My first thought exactly. Also, I've never seen Phil Fish in the same room as Tony Clifton!

Considering he gets so much shit from the general public on a constant basis, and then a media outlet decides to directly insult him, I'm cutting Phil Fish some slack here.

If every time someone brought up my game a legion of people came out of the woodwork and called me an asshole I'd be pretty defensive, too.

Also, OP, are you incapable of making an unbiased topic title? ever? Everything I've seen from you has been biased as hell.

Wait, he cancels his game because a journalist talked shit about him?? What does that guys opinion have to do with the fans who enjoy the game? WTF?

Good Riddance.

Phil Fish and Johnathan Blow were annoyed (and in my opinion rightfully so) at being questioned on a story based on rumours and wanted to wait until there was evidence to back the story up. Marcus Beer then aired his grievances in a video and questioned their integrity and made personal insults. Then Phil Fish and Marcus Beer both acted like assholes and even though I like Phil Fish I can recognise why people do not like him. Hopefully Phil takes a break from all the shit that is flung at him and the cancellation is only until he makes the game. I will continue not to pay attention to Marcus Beer because I get the impression he was just shit stirring a bit.

@colourful_hippie said:

What we need is the Bob Ross of gaming criticism.

Revelling in this whole thing seems a whole lot more dickish than anything that's actually been said by either party.

For those wondering, the whole thing starts pretty immediately in that video.

Personally, I have never defended Fish or Blow when they start in with some of their more whiny moments...and particularly Fish when he flips the fuck out. Nonetheless, I love their games and I continue to enjoy them...and I look forward to their future work.

With that said, Marcus is hitting the nail on the head with a ten-ton sledgehammer. I don't know if he genuinely needed to be that goddamn hostile about it, but frankly, Fish and Blow both need to start realizing that...whether they like it or not...they are the faces of highly successful indie game development. Seriously, no one can honestly contest that Braid was a massive proof-of-concept for XBLA as a platform to release games, as well as showing people "hey, even if you are only a couple of people, you can do this and be successful."

If Fish and Blow (more Fish particularly) wants to go Cobain about their fame and recognition, that's their own shit. However, I look at it like this:

• Blow has a PS4 EXCLUSIVE GAME coming out. He is an indie dev that has worked closely with Sony. He is also someone that would have a worthwhile opinion on self-publishing and/or indie dev on the Xbox One. OF COURSE THE PRESS WILL ASK YOUR OPINION! That's something you can deal with on your own personal time. Otherwise, I would suggest becoming a shut-in.
• Fish, become a shut-in. You will be forever attacked by multitudes of people. Fuck it. Just hole up, don't answer anyone's shit, and make games. Don't show them off at shows. Don't comment on shit. Just makes games and release them. Get someone to PR for you or something. Fez was incredible, and you continually chance your career and the potential of your games gaining any level of reach with your antics.

You know, there are probably faults on both parties, but can we all agree that the "journalists" writing news stories about this stuff are the true assholes here?

Fucking tabloids...

I remember playing football as a youngster, there'd always be that one kid who would pick up the ball and go home sulking when a call didn't go his way. We'd just get another ball and ignore the kid, fuck off Fish, i'll play a different game.

@hunter5024: That actually would be a great contrast against the backdrop of hyperbolic angry people trying to get noticed.

The Angry Nerd bullshit is the worst, I can't stand any of that crap.

I love Phil. Maybe I'm biased because I'm Canadian and we don't have many notable people up here who are willing to speak their mind. Sure he can be abrasive but the amount of shit he gets for what is essentially just a crass sense of humour and an opinionated personality is ludicrous. Getting shit on for simply declining to comment on what was still a very new story is absurd. Maybe he didn't have time to think it over yet, or maybe he had other stuff to do. Who honestly gives a fuck if he doesn't comment. There are a million other devs who could give an opinion on it.

The ultimate revenge is to just make Fez II and make it kick ass. Hopefully he'll realize that.

I was concerned for a second, but I do believe he'll un-cancel it soon enough.

