Josef-Fares
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505 Games acquires Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons IP for $500K
Starbreeze announced the sale of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons to 505 Games today in a deal worth $500,000. Starbreeze CEO Andersson Klint said the transaction represented his studio's "final transition to the digital strategy," following its recent efforts to push sales through digital distribution channels. The deal includes full rights to the game and intellectual property (IP). With Brothers, Swedish studio Starbreeze created a new IP that gained strong traction with critics and consumers alike. The story-driven puzzle platformer earned a spot in our top 10 of 2013 and went on to sell more than 800,000 units to date.
Here's that teaser from Brothers dev's new studio, Hazelight
EA revealed this weekend at The Game Awards that it will publish the next game from Josef Fares, the writer and director of Starbreeze Studios' Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Fares founded a new independent studio, Hazelight, which happens to include four other designers that worked on Brothers as well. Per the studio's website, the as-yet-unannounced game's team includes Claes Engdal (Art Director), Emil Claeson (Lead Animator), Anders Olsson (Lead Programmer) and Filip Coulianos (Lead Level Designer), each having served similar roles on Brothers. What's more, Executive VP of EA Studios Patrick Soderlund said the publisher "shared some space at our DICE studio in Stockholm so [Hazelight] could get to work right away" on the game. No platforms or release dates are known about the studio's upcoming game, though you can head past the break to check out Hazelight's teaser from this past weekend's awards ceremony. [Image: Hazelight]
EA publishing next project from Brothers director Josef Fares
Electronic Arts announced during tonight's Video Game Awards that it will publish the debut game from Hazelight, a newly formed studio headed by Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons director Josef Fares. Target platforms were not named, and a release date is not yet known.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons director on next project, those controls
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons director Josef Fares is working on a new project, but it isn't with developer Starbreeze. Speaking to Digital Spy during a roundtable interview, Fares said, "I can tell you this: If I tell you the idea now, you'd say, 'I haven't played something like this before.' I can't tell you more. But definitely something that hasn't been done before." Fares was speaking at last night's BAFTA awards in London, where Brothers won the gong for Best Innovation. We also caught up with the Lebanon-born director and asked when he came up with mapping control of one brother to the left analogue stick, and the other brother to the right one - an idea that probably contributed to Brothers winning its award. "It was the first day," Fares told Joystiq. "I had to fight so hard to make this game happen. So the first time I got the chance to make a demo, actually I was sat at my motel room and I came up with the concept and the actual story. I mean everything, how it starts, how it ends, how you control, that was all from day 1. Of course it changed during development, but trying to convince all the studios that this was gonna be awesome... "I'm quite known in Sweden for making movies, so people were like, 'You're a movie maker, you don't know anything about games.' But eventually I convinced them. I've worked on this game two years, it's been a real passion project for me." We're glad he convinced them, too: The PS3, Xbox 360, and PC game scored third place in our Best of 2013 awards, with Mike Suzsek calling its emotional adventure "a true rarity, as it places the gravity of its compact story right in your hands." [Image: Starbreeze Studios]
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Review: Do Not Separate
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is an essential treasure to play. I promise, the game's sincere quality absolves the terribleness of its title, which is barely a step up from "Characters: A Story of Them." And yet it truly is a story of them, two boys who leave their humble village behind in a quest for a mythical cure. Their father has fallen ill, and with the loss of Mother ever-fresh in mind, the brothers hope to pluck the solution from a far-off magical tree and undo the fragility that has befallen their family. The involvement of Stockholm-based film director Josef Fares is in plain sight, the camera looking down upon the two boys as they crawl under forests and over frigid mountains. Keeping both characters in frame emphasizes the necessity of cooperation between the two, while the top-down view makes their movements easier to comprehend, as if they were twin hockey pucks gliding across the ice. As much as it may seem to be a traditional co-op game, Brothers divides the attention of a single player between two bodies, with tall Big Brother on the left analog stick and golden-haired Little Brother on the right.%Gallery-169592%
Playing with age in Starbreeze's 'Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons'
"Nobody knows how to make a game yet," says film director Josef Fares, quickly clarifying his statement isn't an attack on the industry but a suggestion that game creation shouldn't be a set science. "It's still a time where we're open to experimentation," the international director adds.Born in Lebanon, Fares grew up in Sweden where he became a director, but his next project pairs him with developer Starbreeze Games to create a game called Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (formerly referred to as "P13" in Starbreeze's internal "project" numbering system). Brothers has been in development for a number of years, with Fares even working on a few of the game's prototypes before the team at Starbreeze locked down the Unreal-developed downloadable title for a 2013 release.The core feature of Brothers is, of course, the game's siblings. But Fares says he's fought off all suggestions by his fellow game makers that the characters should each be controlled by a separate player. Instead, he says, Brothers is designed to have both characters controlled by a single player in a very specifically designed campaign experience.%Gallery-169592%
505 and Starbreeze teaming up for Payday 2 and P13 in 2013
Developer Starbreeze has revealed 505 Games will be its publishing partner for the upcoming sequel to the multiplayer-focused shooter, Payday: The Heist, along with original intellectual property P13, in development for the PSN, XBLA, and PC. Both games are planned for launch in 2013.Starbreeze, which was behind EA's recent attempt to reboot the classic Syndicate series, acquired Payday alongside developer Overkill Studios earlier this year.Though P13 is still masked in secrecy, we know it will be a downloadable "action-adventure game" and that Starbreeze has partnered with Swedish film director Josef Fares to help guide its "storyline, look and feel."
Starbreeze's 'P13' headed to XBLA, PSN, and PC
Compared to other Swedish game development powerhouses – DICE, Avalanche, Massive – Syndicate developer Starbreeze keeps a lower profile. Having only released two projects in the last five years, Starbreeze isn't offering many consistent reminders that it still exists. Company president and CEO Mikael Nermark is aiming to change that, and his first two major projects are two games you probably haven't heard of: P13 and Cold Mercury."We're trying to build four independent core teams," Nermark told me in a phone interview earlier today. Beyond the existing teams at Starbreeze, the newly acquired Overkill Software wil serve as one of those four teams. So, four "core teams," four projects. We know Overkill is working on a sequel to last year's Payday: The Heist, and we know that two other teams are working on P13 and Cold Mercury (respectively), but that fourth team is a mystery.Nermark wouldn't budge on new details about Cold Mercury, but he told me that P13 is currently "in the middle of production" and "it's going really well." The game is heading to Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and PC. Starbreeze brought in an outside force to take creative lead on the project: Swedish director Josef Fares."He's one of the most or maybe the most famous movie directors in Sweden of all time. He's never done a game before, but he's an avid gamer and he loves games. So he actually left the movie industry and this guy is like having one of the top guys – this is the top guy in Sweden making movies. So he's actually working for us full-time," Nermark said. "To Swedes, this is like having a guy like Christopher Nolan working on the game on a daily basis."
Starbreeze concocting new IP with film director
Starbreeze Studios, which has its hands full with the Syndicate reboot, announced today that it is working on a new intellectual property. In collaboration with film director Josef Fares (pictured, right, with Starbreeze CEO Mikael Nermark) and The Story Lab AB, Starbreeze is currently developing the concept after being won over by a prototype. No release window was provided for the game. Starbreeze is known for The Chronicles of Riddick games and The Darkness. Fares is known in Sweden for movies like Jalla! Jalla!, Kopps, Zozo and other stuff that isn't available on Netflix.
