Hazelight Studios
In a recent interview with VG247, Josef Fares, Director of Hazelight, the studio of the upcoming action-adventure Split Fiction, discussed the creation of the game, its use of unique mechanics and side quests, and his thoughts on how the game industry should develop as a whole.
The Director talked about the repeated use of mechanics, which is uncommon for Hazelight games. Instead, the company’s stories are based on implementing unique features. Also, Split Fiction has side quests, but they are optional for players:
“In the beginning of my career when I started implementing these sorts of game mechanics… for instance in Brothers, they’re like ‘why are we doing this and not reusing it?!’ In Split Fiction, we have our side stories – those are optional. You can just skip them. A lot of these are crazy set pieces. The cool thing about that is that people ask me, like, ‘How could you put this as side content? What if people miss it?’ And I say: it doesn’t matter. If they find it, it’s going to be great.”
Josef Fares has a background in movie production and has been a director and writer of over five movies. He compared reusing some features in games to the repeated use of scenes in films and pointed out the reason why it is not usually done:
“Even if it’s a huge, very costly scene… ‘Why don’t we reuse it?’ My answer is: if you’re watching a movie, and you’re seeing this really cool kick-ass scene… they’re not going to show it again just because it cost money!”
He also pointed out that frequent use of these features can diminish their value, making them less appealing over time:
“Use it there and that’s it. It’s more effective. I think sometimes when I see cool stuff in gaming, it actually becomes less cool, because it gets reused too much.”
Fares also discussed a bit the development of the industry as a whole and said that the developers should focus on the quality and the creative side of their products rather than solely on the financial aspect:
“In general, I hope that people just focus on making great games. That’s what people want to see. Don’t try to come up with the next big thing or whatever, you know? We can clearly see games that have failed that were trying to become this new ‘thing.’ Sure, when one hits, it makes you a lot of money – but the games industry shouldn’t be only about the money,” he said. “It should be about creativity as well. It’s yin and yang; they should meet in the middle.”
Split Fiction, an online co-op adventure launching on March 6, follows the story of the two writers, who find themselves trapped in their own imaginary worlds, sci-fi and fantasy, and will have to team up to break free from the imaginary worlds.
Before, Josef Fares said that Hazelight titles would not appear as live-service games.
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