Josef Fares Split Fiction interview – ‘we will not only do co-op’

Josef Fares is a lot quieter and more contemplative than his reputation suggests (EA)

GameCentral speaks to the director of It Takes Two and the upcoming Split Fiction, about trusting your instincts and understanding publishers.

Since it’s the follow-up to the best-selling It Takes Two, we were very keen to play new game Split Fiction (you can read our full hands-on report here) but the thing we were really looking forward to was talking to director Josef Fares.

Fares is best known for his sweary outburst about the Oscars, at the 2017 The Game Awards, but he’s also an award-winning movie director and responsible for the groundbreaking Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Nowadays he runs his own developer, named Hazelight Studios, and following the success of It Takes Two he’s managed to make a co-op title, that cannot be played on your own, one of the most anticipated games of the year.

We spoke to Fares at length about the game and the wider industry, and rather than being angry and loud we found him to be surprisingly quiet and with some very interesting things to say about games and the people that make them…

GC: I’ll start with an obvious question and ask how did you become so interested in co-op? Because Brothers wasn’t a co-op game, originally.

JF: You could say that Brothers is a co-op for one player, because you’re controlling two brothers. I think the first thing that triggered my mind was when me and a friend were trying to find a game that was similar to this. That… felt that you had your own unique character that you can relate to, that you’re playing a story together… and there wasn’t really a game out there.

I mean, you had your drop in/drop out, but we just wanted to play a game where you could connect to the player in a different way. So that’s why A Way Out happened, pretty much.

GC: So, It Takes Two has sold 20 million copies now?

JF: More! Like, almost 23 now.

GC: Wow.

JF: It’s crazy!

GC: So my question is, why has no one tried to copy it?

JF: I don’t know! [laughs] You tell me. It’s crazy.

GC: It doesn’t make any sense to me. The only thing I can think of is that it’s not violent. Because if it was everyone would’ve copied and cloned it a hundred times over by now.

JF: Exactly.

GC: And even if their attempts failed, they’d try again and again like they’re banging their heads against the wall.

JF: [laughs] It’s a very good question. I’ve been asking myself that and considering that… I mean if you look at Dark Souls, when that came, you have a lot of copies of those games and in a sense we created our own sub-genre, like co-op in a new way. I guess people are doing it now, but it’s not that easy to make it. But it doesn’t even have to be this good. I mean, we’re obviously the best in the world at it. I mean, to be honest.

GC: Well, it’s a narrow field.

JF: [laughs] Yeah, but even if it’s not as good.

GC: It could be 20% worse than you and still get 15 million sales.

JF: Exactly! Exactly.

GC: It’s the same with things like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. Why are they never copied but any kind of half successful action game always is?

JF: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don’t know, maybe it’s happening now. Maybe people are realising now; maybe publishers are just seeing the high numbers and then going like, ‘Whoa!’ But what do you think?’ I’m interested to hear what you think because I’m actually curious.

GC: I think they worry it doesn’t appeal to their core demographic, so for some reason they feel very nervous about that even though there’s clear proof that the concept works and is successful. I guess it’s also like the question of why aren’t there more Zelda clones? Well, because they’re difficult to make.

JF: Yeah, I mean our games aren’t easy to make. From a technical and design perspective we pretty much… because here’s the thing, this is written and designed from the beginning as split-screen. So the way the story is told, the way the mechanics are done, the way they compliment each other, everything has to be thought of from the beginning. So we don’t have a single-player that goes to split-screen. It’s a split-screen from the beginning… that’s it! Period.

GC: Given this is the third one, I imagine you feel you’ve learnt a lot about co-op gameplay now.

JF: Yeah, we’re becoming better. And you see also, when you play this game, the fidelity, the quality, the story, everything is kind of like the next step. And it’s a natural evolution for the team to become better at everything.

Split Fiction has no single-player mode (EA)

GC: But how do you play test something like this? Because I’m playing it over there with another journo but if I was playing this with a non-gamer – which I have done with things like the Lego games – I don’t think it’d go as well. How do you decide how demanding to be in terms of gameplay and difficulty?

JF: Here’s the thing, we don’t really… I mean It Takes Two is a little easier than this. I would say Split Fiction has a bit of a higher skill level to it, but not that much. I think the only thing to decide for us is to keep the momentum going forward, to not get stuck for too long. It’s a narrative experience. And once we have that, then it’s fine.

(We’re both distracted by someone shouting loudly while playing the game nearby.)

JF: Oh, someone’s having fun here.

GC: It’s a good sign.

JF: Yeah, it’s a good sign. [laughs] So people are enjoying their experience and playing it. It shouldn’t be too hard and not too simple. I mean just enough challenge for it to be… so there’s a movement forward all the time.

