What should The Oscars do? Well, game designer Josef Fares has some ideas, and he let them fly during The Game Awards livestream earlier tonight. Fares, who directed the indie game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, was onstage to promote A Way Out, his upcoming co-production with Electronic Arts. But before he got to that plug, he shared some truly inspiring words.
What should The Oscars do? Well, game designer Josef Fares has some ideas, and he let them fly during The Game Awards livestream earlier tonight. Fares, who directed the indie game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, was onstage to promote A Way Out, his upcoming co-production with Electronic Arts. But before he got to that plug, he shared some truly inspiring words.
“There are crazy people, and then there are me,” Fares said to The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley. “I’m so passionate to be here. This is great that you started this. Look, The Oscars should fuck themselves up. This is the shit. This is the real shit.”
Fares was making a point about the comparisons between The Game Awards and traditional media award events like The Oscars, which many people consider prestigious and elegant. Fares, apparently, does not agree. But the designer didn’t stop with movie awards.
Keighley pushed Fares to talk about his game by bringing up the point that players can buy A Way Out and play it online in cooperative mode with a friend who hasn’t bought it. Fares sprung back into action at this point and made some pointed remarks about EA.
“This is the thing,” Fares said. “This is my idea. It doesn’t have anything to do with the EA shit going on — with the loot boxes. No!”
This got a laugh out of the audience. EA has faced a lot of scrutiny from gamers — and now regulators — for its business model of incorporating loot boxes with random prizes into its games. Fares, however, wanted to defend EA, and he did it in a “passionate guy” way.
“EA has been very good to me,” said Fares. “And to be honest with you — because it’s nice to hate EA, blah — I don’t care about that shit. What I’m saying is this: all publishers fuck up sometimes. That’s how it is. They fuck up. In this case, they’ve been treating me very well.”
This is not some strange outburst from Fares. He has always had a bold and brash personality, and EA has doesn’t appear to be keeping him on a short leash. And I think tonight proved that’s the case.
