The Internet vs Humanity : The Phil Fish/Fez II episode

Over the weekend the internet’s own Phil Fish canceled the follow up to his smash hit indie game Fez. In a statement on the Polytron web page that reads:

FEZ II is cancelled. i am done. i take the money and i run. this is as much as i can stomach. this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign. you win.

The news strikes me as kind of sad and sadly inevitable. The inevitability that eventually the internet would publicly break someone and we as a society would lose something.

In a seemingly divine twist of fate, Indie Game: The Movie, the film that featured Mr. Fish, released a downloadable content pack (in 2013 the world is such an awesome place) which dealt with internet trollsmanship and how it affected Team Meat. Edmund McMillen, the designer and artist of Super Meat Boy, got so stressed out by internet hate that he basically went Amish and stopped reading about himself and his games. Tommy Refenes the game's programmer and Senior Lady Mac’er, stopped work and had to close down the free “Meat World” service that allowed user created levels for their infamously difficult and addictive million selling Super Meat Boy because of an internet troll.

Imagine that. Two grown men, successful in a field they love, had to abandon something they were passionate about because of the toll it took on their souls. That is chilling. It is so hard to make a dream come true in its self. There is nothing about programming a video game that prepares you for people trying to hurt you.

Phil Fish makes games and has opinions. Disagree or agree and move on. If you feel very strongly, disagree with the point publicly or in person but stay on topic. Disagree without being disagreeable to borrow a hackneyed expression. That bit of advice applies to life and is not exclusive to Phil Fish or game developers. You will never be objective if you think you are arguing with Satan. Then again I am applying rational thinking to irrational people. In those special cases I use a powerful tool I call “Fuck’em.”

What makes the Phil Fish episode so strange to me is that this time the disparaging remarks came from a “professional.” I put the quotes around professional because Im not sure of his profession. It doesn’t appear to be journalism the way he called out two prominent developers for being ‘hipsters’ and ‘toss pots’ (very classy move on the latter sir.) Now we may lose Fez 2 as a community. I dont love or hate Phil Fish, Ive never met the man, but it is a shame that we lose a work of art and passion.

Part of me hopes Phil backs down and finishes the game. Part of me wants him to hold to the cancellation. There would be some tragic poetry in that. Ultimately I wish people would be more opinionated but more human. I know. I am a hopeless dreamer.

In those special cases I use a powerful tool I call “Fuck’em.”

This right here. I don't understand how difficult it is to either ignore the hate or just don't subject yourself to it all together. It really seems like (in Phil's case) that he should not read the comments and had never had a twitter in the first place. There's always going to be people who hate what you do just because they are being assholes.

People in the gaming industry (and maybe others?) seem to have this continual cycle of "Internet Amnesia" where they keep forgetting just how shitty a place the internet can be. We see shit like this happen constantly, the Twitter/Facebook/whatever trolling/harassment/other asinine comments and people are shocked time and time again that it is happening. People need to stop and realize that, yeah, the internet SUCKS. People are dicks on it, and if you want to be a popular person on the internet, you've got to have thick skin to be able to brush that shit off.

In this particular case, Fish didn't have that thick skin that is needed to survive the internet. Doubly so because of his rash, abrasive online personality. He dished it out plenty to people, and openly mocked his own customers in some cases. The problem came up when he realize he couldn't take what people felt like dishing back to him. Does he deserve constant harassment/threats/bullying/etc.? Hell no, but the sad reality is that fame is a package deal. You take the bad with the good, and if you only focus on the bad, you end up getting screwed. Or in Phil's case, you take your ball and go home.

I don't think this sort of thing is restricted to the internet: If you go and see a band, go to the cinema, comedy club, theatre, or restaurant, there might be others that will try and spoil your enjoyment and disrupt the creativity behind the event. There will be those that pass public judgement on the performers rather than the piece being performed. Critics have always held a dubious role in society. Aristotle said "To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing."

In the case of live performance; you might get hecklers or people throwing things at the stage. How the band, comic or performers deal with this can affect everyone's enjoyment and the success of the event.

The other point I have is that there is a strong corroboration between creativity and eccentricity (as noted by Plato, Aristotle, et al). Designing and programming games is a creative endeavour that attracts perfectionists and strongly opinionated character types. It is similar to other creative endeavours that also attract people with a particular drive and focus to their characters. This dedication can often result in a lack of ability in other areas like social interaction and self-perception.

The trick (I think) is to be aware of these limitations and work within them. For example, many actors and musicians don't read reviews or news stories about themselves. Successful games designers and developers - as well as other famous types - seem to keep their a public and private profiles separate.

Well, it's not like he's some victim. I don't follow the guy since Fez looked boring to me, so I'm indifferent about all of this, but he's coming across as a sensitive egomaniac. He's not just some random dev, due to the movie he's more or less a reality star too so things are harder on him for that, which he agreed to and should've seen coming. I'm indifferent, so I'm not really rooting for or against him TBH.

Hell the shit said against him by that Beer guy was pretty mild, abandoning your game because someone called you a hipster is ridiculous and childish.

It's crazy people are defending Fish, sure Beer was a dick too, but jesus. How over sensitive can you be? You don't see jonathan blow ditching his game.

Honestly, i hope he stays out of the industry. The sooner he's forgotten the better.

But this whole thing will turn out to be nothing and he'll announce in 2 weeks that he's really going to work on it again so he gets more time in the spot light.

We really shouldnt reward this kind of behavior with all the attention we're giving him.

@clonedzero: I pretty much agree with you only I adored Fez. I don't really care one way or the other about Phil per se. I was just reacting to our community's cannibalistic urges. I just think Phil is an artist. I dont get the impression he does what he does for the money which in this day of micro-transactions and DRM fuckery is a good thing. I root for guys like Phil even if he is a little abrasive.

@diz: Super good points! I would only say that the obvious difference being that live performance artists perform in front of living people. The point of their art is the reaction. Being a game maker you dont consider your public status while you design and code. With these indy guys becoming their own brands it seems like, fairly or unfairly, they are under more scrutiny. People dont read up on the new Polytron game or the new Number None project. They read what Phil FIsh and Jonathan Blow are up to. Again, really enjoyed the reply. Very excellent points.