Hazelight founder Josef Fares, known for his work on games including Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, A Way Out, It Takes Two, and the upcoming Split Fiction (plus that whole Oscars moment at The Game Awards a few years back) doesn't care what Electronic Arts thinks: He's not a fan of live service games, and says he'll never make one.
EA's opinions on live service games came to the fore in the wake of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's failure to meet sales expectations. In a subsequent investors call in January, CEO Andrew Wilson said "games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives," and that while Veilguard "had a high quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played ... it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market."
The obvious takeaway was that, in Wilson's opinion, if Veilguard had "shared-world features and deeper engagement"—that is, if it was a live service game—it would've had a better chance of doing the kind of numbers EA wanted. We rather strongly disagree with that assessment, and so does Fares, who recently told Eurogamer that Hazelight "will not have them, I do not believe in them."
"I think [live service] is not the right way to go," Fares said. "I hope more and more [developers] focus on their passion, and what they believe in. At the end of the day, we see clearly—and Hazelight is living proof—that when you trust in your vision and go with it, you can still reach a big audience. That's what I want people to focus on."
Fares said he understands that publishers have to worry about the "money issue," and that there have to be some boundaries—"You can't just say, 'Give me $100 million, I want to do what I want to do'"—but publishers "have to respect the creativity as well."
"There has to be a balance," Fares said. "It can't just be towards the finance side. So, no, it will not happen with a Hazelight game, ever. I guarantee."
Hazelight has indeed found success with its somewhat offbeat co-op formula: It Takes Two was a big sales hit and claimed game of the year wins at both The Game Awards in 2021 and DICE in 2022. That's presumably bought the team a certain degree of freedom in its work that other studios might not have. Split Fiction is another co-op action game, similar to It Takes Two, but it looks every bit as weird (and good), with no visible injection of trend-chasing or need to "reallocate toward our most significant and highest potential opportunities."
Not everyone can get away with publicly shooting holes in EA's grand strategy, no, but as PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde succinctly (and, to be clear, complimentarily) put it in his Split Fiction preview, "Josef Fares and Hazelight Studios aren't normal."
Split Fiction is set to launch on March 6.
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