supremist household). To say I am not the target audience for these games is an understatement. But I played the demo for the first LIS, and it introduced me to a whole slew of issues that young people today faced that I never had to. Sure, there were bullies in my day, but you settled your issues with a fight and that's typically where it ended. We didn't have to deal with online harrassment, or a world stacked against them, mentally and financially. I feel for kids coming up today, and the LIS games gave me an understanding of that that I would not have gotten otherwise. The only other game I've seen like this was the Town of Light, which completely changed my thinking about mental illness. It's a shame the developers were laid off, because we need more games like this.

Social impact... sounds like an irony at this point.

The biggest impact that the game has made is making everyone related losing their job.

Welp that's sad as ***** 😕

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare You can't go by the user reviews on Metacritic. Sorry, no matter how you spin it that's not a barometer. It average is around the mid-70's on all platforms from the actual reviewers.

It's easy to assume that's why the game bombed, but that would be without putting any thought into it at all. It released in October, a loaded month. Square Enix is more to blame than the game itself for it bombing. Of course it wasn't going to sell going up against Call of Duty, Sonix X Shadows Generation (which was bigger than expected), Silent Hill 2, etc.

I bought the game and actually enjoyed it.

How was is it a social impact award if no one bought it and their studio closed down? Seems like virtue signal award. It was largely ignored and wasn't well revieved. I question how impactful it was on the industry

@TheSwitchBit You have to remember that these are awards given by game developers to game developers.

It makes sense when you think about it that way.

@TimelessJubilee Well, if I’m not mistaken IGN owns this site now, sooooo….

As a member of society this game made no impact with me at all, or anyone in any of my social circles for that matter. Wonder what the criteria is for this award.

@TicklefistCP you aren't a member of "society", that's why. Neither are your friends, neither am I.

This is about "their" society. We aren't in that clique, their echo chamber, their club.

It's about whether they nod approvingly at the messaging.

Same thing with film and the Oscars. The awards aren't about what you and I take our families to watch.

It's about the metropolitan elite niche of insiders and the trade press.

Who would have thought that game awards don't relate to the success of a game or the sales!

This is just getting us ready for when games are made by AI and the AI doesn't feel like showing up, b/c awards chosen by humans are beneath it. 😂

Just waiting for a sale and I’ll eventually get to it ……..probably 🫡

@ashipaw yup! Which is why all the games that “don’t push an agenda” have performed so well. Every single one of them

@neillaw it’s not like it got a ton of awards like Astrobot. It just received one

@wiiware was Tearaway good? Genuinely curious.

@OmegaStriver use Duckduckgo and you don't need to worry about ads.

@Treestar Ive never heard of it, but I’ll have to check it out.

@ashipaw

I agree with this - also it would seem that the dictator-elect of the US will strong arm sweeping changes to society by strangling diversity in society. This trend will spill over in to what risks publishers and game studios are willing to take. It will affect what people are employed, too, I am afraid.

So, the future seems to have less games come out made by passionate groups of individuals, but there will be an absolute MOUNTAINOUS garbage heap of E-slop that uncannily will remind us of days of yore.

Maybe countries around the world that are still free and democratic will protect their citizens and creative industries to allow a minimum of AI-generation. Like for example: Everything an NPC says in an RPG will be curated and carefully worded by a talented writer up until a certain point, after that if the player keeps prompting the NPC maybe a language model will take over or something.

Another example could be that a creator uses AI image generation and then heavily modifies it/or creates something which a tool adds to and then puts in the finishing human touches, and then an editor follows up with their (assisted) input and you end up with something that a team of people created, but it was enhanced by the tools available.

@wiiware "make good product and get rewarded"

Sadly, the reality isn't always as simple as that considering there's good games that didn't sold well.

Gravity Rush, Forbidden Siren, Haunting Ground, God Hand, Kunitsu Gami, Tearaway, Puppeteer, Rogue Galaxy, Radiata Stories, Rayman Legend, Vanquish, Folklore, and Jeanne D'Arc are some examples of good games that doesn't get rewarded with good sales 😔

@ashipaw There are games that didn't push agenda and they also good games but they didn't sold well. But there are games that some people claim they pushed agenda like GoW Ragnarok, Spiderman 2, Metaphor, or Baldurs Gate 3 but these games sold well.

So this isn't always black and white like you think.

@PuppetMaster Jeanne d'Arc is Good, I played and finished it on psp way back then 😔

In the case of this game though, I heard even fans hate this game story so it's kind of the devs fault the game isn't selling.

In the case of gow ragnarok and spider-man 2 I think it's the power of the first game that make the sequel sells a lot. I platinum ps4 gow 1 while I only played maybe 1-2 hours of gow ragnarok before getting bored, that's why although I platinum ps4 spider-man 1, I waited for a let's play of the game before buying it, and man I'm glad I didn't bought spider-man 2. Metaphor and baldur gate 3 gameplay and story is good so it sells.

Ps. It really nice of sony to honor my purchase of the game (jeanne d'arc) and make it available free on my ps5 account. I played the game on umd on psp, and bought it again digitally on psvita 😃

@naruball Tearaway psvita is great, tearaway on ps4 is good but lost most of it charm. Still worth playing it on ps4 though if you don't have psvita imo.

@OmegaStriver this place has gone downhill rapidly since ign took over the parent company.

@OmegaStriver This is why on PC, you use ad blockers and on mobile, you use Brave. No ads.