This article was originally published on March 14, 2025 - read the full issue here

Interview by Alex Spencer, words by Marie Dealessandri

The year is 2025. The multiplayer space is entirely occupied by microtransactions-heavy service games. Well, almost. One Swedish developer is succeeding with a different take on online play, headed by outspoken director Josef Fares. The filmmaker-turned-game-designer first came to fame in 2013 with Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, before founding Hazelight Studios in 2014. But it was 2021's multi-award winning hit It Takes Two that really brought the studio to centre stage.

Hazelight has achieved the developer dream, creating a wildly successful niche for itself in a preferred genre, in this case emotional, story-driven, splitscreen cooperative adventures. We talk to Fares about Hazelight's enduring success following the launch of its latest, Split Fiction, which released on March 6 to critical acclaim.

Trusting your core idea

"Co-op will always be part of Hazelight's DNA, because we have become the best at it, pretty much," Fares tells us.

He concedes, though, that focusing solely on two-player games, a unique strategy at the time of Hazelight's creation, was a risky bet.

"Here's the thing: there was always a big, big risk in the beginning. But I have extreme confidence in what we do. I trust in the core [of the idea]. Brothers, A Way Out, It Takes Two – all the numbers looked really, really bad. Now it's different, because we've kind of become this big developer, but still, with those early games, I just felt like, 'The core is great, I just know it.' So, trust in your vision, and go with it fully. Don't back away from that."

He admits that owning a studio is immensely beneficial when it comes to being able to assert ideas and vision.

"In the beginning of my career, it was very tough, because I got a lot of pushback," he adds. "But now I have my own company, so nobody can push back – and EA definitely never interferes with any of development. And I mean zero."

On the value of a good developer/publisher fit

All of Hazelight's titles have been published under EA's indie label, Originals, and Split Fiction is no exception. Fares values the partnership, praising EA for letting Hazelight handle things its own way.

For instance, the studio's Friend's Pass concept – which means two players can experience the game together, sharing just one copy – is an idea that came from Fares himself and that EA was happy to facilitate.

"I'm gonna give EA props for actually believing in, and backing up, the vision," Fares says. "They never interfere. Sometimes, I think they get so much shit they don't deserve. I don't know how they work with others, but with us it's super-good."

In terms of EA's contribution to Hazelight's success, Fares says that the need for a strong developer-publisher relationship highlights a broader question about the ownership of success and failure.

"Developers can sometimes struggle with leadership and clear vision," he says. "Sometimes, I hear a lot of blame [placed] on the publisher, but I think it's a responsibility for us both… The perfect combination is when the publisher respects the developer and the developer has a clear vision of what they want to do. If that doesn't exist, then there's a risk the publisher will take over more and more. You know, there needs to be a perfect symbiosis between them.

"Publishers sometimes fuck up and [make] stupid decisions – 'we need to do this for the money.' That's why I say clearly: no microtransactions, no lootboxes. I think it's very important to understand that we're working with creativity. We have to push the medium forward. We can't implement that shit and, at Hazelight, it will never happen."

Staying on course

Staying true to your own vision really is Hazelight's guiding principle in making games, and is also intertwined in Fares's advice to fellow developers struggling through current industry challenges.

"I think the key thing is that everybody has a voice. We have a clear vision of what to do. We don't adapt to the market. We make the games we love to play. When we do our testing, we're not asking, 'What do you want to play?' We're saying, 'This is the vision.'

"A bad example could be if we're riding a bike and you say, 'I want to drive a car.' We'd say, 'No, we're going to make sure that you love riding that bike instead,' because that's what we want. We don't adapt the vision. We make sure people understand our vision. Developer-publisher [combinations] sometimes look outwards: 'What's the market out there? What can we do?' And that takes away from what you're doing, what you wanted from the beginning, your voice, your passion, everything."

Hazelight's structure is central to maintaining this united voice focused on a core vision. The studio currently employs around 80 staff and Fares doesn't envision it growing much larger. He notes that bigger studios often have to deal with red tape to bring an idea from inception to completion, the opposite of his intention for Hazelight.

"Here, it's just me and the team," he says. "I'm in every day, and we talk all the time. We communicate way faster, so the iteration is way faster. For Hazelight, it's very important for us to keep it that size. We can still make the games we want to do [with this number of people]. When you go over a certain number, it becomes something else."

This article was originally published on March 14, 2025 - read the full issue here