In a modern yet unexplained building hundreds of feet from the cute Liddarvjalden Bay in Stockholm, the frosted glass walls of Joseph's fare office appear twice in his video game studio “Toy Story” – an Escu-esque collaborative adventure about the broken relationship of an adult couple. Near his desk, in the illuminated case, a pair of Muhammad Ali boxing gloves sits.
“I can relate his heart to someone who speaks,” Farez said.
Fares stand out in an industry where executives are caught up in technology marketing speaking and can be protected by publicists just like Hollywood stars. Many gamers know Garrulual Designer for their appearance in the Fantastic Game Awards in 2017.
The sentiment could come as a shock from those who have begun their artistic careers as filmmakers, including an autobiographical adult film set in Lebanon's Civil War, the Swedish entry for Best International Features at the Oscars in 2006.
Fares enjoyed the game from the moment he played Pon at Atari 2600 while living in Beirut. He fell in love in 1988 when he went on to Super Mario Bros in Stockholm.
After working with a few students in 2009 to demonstrate the game, the fare was excited. That night he came up with the concept of a brother: the story of two sons, about the brothers who work together in times of crisis. His interest in films has diminished.
“It's like falling in love with something I can't stop,” said Fares, 47. “There's no day in my life where I don't think about video games.”
In an age of faceless online gaming, fares have shown again and again that there is still a market for joint experience. Brothers: The Story of Two Sons (2013) became an important part of the indie game revolution. Hazelight, the studio he started, quickly achieved success with Way Out (2018), a cooperative prison experience, and then sold two (2021) with 23 million copies.
Hazelight's latest game, Split Fiction, has received critical acclaim for its sci-fi, fantasy and joint rocket-fast roller coaster ride. In eight chapters of the game that can be played online, two bold scribes travel to fantastic, sometimes surreal environments. Fares said there is one keyword that will blossom. For the brothers, it was “sadness.” For divisional fiction, it was “friendship.”
Neil Druckmann, studio director at Naughty Dog, called Fares “a high-energy guy” and “a confident artist” with credits including Uncharted and The Last us, and wanted to try something no one has done. He compared the job of making fare music.
“There's a bit of hip hop on it, like sampling these ideas,” Druckman said. “But he makes them himself.”
Split fiction, such as “Dune,” Crash Bandicoot, and Mario Kart, has regular nods to pop culture and gaming history. There are both “The Lord of the Rings” and the Legend of Zelda. The list continues.
In one sequence, the fare borrows a bit from the films Shrek and Baby. When gas, colorful confetti, white stars and rainbows come out of the pig behind them and controls flying pigs.
Fares' personality is regularly referred to as “eccentric” or “crazy” and he enjoys himself with his persona. His Oscar explosion video highlights how video games are interactive experiences, but it takes two Easter eggs.
However, on recent video calls, the fare was reflective when wearing a sweater with beige cable sewn on. He sat on a beige sofa in Hazelight's office with his feet raised on the cushion and explained how his parents tried to move from Beirut to Sweden five times before their application was approved.
They wanted to bring their six children into a peaceful environment far from the constant bombing of Lebanon's civil war.
“The first decade of my life was very violent and very harsh,” said Fares, adding that formative experiences built up his self-guarantee.
In 2005, fares recorded childhood in the midst of war through “Zozo.” This is a film that excludes life by bombs, apartments, and life. Oddly, but effectively, the shell child becomes a friend of the chicks found on the roof.
The fare was chicken as a pet. He was a friend he could speak in the devastation of reality he witnessed. The chick was attacked and killed when he left it with the old chicken. “It was traumatic,” he said, a moment of terribly unsettling.
Some of Fares' other films featured his brother Fares Fares, an actor who appeared in the television series “Tyrant,” “Westworld,” and “The Wheel of Time.” And, as he did with the fare nickname on “Zozo”, he placed a part of his life in the game of Hazelight, sometimes bravely. At the end of the brothers: the story of two sons, there is an emotional burial.
“I actually buried my younger brother,” Fareth said. “He was born and died, so he was still a baby. And for some reason, me and my sister went to bury him.”
It is here that fare quietly spoke about the need for family and friends. Hazelight's games were all cooperative efforts and played best with the two of them sitting close to each other on the couch. Studios are trying to balance their desire to challenge gameplay with concerns that it causes too much conflict, and split fiction autosaving points often arise.
“We build a very tough trust between the two,” Fares says. “And suddenly, you might throw it in the trash, and you might have to oppose each other. There's something interesting about it, to create this kind of tension between the two of you.”
Earlier that day, before work, the fare took his two young daughters to school. He was now ready to pick them up. Two characters from Split Fiction, Mio and Zoe, are named after his child. In the game, Mio is introverted and Zoe is outtroverted. Unlike his children, they don't immediately care about each other's company.
Early on, after each voice has a dislike for the other's favoured writing genre, the author is forced to jump from one space vehicle to another while under attack. The scene is supported by high-tension synths and sci-fi soundtracks by all Hazelite games and musician Gustav Grefberg, who won Wolfenstein: The New Order.
As soon as Grefberg saw the sibling's prototype, he believed in the vision of fares. “I asked Joseph to work with him,” Greffberg said.
Impressed by Fares' excitement and confidence, Grefberg wanted to join a team with so many new ideas. The annual game jam at Hazelight, known as “Freaky Week,” generates ideas that flow freely from the entire company of 83 people.
Beyond the fare, “When Joseph says he wants more actions, he says it almost like an emotional word,” Greffberg said – he is deeply philosophical. My colleagues have had a wide range of conversations about meditation, the concept of Zen, and the meaning of spirituality. That doesn't mean that fares have lost his ambitions. If he can find time, he could even go back to filmmaking.
“I think split fiction could potentially be a great film,” he said.
The game has already revised the audience.
