Josef Fares made a complete fool of himself at The Game Awards and people are praising him for it?

Fares was the best part of the show.

OP you're taking this far more serious than it deserves. His rant was neither worthy of praise nor derision. I thought it was funny, but nothing more. Yeah, he cursed a lot and flipped off the camera. Are you that sensitive? He's an excitable guy who perhaps got caught up in the moment. And yeah he probably had a couple frescas beforehand, but saying he was coked out is a bit much. I want to play A Way Out.

About a third of you are overreacting the way you claim other people are overreacting.

Why would someone not like the Oscars in the first place? Someone in this thread also said fuck the oscars, but for what reason would anyone say that.

@steveurkel: Because the Oscars have nothing to do with artistic merit, and everything to do with money and politics.

You hit the nail on the head with that; the whole post, really. Fares was being a horses ass.

There's no way he wasn't told things like, "No cursing", "Stay on Topic", or "Your spot is X minutes long" before the show started. I don't care about cursing and I'm totally alright with him going off-topic (as long as he had let Keighley bring him back around), but it's clear that his hosts were not. Show some class; have some decorum. If you weren't willing to abide by some simple rules, don't go on the show.

I think the main reason why people liked Fares is because they are tired of the whole phoney pre-written, rehearsed ordeal of an awards show. Even though he hardly made any real coherent points, people loved that he just went off the rails. That's all it takes. And I sort of enjoyed it too. Just watching the show everything else came across so lifeless and stale.

Who said being loud is the only way to be passionate about a game? Don't put words in other peoples mouthes please.

@fisk0: But atleast Fucking Åmål is an amazing movie. God, I haven't watched it in years. I should probably rewatch it soon. Don't really have anything extra to add. Just wanted to give a good movie some praise.

Heh, I'll take anything that will embarrass EA further. This award show means nothing to me anyway (like any award show).

He seemed sincere. At least he wasn't like Geoff interviewing the Rocket League dude, asking him when crossplay with all platforms would come around and the dude not knowing how to answer without saying "Sony doesn't care". That was cringe-worthy.

He's a passionate man.

Also the VGAs are still broken and needs further patching.

Nah, he was awesome. It wasn't nearly as cringy or gross as the way this awards show treats Kojima. So good on him for being fun during a mostly boring awards show

Brothers was a good game, for a couple of hours but hardly life changing. This is cringeworthy, this is the sort of thing that makes people not take video game awards seriously. I certainly took every award here with a grain of salt, it was an open vote popularity contest with way too many corporate sponsors to even trust its legitimacy.

but listening to him say F the Oscars, sounds to me like he was butt hurt because the Oscars said F Josef Fares at some point.

I want this type of show to be successful but I it's struggling, most likely because it's budget it 10% of what they need. It just feel so amatuer, like something from 1990.

He's a passionate guy sure but i don't like anything about him.

@penkaizen: I'm with you man, watched the Waypoint stream because I was bored and holy hell what an awful awards show. I don't get Geoff Keighley as a personality, he just comes off a super fake add to that the constant commercials for tat and the skipping over of loads of award. It really is a load of garbage.

The type of people that spend all day "crusading" against the evils of EA, watching angry people on YouTube and shouting on reddit are of course the people that would look up to some drunk guy going on some long nonsensical rant knowing that he was abusing the platform he had been given.

With that said, it was pretty funny

People... the Spike VGAs have been dead since 2013, stop it.

He didnt make a fool of himself and it wasnt a crazy drugrant but i shouldnt be surpised when people gets riled up from swearing on the internet.

"How can he say fuck the Oscars when he is on an award show himself?" Becasue he is talking up the award show he currently is on......

"Is he a legend because lootboxes are bad?" Theres an EA witch hunt going on and he wanna make it clear that has nothing to do with his independent game, hes a legend for officially and publicly not sweetwording his publisher.

Also it was a great host holding it together in the heated moments.

It’s hard to dislike the guy for disrupting a show that heavily featured advertisements for McDonalds, Uber Eats, eBay, etc. and got so caught up in those they forgot to give out an award (Best Multiplayer for PUBG).

It was hilarious, but I seriously can't understand why anyone would go to the extreme of praising or condemning the guy over it. I would have forgotten about it already if this thread hadn't been on the front page all day.

@disco_drew22: it’s an unfortunate reality that you need money to put on huge award shows. I’m sure Geoff would love to cover the millions of dollars this thing costs straight out of his own pocket and retain full control over it but he’s not THAT rich so you need sponsorships. At this point I think most people see those ads and don’t even blink because it is what it is, and I don’t really have a huge problem with McDonalds so who cares.

