Hazelight Studios
The creators of Split Fiction talk about their next game and clarify their relationship with EA: “I’m excited on the next thing”
Josef Fares, CEO of Hazelight and creator of It Takes Two, admits that Electronic Arts may “f**king up” other studios, but not his own.
Hazelight has just released Split Fiction, its new collaborative proposal in the line of its previous titles such as It Takes Two or A Way Out, which has been consecrated as one of the great releases of the year thanks to its high marks in the national and international media. In addition, it has sold more than two million copies in just two weeks, so we are facing a new success for its top manager: Josef Fares. Now Fares himself has confirmed that he is already working on his new project, and also talked about his relationship with EA, assuring that it is a good business partner.
Josef Fares and his relationship with Electronic Arts
“Split Fiction is the best-received game we have done, everybody is super happy, but I’m so fully focused and excited on the next thing,” Fares said in the Friends Per Second podcast (via Gamespot). “We’ve already started,” he adds, assuring that work began about a month ago.
Fares didn’t give any concrete information about Hazelight’s next project, which is still in the early stages of development, but he did say that the mood in the studio is very positive and that the team is excited about what’s to come. He also believes that the team can do even better with their next project, about which nothing is known yet.
“It’s not like we’re feeling now, ‘Oh, shit, how will we top [Split Fiction] or do better than this?’ We just feel like... just wait until [you see] what we do next. I know it’s cocky. But that’s how confident we feel in what we’re doing,” the creative explains. On the cooperative aspect of their next game, Hazelight’s trademark: “You never know what happens in the future. It’s not impossible we look into single-player as well. But it would be done in a Hazelight way, with a Hazelight twist. It’s not going to be your typical single-player game.”
In the interview, Fares also clarified Hazelight’s relationship with EA. He confirmed that Hazelight does not submit its projects to EA. However, Hazelight does tell EA, “We’re going to do this,” Fares explained. “That’s it. They have zero to say about what we are doing next,” adding that while EA may “f**king up” other studios, that’s not the case with Hazelight: “They respect us. They respect us. They respect what we do. I am very clear with them that they cannot interfere with what we do."
Don’t miss our opinion of Split Fiction, in which we concluded that “Split Fiction shows the maturity of Hazelight Studios in terms of mechanics, balancing creativity and intuition with flashy puzzles and sequences that require skill. However, the story, graphics, and dialog create an atmosphere that makes it a memorable game, and without a doubt we are looking at another strong candidate for video game of the year.”
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