What happened to Phil Fish?

@Hailinel: Not really, since the "suck my dick" Tweet was a reply to a specific internet stranger who was being a colossal dick to him, as internet strangers are wont to do. Like, dude had just won the highest honor anyone in indie games can win, and then he checks his phone and sees awful people - people who do not know him - continuing to be awful towards him? Yeah, in my book, he gets to tell them to fuck off any way he feels is best. He didn't, as I think you're implying, tweet "I won the award, suck my dick, etc" - he tweeted it just to this one dude, and the only people who saw it were the people trollishly scrutinizing his Twitter feed looking for stuff to harangue him for. That's where that quote comes from.

Just like the "Japanese games suck" thing, this is another awesome example of what's dangerous about relying on internet hearsay: you end up having zero context. Ignoring everything but the specific words themselves makes it way easier to dehumanize him and reinforce positions they made up their minds about forever ago.

In short: Phil Fish isn't evil. Also, you should see Indie Game: The Movie. It's good!

@Babylonian, it wasn't just one tweet directed at one person.

@Hailinel said:

@Babylonian, it wasn't just one tweet directed at one person.

Hey, at least he's upfront about it unlike Square which keeps selling you dogshit and calling it a Final Fantasy game. ;)

EDIT : I KAN ENGLICH

@SeriouslyNow said:

Hey, at least he's upfront about it unlike Square he keep selling you dogshit and calling it a Final Fantasy game. ;)

That doesn't even make sense.

@Hailinel: fixed.

@Hailinel: But that was a joke referencing the 35-page NeoGAF thread and Kotaku article piling on him for the "suck my dick" comment. Again: zero context! But I don't think I can convince you he's not a maniacal supervillain whose every word should be scrutinized, so I give up. Sometimes people say rude shit when they're harassed! Sorry!

I mean, for what it's worth, Jon Blow called modern Japanese games "joyless husks" literally seconds after Phil made his original comments. And I saw Tommy from Super Meat Boy stand by Phil and agree with him at multiple Indie Game: The Movie Q&As every time he was asked about Phil's 'outburst.' Nobody batted an eye at either of those. Hrm.

@Babylonian said:

@Hailinel: But that was a joke referencing the 35-page NeoGAF thread and Kotaku article piling on him for the "suck my dick" comment. Again: zero context! But I don't think I can convince you he's not a maniacal supervillain whose every word should be scrutinized, so I give up. Sometimes people say rude shit when they're harassed! Sorry!

I mean, for what it's worth, Jon Blow called modern Japanese games "joyless husks" literally seconds after Phil made his original comments. And I saw Tommy from Super Meat Boy stand by Phil and agree with him at multiple Indie Game: The Movie Q&As every time he was asked about Phil's 'outburst.' Nobody batted an eye at either of those. Hrm.

Context which he himself failed to provide, and for those that lack it, paint it as something different. Either way, he's incredibly bad at PR. Incredibly.

And I find it hilarious that indie devs apparently love shitting on an entire nationality's gaming output when their games are so heavily influenced by other games from the same nationality that they're shitting on. And I mean, what games are these guys actually playing that bring them to these conclusions? What American games are they playing?

There have been plenty of great Japanese games. Probably a bit of a problem just how many of them are on handhelds, and so can be conveniently ignored.

I stumbled over his Twitter accounts

https://twitter.com/polytron

and

https://twitter.com/PHIL_FISH

Around 15 'arrogant' tweets every day? WTF? Does he have to much time to do as a millionaire?

I did buy FEZ but IMHO in his tweets he answers like an 'arrogant dick'. It seems to be true: Give a man power and/or money and he will reveal himself.

joblack has been stewing about this for 9 months. he has a picture of phil fish on his wall and then a red string that connects it to picture of a question mark

EDIT: blah necro'd thread didn't notice

This makes his unnecessary necro post much more fun, thanks

@officegamer: No I didn't know about the controversy until yesterday. But it seems Phil Fish has a bad character, his twitter posts seems erratic and 'psycho' and after his semi-success it wasn't getting any better.

I won't buy any more games from this arrogant brick.

Glad Ryan Davis found him.

Phil Fish has the attitude on twitter of someone who is posting something pithy and off the cuff in a 140 character limit to an internet full of douches that have been hassling him for maybe five years while toiling away on his project. People should probably step back and chill the fuck out. If people are "put off" by his "attitude", then they must have a seriously difficult time navigating day to day life around the rest of humanity, which is truly hostile and abrasive.