One of the issues of Game Informer featuring a "Where Are They Now" article about the Indie Game: The Movie devs referenced Fish's decision to take a break from Twitter. It said, "He's been silent since May". I checked to make sure - he maintained it for about a freaking week. I'm thoroughly convinced he's bipolar or schizophrenic or something.

I can see this from both sides, but I empathize more with Mr. Fish simply because he is a fragile daredevil.

Marcus Beer is just another piece in the "things wrong with games journalism" puzzle.

Posted a few minutes ago on the Polytron website:

@dallas_raines said:

The hilarious irony of it all is that The Angry Videogame Nerd is really a nice guy who loves video games. James Rolfe is probably one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. No bullshit. The dude "out of character" is a sweetheart.

That's something his imitators never seem to grasp. The "Angry Nerd" gimmick is just a gimmick. It's a character. People like Marcus Beer think that label makes them cool in order to cover up the fact that they're pricks.

Fishy Phil sounds about 8 years old and I hope he does fuck off. People who threaten to leave never do though unfortunately, except Endogene. RIP Endogene.

You're a beautiful human being and I love you deeply.

Man, I don't understand why he didn't delete his twitter and other similar social networking sites a long time ago. It just causes him grief, stress, and general pain. He seems like a fine guy, but his personality and the nature of Twitter and the Internet at large doesn't exactly harmonize nicely.

Also, Braid and Fez are fantastic games. Braid cleverly builds itself on self-reflective, holographic model in which virtually every aspect is both a piece of the greater whole, but as well as a metaphorical microcosm for the entire game. It is a genuine, clever puzzle game challenging your mind with ideas of perception, time, as well as the specific rules the systems of the game present. Blow seems like a really down to earth, intelligent guy (interviews on here, Dtoid, and GS have been great and fun.) He just picks and chooses his moments and will say drastic things now and then, but is generally well tempered.

Fez is great in how it crafts a world built on mystifying, childlike nostalgia that was forged in 80s & 90s gaming magazines, then it quickly takes those now thought to be crushed childlike perceptions of exploration and puzzle solving to quite cryptic, and sometimes unbelievable extremes. Phil has been pretty cool on all of GB's stuff and I hate to see him attacked so much, he really needs to step back and get rid of his presence on the Internet significantly. Delete your twitter, remake it all nicely so no one can take the URL, lock it, and forget about it, delete the apps from all your device, delete the bookmarks, and surround yourself with genuinely positive things going forward. It's only healthy.

It's not that they have publicists, some people can simply control themselves. Jeff was fired after 10 years of work in Gamespot, yet he didn't go around the web talking about it. Fez is a pretty neat game, and Fish may be a laugh riot because of his outbursts but you can't take every offensive and aggressive thing he says and chalk it up to him being a goofball. I never liked Marcus Beer much because even when he was a passing guest on GameTrailers years ago he already had his boring grumpy persona in full effect, but he's not 100% wrong about what he says, ironically though just like Fish he says it in the worst possible way.

@chaser324: At this rate, Phil Fish might have me *GASP* agreeing with @sweep about Fish being a whiny cunt. jakob187 agreeing with Sweep is basically the seventh sign of the Apocalypse.

Have you considered the reason why people attack him? Is it, perhaps, because he is an enormous arsehole with an inflated sense of self-importance?

So what's gonna happen to Polytron now?

Whatever, it's his game he can do whatever he wants for whatever reason he chooses. Though he really needs someone to run his business and PR for him.

@humanity said:

Yeah, that's more due to the fact that he signed a legally binding document on the way out saying that he would never speak about the reasons why he was fired than it is about having control.

@chaser324 said:

Posted a few minutes ago on the Polytron website:

Since its Phil fish its hard to know if this is real or not. I guess we need to wait and see what happens.

I can understand going at this guy, he seems like an asshole, but why cancel your game????

I hope this is real just so we can stop hearing about this guy

I don't think there's any hope left for video games if someone as passionate as phil could give up.

"And here we have some happy little SpeedTrees..."

