Josef Fares Talks All Things Split Fiction and Hazelight Studios

Split Fiction is the brand-new project from Hazelight Studios, the studio behind the TGA 2021 GOTY It Takes Two. Founded by Josef Fares, Hazelight hopes that Split Fiction will continue where It Takes Two, which has sold over 20 million copies to date, left off by pushing boundaries and subverting fan expectations. Split Fiction centers on Mio and Zoe, two writers who become trapped in their contrasting worlds and must work together to escape.

Game Rant caught up with Josef Fares at The Game Awards, and he was keen to express his excitement about Split Fiction, as well as his passion for the video game industry in general. Fares discussed the importance of sticking to his creative vision, and how Hazelight Studios is able to create games with such a varied range of mechanics. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Split Fiction is a Product of Hazelight’s Creative Vision

Q: It Takes Two won Game of the Year, so it could have been an easier route to just make another one of those. What made you want to keep pushing the boundaries and do something different?

A: Well, we love to push boundaries and to try different stuff. I like to say we f*ck sh*t up without f*cking up. We just felt that we wanted to do something else that pushed us, and this was something that we felt was a great challenge, so we just went for it. In a way, we are like dogs without a leash. The creative environment is crazy. There’s no one telling us what to do, it’s only me and the team. That’s where all the creativity happens, which means that we can create these amazing experiences with no limits.

We’re not looking at a market in terms of what’s working and what’s not working. I literally don’t give a f*ck what’s working or not working. I truly believe, even if it sounds a bit silly, if you do something out of passion and creativity, people sense that. It Takes Two sold over 20 million copies. I think that comes from a place where people can sense that what we have done is that we’ve just gone with our intuition and what we love to do. The bottom line is, we love doing new things. There’s no rule in terms of what we do or not do, so who knows what we’ll do in the future?

How Hazelight Juggles Multiple Mechanics When Making Games

Q: Do you find that this idea of making games with so many mechanics, so many different things going on, is freeing for the team, or does it make it more challenging?

A: This has been going on since I directed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. I had a lot of pushback from the teams, obviously, because that’s not usually the way you do games. The expectation is that you need to polish everything, but that’s why I started my own studio because I had to do it exactly how I wanted it. Everybody in my team knows what’s going on. Of course, we have a good tech team that supports this. We plan this very carefully. We make sure, with all the mechanics we use, we can polish them because it’s not a problem to create prototype stuff quickly. To take them to a level where it feels nice and finalized, that’s the tricky part.

That’s why you have games having only one mechanic because they work on that one mechanic the whole way from start to finish. The problem we have is that we need to make sure that all the other mechanics feel nice too. As a player, when you play a snowboarding game, you just want to play a snowboarding game. If you play a combat game, you want to play a combat game. The player shouldn’t have to worry about what’s going on behind the scenes, so that is our hardest challenge: finding the time to make all these mechanics as polished as possible. We are getting quite good at measuring what we can do and how long it will take though. We can create these things without being too much of a hassle.

Q: Do you find that it’s more gratifying to you to be charting your own path?

A: I don’t think anybody is making the same games, but for me, I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone. I just believe that we make the games we love to play and that’s pretty much how everything started. I just believe that in this industry, we have a huge amount of creativity that hasn’t been explored yet. I just hope that Hazelight is part of pushing the medium forward because I really love the gaming industry, so it’s just good to be part of it, to push forward with each of these new games.

Split Fiction’s Story Explained

Q: This game seems to have a unique story. Can you talk a little bit about that?

A: It’s tricky because you always want to combine the narrative and the mechanics as much as you can, but some mechanics don’t fit with that. You have to adapt the stories for stuff like that. In general, though, our games tend to have one word associated with them. For Brothers, it was sorrow. For A Way Out, it was trust. It Takes Two is collaboration. For Split Fiction, it is friendship. It’s like a buddy movie, and you can see the friendship that develops from beginning to end between the characters.

The more you play their stories, the more you get to know them and the stuff they have going on, without going into detail. The story is pretty much about friendship. It Takes Two tackled some heavy subject matter, but this one does as well. I think, in the gaming industry, we’re getting better and better at telling stories in video games, but I would argue that we’re not quite there yet. Hopefully, we’ll get better and better at finding the perfect interactive way of telling stories.

Split Fiction is Very Different From Hazelight’s Other Games

Q: Are there moments about making these unique types of games that are meant to be experienced between two people that you love hearing stories about?

A: It’s always nice when the game is finished and you have it in people’s hands, and you see the reactions and how they react for sure!

Q: Do you find that your perception of making games has changed since all the recognition for It Takes Two?

A: Not really, no. Of course, it’s nice to get recognition, but to me, at the end of the day, life is a playground and I just play around with it. Also, I think it’s very important not to be too dependent on your environment. Otherwise, you start to change and adapt your vision too much. I often say to my team, let’s focus on making sure people understand our vision instead of making what we think people want to see. From that perspective, it’s almost like we’re creating a market instead of adapting to a market. Of course, the video game industry needs to generate money, but it can’t just be about money. It’s about money and creativity. There’s got to be a balance. That’s how we push things forward.

What Sets Split Fiction Apart

Q: It Takes Two pushed a lot of boundaries, and its success ultimately drove you toward this next project. In terms of Split Fiction, is there anything about it that you are looking forward to using as a springboard for whatever project comes next?

A: Well, Split Fiction is definitely a very different game. You can sense the Hazelight in it, but it’s a totally different game. I just hope people play it from beginning to end and understand it for what it is. Some of the stuff we’ve done with it I haven’t seen before. It’s not been done. In particular, I’m not gonna talk about the ending, but I’m pretty sure that’s never been done either.

Q: Do you find that with the types of games that Hazelight makes, you end up with more things in your game or more things that don’t make it into the game?

A: Of course, we have to cut stuff, we have so many things in our games, but we still have to cut stuff. When we try these mechanics, sometimes we recognize quite early that it will be difficult to get to the required level, so we realize that there’s no point because you need to have the same level for everything. The good thing is that we have become better at deciding what to cut or not, and making the call earlier in production.

Q: Do you find, with your personality, that you want to challenge yourself when people doubt you?

A: If you ask the team, they’re like, “Oh f*ck, now we are going to have one of those meetings where I have to be like, ‘OK, guys, we need to do this’ again!” There are definitely stories where the team gets a little bit nervous because we make some late changes for sure.

Q: What are you most excited for people to experience when they play it?

A: I’m just excited to see players’ reactions when they jump between these worlds because there’s so much craziness and so much sh*t happening.

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