I don't really feel the need to watch the video, I just came here to say, fuck Brothers. A Way Out seems okay but it just looks like a slight twist on Brothers so I can't get myself to care.

I'm with you that Brothers isn't a good game, but A Way Out is a different thing. I wouldn't be surprised if the puzzle design is just as bland and forgettable as it was in Brothers, but the fact that Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a single player game and A Way Out is a co-op experience is a pretty huge difference.

I think A Way Out looks like a very good video game and I was very interested in it before the TGAs. Now, my interest is at a fever pitch. I want to see what this insane man has made for us. So, for a lot of people, this little scene worked in Fares's favor.

My first thought while watching it was "Oh boy, this game is going to need a new publisher." He talked some mess on EA and I'm surprised there hasn't already been an announcement relinquishing publishing rights. That tells me that either it was somewhat planned, or EA is so bought in on this guy and his vision that they don't care what he does. Either scenario is interesting to me.

As someone who loves watching big lavish award shows, this moment was emblematic of the best parts of those shows (and live television in general). Audiences of live events want things to go wrong in a controlled environment. It's why actors breaking on SNL is so funny, it's why botches in wrestling are so exhilarating, it's why this year's Oscars Best Picture screw-up might be the best moment in award show history. This was one tiny moment in an otherwise clean-cut (though by no means technically sound) production that went momentarily off the rails. As others have said, it's the one moment in the stream when I just could not look away.

It also helps that he was the only interviewee of the night with even an ounce of charisma, even if he misplayed his hand with it. He's just a passionate man.

Also, for those noting the Tommy Wiseau comparisons, this is what the Wiki page for A Way Out looked like about 10 minutes after his rant:

A Way Out is for the children!

Josef has been on Giant Bomb before and he was EXACTLY like that. He is arrogant and loves to be center of the attention. That is how he always is. If you have him on your show you know what you are getting. So if you don't like his shtick, don't have him on. Personally I think he needs to learn to when to stop or no one will have him on their show. He is only good for very small doses. I would be surprised if GB invites him back.

@memu: Do you mean on the forums because I can't recall him ever being a guest on a video or podcast.

EDIT: You might be thinking of when he was a guest on a Game Informer video alongside Tim Schafer.

I wonder if a female developer had done this if it would have been considered "passion." I feel like that Youtube page would be littered with comments calling her an attention whore.

award shows are silly and his rant was funny

@millionthlayla: There would definitely be a shit ton of sexist and other hateful comments if it was a female.

Exactly. That segment looked like a train wreck. People are dumb

Yeah, I get that. It's a natural evolution for the concept and I can see much better puzzles being possible and it does have a lot going for. It looks good, I like the setting, the slickness of the presentation, and just the idea. But also, Brothers..."Ten games better"...irritates me in a way that's simply irrational. Also, I wouldn't want to play with a stranger and I don't have anyone to play with. :/

No really fuck the Oscars. It's a bunch of white people circle jerking and telling how diverse they are...

Also i don't think he was drunk he's just very passionate about stuff.

http://www.cocainemountain.com/

People who think that guy was only jet lagged never used drugs OR took a long flight...

Okay, serious question because I haven't seen the whole show: Did anyone, prior to Fares's appearance, reference the Oscars during the show in any way? Why is he going on about the Oscars?

To me this has nothing to do with what he said, and everything to do with the venue in which he said it. If he'd said the same shit on a YouTube vlog post or something, nobody would care, including me. It seems to me that people are praising him for sticking it to man in such a public forum or whatever, but all he's actually doing is upstaging the hard work of the people who actually made the games being honored that night.

If he has problems with the behavior of his business partner EA and wants to discuss it publicly, by all means he can schedule an interview with any number of outlets, all of whom I'm sure would love to run such a story. But to boorishly upstage an awards ceremony like he did is pretty classless if you ask me. If I was one of the people being honored that night (like Carol Shaw, for instance), I'd be furious at this dickhead. But of course we live in a time when boorishness is universally rewarded, so I guess I'm just a grumpy old man. But I do genuinely worry about the sort of people who look at this kind of behavior and celebrate it. The guy acted like an ass, period.

I'm a little biased since I dislike award shows and think Geoff is the most bland person in the world, so I was mostly okay with it. The only thing I didn't like from the dev is him saying wait and extending his own time, since the show needs to keep to a schedule, but that's on Geoff too to a degree, since a host with a stronger personality or more witty could've stopped it on time and rolled the footage of the game. I see no reason to think he was on drugs... he was probably drunk and jet lagged. I always hear that cocaine makes you talk fast (like adderall) which he wasn't really doing.

