Split Fiction Creative Director Believes EA Gets More Flak Than it Deserves

While Hazelight Studios’ Josef Fares has typically been quite outspoken on a variety of subjects, when it comes to the publisher of his games, EA, he believes the company gets “more s*** than they deserve.” Speaking to The Game Business, Fares noted that many companies, including Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, have messed up every now and then.

“There are a lot of great people at EA. They know how we work. They respect it and they leave us be,” Fares said. “Let’s be honest, there’s not a publisher in the world that hasn’t f***ed up now and then. Sometimes I feel that EA is getting more s*** than they deserve. I mean, come on, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, everybody’s done something that’s not good. But for some reason, EA has become this bad guy.”

As for Hazelight Studio’s relationship with EA, Fares said that working together has been beneficial for both companies. While he acknowledged that EA has made its share of mistakes, the relationship between publisher and studio is still great.

“For us, it’s a super good collaboration. I’m very open about. If it was bad, I would’ve said that in this interview as well. But we have a great relationship. I’m not saying that they haven’t done any mistakes like every other publisher,” he said. “All the people I am surrounded with at EA are gamers. They love games. It’s not like I’m sitting with corporate people with suits. It’s not like that. And people should not worry, because Hazelight will do always what it wants.”

In the same interview, Fares had also spoken about the rise of high-quality AA games in the industry, and how he hopes it doesn’t become yet another trend that publishers try to chase. While these smaller-scale games are great, he noted that you can’t really make something as ambitious as a new Grand Theft Auto on a budget of $10 million. Rather, he hopes the industry finds a balance for all kinds of games to exist.

“You do hear, after the success of things like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, that the AA games are taking over,” he said. “But I would not be able to live without a AAA title. I really want to play the blockbuster games. You can’t do GTA for $10 million. We need both. It’s important not to get stuck in ideas, like AA is a new thing, or indie is a new thing, or ‘blah, blah, blah’ is a new thing. We need the diversity. I hope that publishers don’t just look at a game like Expedition, which has been super successful, and think, ‘oh, AA is a new thing. Let’s only do that.’ I don’t believe in that. You had a huge amount of AA games that came this year, which nobody cared about. Let’s remember that.”

Fares also spoke about the next game being developed at Hazelight Studios, which he went on to note that will be even better than last year’s Split Fiction. Going into more detail, he also discussed how the studio’s philosophy “to keep f***ing s*** up,” also has to be pulled off responsibility.

Split Fiction is available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. For more details, check out our review.