GC: There are lot of mechanics and nods to other games here, things like Metroid, but was there anything you wanted to do but you decided not to, because it would be too complicated?

JF: Yeah. I mean one of the toughest challenges is the mechanics, obviously. There’s so much variety in them and that is the hardest part to take them to a level where they feel polished and nice. So we have learned as a team, early in production, ‘Oh, this will be hard to polish.’ You have to understand when you play a game like this, if you play combat, you want it to feel like a combat game. I mean players, which is understandable, don’t understand the amount of work behind everything.

There’s a reason why you only have a mechanic or two in a game, because you have to polish it all the time. But for us, that is the important stuff, to take it to a level where it feels very nice and still have the variation. And we become quite good at pinpointing, ‘Oh, this will be a problem and this will be better.’ So we cut stuff early that we feel like, ‘This is not gonna work, it’s going to take too long.’ But yeah, it is crazy to do a combat system that you only use in the first level for 10 minutes, pretty much. [laughs]

GC: And how far do you go in terms of storytelling? It’s quite a long cut scene in the beginning, but I imagine the rest are not like that.

JF: No, not like that. It’s the beginning. It just sets the tone and then it’s gonna be… I mean all the tests we’ve tried, nobody thinks it’s too much cut scene, at all. So it’s the perfect combination I would say.

GC: It is quite an odd plot, what are you trying to say with it? Brothers was a very affecting story but what are the main themes here?

JF: There is a little bit about AI in it, like a reference to that, but it also fits the actual theme of jumping between sci-fi and fantasy. It has to make sense somehow, for them. And then this idea of having a company that wants to steal their ideas just felt very compelling and natural. But obviously the real story here is about… the whole core of the story is about friendship.

Every game has a word connected to it. Brothers had loss, A Way Out, had trust. It Takes Two was collaboration. This one is friendship. So it’s all about building their friendship. Story is really about these two entirely two different people that you follow and during their arcs you learn more about them, their traumas, who they are, and they connect more and more together. So that’s the main focus of the story.

GC: Given how successful your film Zozo was, the direction you’ve taken in the games industry does seem somewhat surprising. Looking at that I’d expect you to be making something more like The Last Of Us than a fun co-op game.

JF: Yeah, but my two first movies were comedies. The first one was a romantic comedy, second one was an action comedy. Third one was a drama. So, I did different genres, actually.

GC: Maybe that was the germ of Split Fiction!

JF: [laughs]

GC: But are you always going to make co-op games? Could you imagine yourself doing something that was more serious and straightforward?

JF: For sure, yeah. Look, we have become very good that what we do, it will always be part of Hazelight’s DNA. But let me just say this: we will not only do co-op, we will definitely do other stuff with a Haze-like twist. We want to do something different like a twist… like what we did with the co-op. But co-op is great and, I mean, you can tell great stories and there’s so much to be explored there.

GC: Could you be inspired to make something more realistic or political in the future?

JF: It depends, it depends. For me, it’s not about that. It’s just that I feel it in here [gestures to torso]. If it feels right, I just go with it. If it feels correct [snaps fingers] I go with that. But I definitely believe we can… I think we’re still scratching the surface on how to tell stories in video games. We’re not really there yet.

I would say we still have good examples. Obviously Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, have done some great examples of storytelling – Rockstar Games as well – but we’re still, I think figuring out how to tell a story in video games. And, also, I think in the future we will be able to cover other kinds of subjects in video games, that we haven’t really done yet. And, yes, Hazelight would love to be part of that, for sure.

Split Fiction features many different mechanics (EA)

GC: The problem is games take so long to make the chances of doing anything that’s topical is almost impossible. Because if it was a triple-A game it’d take 6+ years.

JF: Yeah, it depends. I mean this took three years. [laughs]

GC: Well maybe you are the one to do it then! So, how long ago was it now that you were at The Game Awards?

JF: You mean the f*** Oscar moment was 2017?

GC: I was trying to think of a diplomatic way to refer to it. You seemed to be angry about a number of things there…

JF: I wasn’t really angry. Here’s the real story behind it. So I was there, all the people were talking about the Oscars. ‘Oh, this is like the Oscars.’ So I was so excited on stage, so I was like, ‘F*** the Oscars, man. This is the cool s***. That’s where it came from.

But here’s the thing with me. If you know me personally, you know that I just say stuff and it comes up from nowhere and that’s why. But yeah, it became a funny thing. [laughs]

GC: How do you feel about the game industry at the moment? Because there certainly seems to be a lot to get angry about there.

