It Takes Two director Josef Fares has been making headlines in the gaming industry for years, like when he famously said "F*** the Oscars" at The Game Awards, and more recently, for taking home the award for Game of the Year. The award-winning game director is known for being outspoken, recently touching on the subject of NFTs and going as far as to say that he would rather be shot than include them in his video games.
Fares recently spoke to The Washington Post, where he championed video games as an art form and criticized companies for adjusting mechanics to try to get players to spend real money. He said that his company Hazelight Studios wouldn't make a live service game despite how much money those kinds of games can rake in, and added that he would rather be "shot in the knee" than incorporate NFTs in his future games.
NFTs are an increasingly popular trend in the digital space, with some people spending thousands upon thousands of dollars purchasing them. For example, the bidding for an Amouranth NFT based on the likeness of the famous Twitch streamer surpassed $125,000 at one point. There is clearly money to be made from NFTs, but fans shouldn't expect them to pop up in any future games developed by Fares and his team at Hazelight Studios.
Other video game companies have already started experimenting with NFTs to largely negative reactions from the community. For example, Ubisoft's NFT plans have been widely criticized and have seemingly flopped, though the company still seems determined to incorporate NFTs into its future projects. Ubisoft seems to think that NFTs will be more widely accepted by gamers as time goes on, but that remains to be seen.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl, meanwhile, was also going to include NFTs, but those plans were scrapped. STALKER 2 removed NFTs after there was some severe backlash from fans online, and so right now it seems like a pretty risky move to build a game with NFTs in mind, though who knows what the future holds for the industry at large.
As for what Hazelight Studios is working on next, that has yet to be revealed. Fares has consistently put out high quality games, with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, A Way Out, and It Takes Two all earning positive reviews. It Takes Two earned the highest reviews of the bunch so far, and so it will be very interesting to see what's next from Fares and his talented team.
It Takes Two is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: The Washington Post