Fares, who got infamous for his The Game Awards 2017 comment („F_ck the Oscars!”), is already working on his next game, which got a few minor details revealed.
Hazelight‘s A Way Out is Fares’ latest game. It launched this Spring, and it became a quick success by reaching over a million sales in two weeks. It got the attention of Electronic Arts, its publisher as well. How much, you ask? Just read what Patrick Söderlund, EA’s Chief Design Officer, told GamesIndustry:
„We have to be very clear with the fact that for some of these games we pick, they’re not picked because they’re the most mass-market products. And I think that’s the beauty of the program. We want to get these games into the hands of players because they have a deeper meaning than just being a mass market play. I think A Way Out is a mass market play, but that’s not why we picked it. We picked it because of the unique idea of a co-op only game, we liked Josef Fares we liked the story, and we liked his ideas. His execution and the work his team did make players love it… It shows the program can bear fruit, and it can work, and I think the next game they’re going to build will be a much, much bigger, more ambitious game with far deeper funding.”
Hold on: „far deeper funding” – that means Electronic Arts will provide a bigger budget for Fares than they did for A Way Out, and that will give him a chance to expand his ideas. Seeing how he was a former film director, he probably has a few aces up his sleeve… and it’s no wonder that he supports EA. „I would love to make some internal mails known. I think people would drop their mouths if they saw those emails – at least, the way EA treats me, it’s all supportive. I know nobody believes this, I say it all the time, all the publishers screw up at some point: Microsoft, Nintendo, I do not care, and here’s the point: when you’re in the industry, everybody rages constantly, and that’s rubbish, the only thing that should worry us is good video games,” he said. He added that the games should be looked at as experiences, and seeing how a lot of people don’t play them through to the end, he asked why the devs should worry about replayability or the second half of their games?
Let’s hope he won’t get screwed over by Electronic Arts!
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