Det finns få utvecklare i den moderna spelbranschen som är lika välkända och hyllade som vår svenske stjärna Josef Fares, grundare av Hazelight Studios, studion bakom A Way Out, It Takes Two och Split Fiction.
Fares är ofta förknippad med sitt numera klassiska utspel på The Game Awards för några år sedan, där han ikoniskt utbrast "Fuck the Oscars", men den som känner till honom och hans arbete vet att han är mycket mer än så.
Mot den bakgrunden fick vi nyligen möjlighet att prata med Kaja Chan, som spelar Mio i Split Fiction, i en intervju om det hyllade plattformsspelet. Samtalet kom också in på Fares och hur det är att arbeta med den välkände utvecklaren. Kaja Chan sade:
"He is such a character. He's such an incredible person. So he is the "F the Oscars guy", but he's actually really grounded. He's so down to earth and so welcoming and so loving and incredibly passionate. He knows how to lift up the spirits of an entire room and the moment he walks in, it's like the temperature rises in a really good way. It means that when we're doing motion capture, we lock in. But also as soon as things get serious, he's like, all right, you know, who can I show some love? And then he'll go into the ground or he'll be like, oh, do you want chocolate? Do you want chocolate? Do you want chocolate? And, you know, he's making sure everyone's fed.
It's like you have to, you have to strap into the roller coaster ride that is working with Josef. But he is adorable and lovely. And I think that the success of Hazelight and Split Fiction and It Takes Two, and every one of their other amazing titles, has been because of the strength of his ambition and the clarity of his vision and how optimistic and encouraging he is of his team. Everyone is blindly following him into battle, basically, and that's because of the power of his vision and his, you know, he's very persuasive, put it that way."
Beträffande framtiden har studion nyligen påbörjat arbetet med motion capture för sitt nästa spel, vilket tyder på att det inte lär dröja alltför länge innan vi får höra från Fares igen.
