Video game developer Josef Fares is on a mission to put storytelling first in video games, slamming money-driven designs for stifling creativity.
“From a creative perspective, if you involve money too much, then it will affect it,” says Fares, whose 2021 game It Takes Two was a critical and commercial success.
The 47-year-old Swede of Lebanese descent, a former filmmaker who founded game developer Hazelight Studios in 2014, does not have a lot of patience for video game industry trends such as microtransactions, where players are encouraged to repeatedly pay small amounts for virtual in-game items.
The model provides developers with a revenue stream after the initial purchase of a game, or in some cases the game is made free upfront with such transactions being the only form of revenue.
Fares concedes that in some cases it has been extremely profitable, but “we will never have those in our games”.