It's probably the most entertaining thing from the whole boring night. I think the concept of movies has Oscars, TV has Emmys, so video games MUST have an equivalent is flawed logic and just copying other mediums for validation.

@humanity: The problem with the Game Awards isn’t the McDonalds and Uber Eats ads, or even past nonsense like Schlick Hydrobot. It’s that the entire show is an advertisement. It’s an awards show where the majority of the focus is on trailers for upcoming games and the awards are such an afterthought that they’ll have segments where they rattle off multiple award winners in a row with no time to process or celebrate the winners. For god’s sake, this is intended to be the industry’s highest honor and yet how many people care, or even know, that Breath of the Wild won Game of the Year? And yet seemingly everyone and their mother saw the Death Stranding trailer or heard about Bayonetta 3. The fact that Spike TV isn’t involved anymore is irrelevant because the vibe is the exact same - the awards are secondary to the new announcements by design. I don’t have much love for the Oscars, but at least they treat their awards with respect and don’t dilute it by shoving world debuts of trailers into the broadcast, because this would be akin to no one caring that Moonlight won Beat Picture this year because everyone was talking about the new Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer they premiered.

Suffice it to say, Josef may have acted like a lout, but he treated The Game Awards with the exact amount of reverence and importance that they treat themselves with, which is none.

I'm not sure I'd praise him for it but it was definitely the highlight of the show for me. Love a good crazy speech.

@iamjohn: I've been struggling with complaints regarding the show's advertising. I don't mind commercials nearly as much as other people do because all award shows have commercials. The show needs to be funded, and more lavish events need time to prep the stage for skits/performances/presentations (which TGA are too light on). The trailer focus certainly needs to go, but I feel like they're inching even closer year by year. Most people who watch TGA aren't me. They don't inherently care about awards, so they just watch for the trailers. Trailers need to be there in some capacity if this thing is going to continue being watched and funded, but they are also what keeps the show from achieving legitimacy. I think if they kept trailers to the pre-show and maybe one to close the show they'd be fine in terms of balance, but who knows if that's enough to keep the lights on.

But yes, especially considering the nature of the show, I'll just consider Fares's rant one long, successful advertisement.

@digaumgrunge: As someone who's been on a long flight which left in the morning that ended with being in the airport in another country for 10 hours on a lay over starting at midnight, jet lag can really fuck you up. One of the most surreal and discomforting experiences I've ever had. Somewhere between too much caffeine and the high of working the midnight oil on a huge project when all you want to do is sleep. Or to quote William Gibson "She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”

@elmorales94: I doubt they would cancel the game or not consider working with him again in the future. He didn't disparage EA, in fact it was the opposite, he was thanking them for the great support he and Hazelight have received from EA and acknowledged that EA has done things that have made fans upset with them recently. Feels like a lot of the people who are cheering him on after this tuned out after the "Fuck the Oscars" moment. It's a win-win for EA because if you read any of the comments on his most recent few tweets it's a bunch of people saying they will now buy A Way Out because he said fuck the Oscars.

Out of all this, the last sentence in the personal life section of Josef's Wikipedia page is the part that upsets me. Wikipedia isn't the most accurate source for information, but it represents one of the most honest and successful uses for the internet and to now have it become a target for vandalism so the internet can have another meme is such a fucking stupid thing.

@kevin_cogneto: Only Josef brought up the Oscars, he's directed several movies so maybe he has some past experience with the organization that wasn't great. You should watch the clip, it's only about 4 minutes for the part where Josef is talking and anyone who watched it and characterized what he said about EA as taking them to task needs to watch it again. He was being thankful towards EA and apologetic for their recent public disappointment. More than anything, it appears people latched onto when he said fuck the Oscars and then totally tuned out for the rest of that segment.

@boonsong: No he was definitely on Giant Bomb. It was one of the E3 guest panel things after Brothers came out. I remember Jeff interviewing him.

I usually hate-watch the show every year, but I'm glad I missed it this year.

@memu: Huh, I've watched all of the E3 stuff multiple times and don't recall him ever being on the show. I could be wrong though, there's been so many interviews and video content over the years.

@memu: I'm not able to find any such E3 video, let alone an interview conducted by Jeff with Josef in the Giant Bomb presents section of podcasts where a recorded interview would end up. All I've found is a written interview done by Patrick after the release of Brothers.

@millionthlayla: I mean...yeah. There's an incident in Giant Bomb's history that pretty much shows that would be the case.