The latest game by Hazelight Studios, at the 2017 Game Awards, Fares shocked the gaming world by standing next to one of the industry’s finest, Geoff Keighley, pointing straight at the camera, and yelling bluntly, “F*** the Oscars!” This was during an interview regarding Fares and Hazelight’s previous game, A Way Out, which came out in March 2018.
Ironically, Fares comes from a filmmaking background. He made several Swedish feature films before stepping into the gaming industry. Fares founded Hazelight in 2014 after directing Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons with Starbreeze Studios. It Takes Two serves as the studio’s second release, the first being A Way Out, which has sold nearly 3.5 million copies. EA had announced a new EA Originals deal with Hazelight in June 2019, but It Takes Two wasn’t officially announced until roughly a year later at EA Play. The game released on March 26.
Now that It Takes Two has hit the market, the gaming community has done one of its favorite things using its favorite tool. As reported by to share with someone close.
This is far from Fares’s only brush with expletives since he’s been in the spotlight. This incident dates back to 2017, but just this past January, he dropped another f-bomb when discussing Microsoft’s naming conventions for Xbox. It would seem that he was just as confused as much of the industry was when Xbox revealed Project Scarlett’s official name would be Xbox Series X/S. As a prominent and notorious figure in both the film and game industries, he’s no stranger to being unashamed of his voice and making sure it’s heard.
It Takes Two marks the third co-op game out of three total games developed by Fares. He has capitalized on a genre that hasn’t grown all that much in many years. Before Fares came on the scene, most co-op experiences were not particularly narrative-driven, but Fares seems to have found himself a place in the industry that he connects with. So far, he seems to gravitate towards shared experiences as opposed to solo ones, and he does so with his own style and flourishes. He has become known for his enthusiasm, ion, and down-to-earth style when it comes to developing engrossing games with engaging stories. He clearly loves what he does and isn’t afraid to share his excitement, or to memorialize it in games like It Takes Two.
Sources: Kotaku, Geoff Keighley
