Josef Fares, known for his work on a number of co-op centric games as creative director at Hazelight Studios, has said that his next project is going to be even better than Split Fiction was. Speaking with The Game Business, Fares discussed the attitude at Hazelight Studios where the developers are encouraged to mess around and break stuff during the course of development without it negatively impacting the game itself.
“I don’t even know this word ‘pressure’. I feel extremely confident of everything we’re doing. I can easily say that our next game is better than Split Fiction,” he said. “We’re on a good path. Hazelight is a very respected studio that people look up to and get inspired by. And the key thing is to keep f***ing s*** up.”
As for the risks often taken in game development, Hazelight Studios’ ethos has been described by Fares as being to “f*** s*** up”. He further explained that the studio isn’t afraid of taking risks, regardless of what constraints might be placed on it due to budgets. This mentality, he said, goes hand-in-hand with the studio managing its real-world responsibilities as well.
“The f*** s*** up mentality, without f***ing up, is important, because we take things to the next level,” he says. “We can explore. If you are limited, because of risk and being scared, it’s not good for the game. So, for us, it will always be like that, whatever the budget.”
“With that said, obviously there’s a responsibility. People need money to pay the rent, and there’s a responsibility to who’s paying for the budget, and to actually deliver the milestone, to do a great game, to not slack, to do something really well.”
Fares described how the studio goes further by simply removing its limitations from developers. He noted that a lot of stumbles in creative works tend to rise from the limitations people have placed on themselves, with many of these limitations coming from their own minds.
“It’s easier said than done because people put a lot of limitations on themselves, and it’s mainly coming from their mind,” he said. “Once you stop listening to that, s*** will start happening. And how do you do it? Well, first, you practically push that person… in a nice way, obviously. You say, ‘not this’, ‘let’s do that’. ‘that’s been done before, let’s try this way’. And eventually they come into this ‘f*** s*** up’ mentality where they’re like, ‘okay, there are no limits’. And then you make that person feel confident that there really are no limits. People have so many possibilities inside them, and that’s not only for creating games, but in general. It’s just, stop listening to this [points to head] and just feel it instead.”
Split Fiction was released on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch last year. The title has proven to be a hit, with the company confirming back in May that it had already sold 4 million copies before its Switch release. For more details about the co-op-only action adventure game, check out our review.
