The orchestra should’ve played him off
Josef Fares put himself on the map in 2012 with a heartfelt narrative-driven adventure game called Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. But the developer has a reputation for not keeping his opinions to himself, and he lived up to it at The Game Awards tonight, going off-script with a lengthy, scatterbrained rant that left everyone pulling their collars.
Fares, the co-founder of Swedish indie studio Hazelight, appeared at The Game Awards to introduce a new trailer for his next project, A Way Out. He was also supposed to discuss some news: the game’s March release date and a unique co-op trial. But Fares, who has a background in film as well as games, began by telling the crowd how excited he was to be at the show — by proclaiming the superiority of The Game Awards to the Oscars.
“There are, like, passionate people, there are crazy people and there is me,” said Fares. “Look, the Oscars should fuck themselves up. This is the shit! I’m telling you — this is, this is the real shit!”
That line got some applause, after which Fares apologized to The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley — who was standing next to him — and asked for “a minute.” Then, after checking with Keighley that he could swear, Fares picked up where he left off.
“Fuck the Oscars, you know? Fuck the Oscars! Fuck you!” Fares shouted, giving the middle finger to the camera.
Watch the rest of the rant above, in which Fares went on to note that although Electronic Arts — which is publishing A Way Out under its EA Originals program — has deservedly received criticism for its use of microtransactions in games like Star Wars Battlefront 2, the company has been very good to him.
“It’s nice to hate EA, blah, blah — I don’t care about that shit,” said Fares. “What I’m saying is this: All publishers fuck up sometimes, you know?”
EA executives must have loved that. (This seems like a good time to point out that in a leaked document that was purportedly an internal EA Originals marketing email, the company said this about Fares: “Josef as a personality is a plus, his passion is great, but need to watch out for controversy.”)
In the end, Keighley had to cut Fares off — you could say Keighley was the one looking for a way out.
