The article explores the intricate duality of video games as both products and art, emphasizing the importance of culture in shaping game development. It focuses on Hazelight Studios, renowned for their award-winning Game of the Year, "It Takes Two." The piece illustrates the studio's environment and identity, largely influenced by founder Josef Fares's engaging and confident persona. Hazelight's new office in Stockholm reflects their success but maintains a humble charm, demonstrating that a studio's culture can drive both creativity and commercial achievement.
Video games are products. But they're also art, and I won't hear anyone argue otherwise. This is the complicated and often contradictory paradigm at the root of our medium.
At the risk of sounding like that infamous article's opening paragraph musing on auteur creators, Hazelight is definitely a studio defined by the identity and attitude of its founder, Josef Fares.
Fares is a little bit scrappy, with a braggadocious attitude that always manages to land on the charming side of things, rather than the arrogant side.
Hazelight is instead tucked away on the top floor of an unassuming office building... in the wake of the success of It Takes Two.
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