@branthog:

"If people are "put off" by his "attitude", then they must have a seriously difficult time navigating day to day life around the rest of humanity, which is truly hostile and abrasive."

With most of the people I'm fine, but thanks for asking. If I want to sell something to customers there has to be at least a minimum level of friendliness.

The point is that the Phil Fish behaves as an arrogant hipster but wants our money. I'm still angry about the missing patch for FEZ XBox live. Just because he is either not competent to patch the bug at the right time frame or to cheap to care about "1% " of his customers (oh well with 200.000 buyers it's still over 2.000 people). His 'non business' behavior is a complete disaster.

With this behavior he will get not a single cent from me. I'll boycott the Steam FEZ edition.

I have to agree completely with Marcus. Not a classy way to say it, but yeah, Fish and Blow can't treat the press as a marketing firm. They have to speak every once in a while about the issues of the day, too.

Fish and Blow don't have to say anything. That's not their job. And if news sites are mad about that they can just boycott reporting about them. Which they shouldn't bc that's THEIR job.

It sucks we won't get a sequel but it's still very gratifying to see him have yet another meltdown. I got Fez during Steamsale -- having regrets about that now, even if I can separate the artist from the art. Phil is maybe the single most insufferable dev, and the sole reason most people think all indie devs are horrible pretentious assholes.

Had a good laff at people comparing him to JD Salinger and Terrence Malick for this, too.

I look forward to him coming back in a few months and trying to act like nothing happened. He will most likely never be successful again. Should this type of thing be called Pulling A Dyack or something?

He'll be back in a short while. Just needs some time to cool off.

Explain to me why it's enjoyable to see a person get so constantly berated that he gives up doing what he loves just to get away from it.

@warlordpayne: Because he brings a lot of it on himself, and continues to be a hilarious dickhead to everyone instead of just learning to deal with it. If he knows he makes good games, and is superior to others, as he clearly thinks, why should he care what others think?

@larrydavis: So it's okay for everyone else to be colossal dicks to him for little to no reason but he has to always be above it all or he's an asshole and deserves it. Okay.

I don't have to like a person to like their art. Phil Fish always seemed prickly to me, but he made a fantastic, original game and maybe that's part of his makeup. Sometimes artists are prickly and difficult, and yet also make good art. I see many people scrutinize Phil Fish's every comment and bad moment. To me, Marcus Beer is far more insufferable and patently set out to troll Blow and Fish. I hope Phil Fish makes more games because he's good at it.

It may be cliché to just tell him "grow a thicker skin", but seriously, he needs to do that. There are thousands of game creators out there whose work is shit on every day, and nearly every one of them just deals with it and moves on.

His reaction shows a startling amount of insecurity and poor judgement for a man of his talent.

No matter what you think of the guy, it's silly to say he deserved any of this nonsense. It'd be cool if everyone on both sides acted like decent human beings to one another. This also goes for the world. *sigh* wishful thinking.

Ok, so there's two obvious camps here:

People who think Fish is some kind of Christ-dev-genius forever tormented by the Man

People who think he is a Manchild-Satan-spawned-imp who begs for mistreatment with self-righteous glee and then cries himself to sleep

I think Phil Fish is nothing more than a jerk who can't handle it when other jerks are jerks to him. He dishes it out all the time, and he well established himself as "the guy that everyone loves to hate" in that movie he was in. Famous quotes of his like "Suck my dick. Choke on it." have cemented him in that category. It's fine if he wants to get out of that shithole that he dug himself into, but he needs to actually make effort to sound more professional and courteous to his consumer base. His job is to make and sell his game, not to gloat on Twitter about how he won some Indie dev award.

The funny thing about all of this is that he is the exact same type of person that everyone is complaining about in this situation. He's the type of guy that tells someone to kill himself for being a jerk. The only difference between him and the anonymous people he's now running from is that he made a video game.

Dude seriously needs to grow up. If he cares that much what an anonymous asshole on the internet thinks or about something stupid that Gametrailers put up he has issues. He has serious personal issues and needs help. Now I'm not saying that the people that troll him aren't absolute cunts but as a moderately successful public figure it is up to him and him alone to learn how to deal with it. It's the internet. Everybody is calling everybody else an asshole. If he can't deal with that then maybe he shouldn't be on twitter and maybe he shouldn't be releasing games in the public eye. Shame to say it, but that's how I feel.