JF: I’m still optimistic. The way we make a game, we have a three year period, you look at our games: they’re new IPs, lot of content in them, high quality. I just think that the industry is going through some rough patches now, considering what’s going on in the world. The quality is going up really high. The time to make a game takes longer, but at the end of the day we’re going to come up in a good place, I think.

I just hope that people take more decisions based on creativity and not just money. Here’s the problem: even if we live in a capitalist society, I understand that, but the problem is that if you only focus on the finance side, that’s the issue. Because we are working with creativity here and there has to be a combination where they meet.

You can’t just focus on creativity as well. You can’t just say, ‘Give me a hundred million, I’ll do whatever I want.’ No, that doesn’t work either. There needs to be an understanding between the money people and the creative people. And that, I sense, is not happening, because everybody is trying to hit the next big thing. And that’s a problem.

You can’t chase that. You got to… as silly as it sounds, you got to follow your passion and follow your heart. At the end of the day. We are a clear example that you actually can reach a huge audience if you follow what you believe in.

GC: I do worry that balance has been lost. When I see veteran companies abandoning everything they have built up over decades to jump on a band wagon like live service games… you can’t help but lose some respect for them.

JF: Yeah, that’s crazy. I don’t like it at all. It’s really crazy. I don’t understand why. The reason is it’s all based on financial. Because if you hit one live service game, you make huge amount of money. So, they’re ready to throw a lot of money at.

GC: But the chances you’ll have a lot are so low, it’s just silly.

JF: Exactly! And it’s also focusing on the finance side only. That is the problem. There needs to be balance. And actually, I talk about this a lot in interviews and when I meet my colleagues and I think I’m in a position now where I actually can inspire and actually affect people. So if I say this enough, maybe something will happen. I mean, someone has to start talking about it. So I’m very vocal about this.

And the problem is that those live service games, the problem they have is that even if it’s cosmetic – I don’t care if it’s cosmetic or not – you still have to make decisions on your design based on the fact that you have to pay something. That is problem there. You know what I mean? That is the actual problem.

GC: Absolutely. I mean they employ psychologists now, not just game designers, to figure out how to get people paying more.

JF: Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy. This will never happen in a Hazelight game. I can guarantee you, for sure. Never, ever.

GC: But it’s interesting that you’re published by EA, who certainly don’t mind the odd microtransaction.

JF: Sometimes EA give out a lot of s*** for… here’s the thing, every publisher f**** up, every publisher. Because it’s a big company, they have shareholders. And who are the shareholders? Shareholders are the people, right? For some reason people love to hate EA but they’ve been super supportive. They supported It Takes Two and nobody, in all the data, showed that these games were going to sell and they still believe in it.

So big props for them there. But again, all publishers will f*** up at some point. But I would encourage other publishers to do what EA do with EA Originals [their publishing label for indie titles like Split Fiction – GC] to take a risk and do something else. That should be inspirational for others.

Here’s the thing. I’m going to be the devil’s advocate a little bit here. It’s a combination of both the publishers and the developers, because I think some developers needs maybe to have a stronger vision of what they want to do. Hopefully find better ways of concepting their vision of how you’re going to do it.

Split Fiction will be released on March 6 (EA)

You have a lot of stuff happening in the game companies where it’s like, ‘How could this take so long? It shouldn’t have taken so long.’ And there’s a reason for that. We’re learning, also, from a production perspective, how to make games. If you compare movies to games, we’ve not had the same length to work with it. So we need time to learn. So there’s a learning curve for both. We can’t just blame the publishers. I think it’s a combination.

It’s about also daring to say, ‘Look, here’s what we believe in. Here’s what it is, here’s the vision.’ But you would be surprised… I know a lot of producers who go to see developers, when they present ideas. One of the guys, he said, ‘I see 10 presentations every month. and maybe one of them could be interesting. The rest is just copies.’

You see, it’s also a lack of ideas as well, you know what I mean? So you have to also push yourself to the next level. So, also, remember, it’s not that easy to come up with something totally new and reinvent the wheel. It is not just that all the publishers are bad.

It’s not good to just see the word as black and white, to always say people with money are bad. No, it’s not that simple. You have to have a combination. When you understand both sides, then you can come up with something that makes sense, something that actually can become a great piece of art or a great game.

GC: If you could give developers just one piece of advice, based on your experience, what would it be?

JF: This is going to sound a bit silly but trust your gut and trust your instinct of what you love. Focus on doing what kind of game you want to do instead of what you think people want to play. That is the main thing I would say.

GC: That seems like excellent advice. Thank you for your time.

JF: Cool, man. That was good.

Josef Fares has some good advice for developers (EA)

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