‘No micro transactions, no bullshit’: Josef Fares on Split Fiction and the joy of co-op video games

Fares is a refreshingly unpredictable voice, starting as a film director before moving into games; now, he says, working on a movie would be a vacation'

There aren't many video game developers as outspoken as Hazelight's Josef Fares. Infamous for his expletive-laden viral rants at livestreamed awards shows, Fares is a refreshingly firy and unpredictable voice in an all too corporate industry. As he puts it, It doesn't matter where I work or what I do, I will always say what I want. People say to me that that's refreshing - but isn't it weird that you cannot say what you think in interviews? Do we live in a fucking communist country? Obviously, you have got to respect certain boundaries, but to not even be able to express what you think personally about stuff? People are too afraid!"

Yet while gamers know him as a grinning chaos merchant and passionate ambassador of co-op gameplay, in Fares' adopted homeland of Sweden, he is best known as an award-winning film director. His goofy 2000 comedy Jalla! Jalla! was a domestic box office success, while his 2005 drama Zozo was a more introspective work about his childhood experience of fleeing the Lebanese civil war.