Over the course of the past decade, episodic games have slowly fallen out of fashion. WhenTelltale’s The Walking Deadlaunched with a rollout that lasted throughout 2012, it seemed like the adventure game studio had found the next big thing. That feeling was further cemented as Telltale continued to pump out episodic games like Game of Thrones, The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands, and countless others over the next several years.
Don’t Nod also released the first and secondLife is Strangein installments, and IO Interactive reimaginedHitmanas a series of replayable maps you returned to over and over, not a one-and-done campaign. But that boom ended. Hitman 2 and 3 ditched the episodic release entirely, and thoughLife is Strange: True Colorswas split into parts, those parts all launched at once.
Life Is Strange: Double Exposure’s Release Model Is Built On Weaponizing FOMO
Now, withLife is Strange: Double Exposure, Deck Nine and Square Enix may have found the worst of both worlds. Like True Colors, it’s all launching at once. Unlike True Colors, if you preorder the expensive Ultimate Edition, you gained access to the first two episodes of the game two weeks before anyone else gets the game on October 29.
Given the direction the games industry — and culture at large — is heading, this seems predictable in retrospect. Instead of offering the opportunity to buy episodes individually, or pay for the whole season upfront, Deck Nine andSquare Enixare, essentially, charging extra to avoid FOMO. If you want to experience Double Exposure with the most fervent Life is Strange fans, you’ll need to shell out an extra 20 bucks. The Ultimate Edition comes with other stuff, too, like DLC outfits for Max, but the marquee feature here is being able to play the first two episodes two weeks before everyone else.
Access To The Watercooler Shouldn’t Paywalled Behind An Ultimate Edition
Not to be too dramatic, but this is a betrayal of the episodic ethos. When Life is Strange and Hitman and the Telltale games were coming out, a huge selling point of this unusual release model was that it could replicate the watercooler conversations inspired by week-to-week TV. This is a joy that has been lost in the streaming era, as Netflix pioneered the binge model of releasing all the episodes at once. But from its widespread adoption in the 1950s through the rise ofNetflixin the 2010s, this was one of the key distinguishing features of TV as a medium. You watched the latest episode of a show you loved and then you talked it over the next day at school or at work with your friends.
This model is coming back to TV, as streamers get wise to the ways they can extend the hype around their show by spreading the season out over months, instead of over a single weekend. HBO never stopped releasing its shows this way, though, which is why shows like The Last of Us, The White Lotus, Succession, and Game of Thrones still drummed up week-to-week conversation.
When Square Enix and Deck Nine use early access to the episodes as an enticement to buy the pricey Ultimate Edition, they’re locking that experience behind a paywall. Instead of all of the players getting to talk about the episodes as they release, the players who don’t have the extra cash, have to wait to get in on the conversation. Obviously, not being able to buy a game the second it comes out is no real hardship. This is an entertainment product, not insulin. But Square Enix and Deck Nine are milking their players for 20 extra dollars and not giving them much in return aside from the chance to avoid being spoiled. Like Xbox raising the price of Game Pass, Square Enix is offering less for more.