I think it's much simpler, he probably gets off on the attention just as much as he hates it. Being able to antagonize thousands of angry nerds, including the games press, with a couple of tweets is probably quite entertaining.

I think the most interesting thing out of all of this is reading the comments on twitter from game developers / media and them commenting on who was right who was wrong. Feels like ages since one of these occurred.

@oursin_360: Phil says he's been dealing with this kind of stuff for a long time now, and he said he was fed up with it.

From what I know, I think he's overreacting. But that's just it, I don't know the whole of it. Maybe this is an appropriate reaction.

I like Annoyed Gamer / Marcus. And I dislike Phil Fish. Always found him borderline rude and spoiled with his own success, rubbing it in people's face. Cancelling FEZ 2 is a major fuck you to his fans. Until he explains himself, he sounds like a major egotistic guy.

So ignore him. What the fuck is the point in constantly insulting a person who isn't doing a god damned thing to you?

I know almost nothing about the things that he's said or done because I don't seek them out. Is it that hard for you to just not pay attention to someone if they bother you?

OP was written by a complete imbecile (shouldn't be surprising if you look at his other posts) who either has no idea what happened or has no plans to actually give anyone the full story. At least present some actual facts so people can decide for themselves.

Marcus Beers (as he often does) acted like an asshole. Phil Fish (as he often does) got angry. Beers throwing a fit because Fish and Blow wouldn't comment is completely asinine. They don't owe the media anything. If they don't want to comment on something, they don't have to. Phil is obviously an emotional guy and I wouldn't be surprised if Fez 2 is un-cancelled soon. He needs to learn how to deal with this shit better if he wants to continue making games. I know that's oversimplifying things (and just look at his Twitter if you want to see the magnitude of shit that gets flung at him, it's a lot) but the internet is always going to be filled with assholes like Beers who contribute nothing but negativity.

When presented the choice between another Fez game and internet drama, I'd go with drama every time.

Whenever these dumb twitter blow ups happen I hear about them but I never know what's going on because the people I follow never end up being involved. That makes me kind of happy.

To be fair, this thing started because Beer insulted Fish and Blow when they didn't want to comment on the potential Microsoft self-publish change when it was still rumors and speculation. Fish and Blow then posted tweets stating that asking them to comment on every remotely-indie-related rumor and speculation was stupid (in much harsher terms).

Beer used harsh language (that could be interpreted as personal attacks) for them not wanting to comment on something that may not have even been true. Jon Blow tweeted a quite more calm and concise response, Phil Fish responded like Phil Fish, and Beer responded like himself. It imploded from there, basically.

Both sides acted like asses(except for Blow, really), but I'm pretty sure that Beer is more in the wrong.

It seems so fitting that Phil Fish uses a picture of Andy Kaufman on his Twitter profile.

Fixed.

You know I initially included a line about him signing that thinking "oh someone is gonna mention how he signed an NDA about it I bet". It is still control that he didn't talk around it or mention it at all really for all those years. You think someone who wouldn't have self control would be able to sign something like that and stay quiet? It's not even self control, it's about being an adjusted individual. Not to attack Fish but when you look at all the stuff he writes, it honestly comes off as a person who has difficulty controlling himself.

Emphasis on some. Everybody doesn't have tough skin and are able to shrug off dumb shit like that. I don't hold anything against him for not being able to handle the situation more carefully which is why people like that need PR reps *cough*Dennis Dyack*cough*

@rebgav: You could be on to something there.

This whole thing is just really dumb. Bunch of drama queens. Nut up and learn to move on.

That still implies some sort of sociopathic behavior. Either way, he's not a normal happy-go-lucky developer; he's got weird social needs we can't even begin to comprehend.

Guys, I just want to say that even though I have no opinion on this argument (though I enjoy Marcus Beer's internet personality more than Phil FIsh's) do you realize the internet is awesome. We just witnessed the digital equivalent of two nerds hissy fitting and one of them leaving and crying. IN PUBLIC DOMAIN. We live in great times.