Electronic Arts publishing Josef Fares' next game

Outspoken game maker Josef Fares has confirmed he will continue his partnership with Electronic Arts, which will publish the next game by his company Hazelight Studios.

The confirmation came via a roundtable interview at last week's GameLab conference, attended by our sister site Eurogamer. During the discussion, Fares praised how good EA has been to collaborate with in the past.

"It's super-good support," he said. "I don't care what publisher I work with, it's going to be the same. This is how I work: I respect the economical aspect but nobody fucks with the vision - it's very, very important. And they know it at EA now, and they're super-supportive."

Details on Hazelight's next title are scant, but Fares did say the project has only been in pre-production for "just a couple of months" - presumably since the launch of previous release A Way Out. The developer expects to enter full production in a month's time, but warns that it's unlikely to be shown for another two to three years.

This is in part because the game will be much larger than the team's previous projects - "It's not AAA big, but it's bigger than A Way Out," said Fares - and is likely to be much longer than this year's prison break adventure.

A Way Out was released back in March as part of the EA Originals initiative, whereby the publisher brings indie-style games to market but promises their developers 100 per cent of the profits.

During EA's E3 2018 press conference, chief creative officer Patrick Söderland said the game's "huge success" - selling one million copies within its first two weeks - has enabled Hazelight to expand its team and move into a new studio.

Fares' comments at GameLab echo the praise he had for EA when we spoke to him earlier this year. They also match reports of solid support from Unravel developer Coldwood Interactive, which told us it was pleased to be working with Electronic Arts again when we met them at E3.