A massive amount of this he brings on himself, and instead of being the better man he tells people to eat dicks and kill themselves. I have zero sympathy for a hypocrite such as that. If we don't see Fez 2 because of this fine. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Fish deserves to be criticized and if he can't take it then he should leave, for his sake and ours.

I love how long this thread has been up. Also.....

I feel bad for the guy, nothing i ever saw him do warranted the amount of hate he got, i found what he said funny more than anything. A question, what did he actually do?? i know he said Japanese games are crap (oh nooe an opinion), and he was an asshole to people who went after him, is that it?? I know theres something to be said for being the better man and ignoring that abuse but i dont know if i would have handled it any better, Talentless flubbers, venomously insulting you and your lifes work?? maybe working so long, alone on fez put him in a weird headspace, maybe because he has bipolar hes overly emotional, i guess it doesn't excuse something he did (something that i dont know about) .

hes got a big ego so i dont think hes coming back, unless hes got some real mental stuff going on, i hope he goes under a pseudonym and develops games in secret, seems like an ideal situation. i didnt play fez so im not too bothered either way, but its a shame to loose a talented developer, they aren't treated well by this industry.

I think you are hitting the nail on the head here. Its maybe one of the biggest things that separates the creators and the critics/consumers. To us, there are many, many games. Its easy to say: "That one's bad. That one is good." To a creator, there is only one game. The one they make. It's extremely personal to hear that your game is bad. With so many devs, it's easy to have a passing opinion of most of them. To that dev, it's a personal insult.

This is all new too, with creators interacting directly with the consumers thanks to twitter. I wonder who needs to grow up though? Do devs need to get thicker skin if they are going to be on the internet? Or do the greater masses need to learn that "celebrities" are people too. And their words can hurt.

Well Phil Fish, if you're going to try and troll the internets, it's probably going to try and troll you back. Makes you look a tad thin skinned if you're happy to dish it out, but not necessarily to take it.

Phil Fish happened to Phil Fish

Yeah, I have no idea what happened to Phil Fish...

@truthtellah: How many of these do you have?

Even I don't know...

A few things, as I'm feeling particularly ranty.

Firstly, Jonathon Blow and Phil Fish were initially asked to comment on the RUMOUR that MS was enabling self-publishing on the Xbone, which they both refused as there had been no confirmation at that point:

https://twitter.com/TommyRefenes/statuses/361263268309893120

Secondly, even after self-publishing was confirmed by MS, there were so few details on how the system would be implemented that making an official statement would be largely speculative. Again, their refusal to comment is entirely justified.

Third, "Phil Fish" was trending worldwide today. Think about that. Think about how many people would be actively talking about him. Imagine even a small percentage of those people are complete entitled assholes who take the word of someone who calls themselves "Annoyed Gamer" as gospel. Now imagine they take their ire to Phil directly and spam his twitter account with utter bullshit akin to this.

Phil Fish is an emotional guy who doesn't sugarcoat his opinions and is invested heavily in communicating directly to his follwers on twitter. In the grand tradition of people like Jeff and Ryan, these are traits to be applauded, yet he cops a barrage of shit from gamers every time he says what he thinks. I don't blame Phil for throwing his arms up in defeat, if that's indeed what he's doing. You shouldn't have to be made of stone to work in this industry and talk to your fans.

You know, maybe we were better off in the old twitterless days with the devs doing their thing in relative silence, interacting exclusively with the press. Seemed to be much better for their piece of mind.

@hailinel: No after being treated like shit by the media and the internet. Reddit likes to edit twitter feeds to make him look like an asshole. You shouldn't believe something that comes from Reddit or the journalists at all. For an example Marcus Asshat commented on a false article. Phil and Jon were asked to comment on rumors and they said that they weren't going to comment on a rumor. After the interview was done before it was released the news broke that xbox one supported self publishing so the limey asshat from GI edited the article and then Mr Beer read it and started the shitstorm that ended it all.

@fram@masterpaperlink

Great points, well said.

I don't think people understand just how hard it is to read pages and pages of comments/articles/tweets/videos of people personally attacking you, your work and every single thing about you. The level of hate people project on the internet under the veil of anonymity is startling. It's like having to be accountable for every comment you've made in a forum by thousands of people who know your name, what you look like who decide they hate you because of some watered down quote in a bitter blog somewhere. Gamers in particular can be so harsh. There is a lot of misdirected bitterness in this industry.

I'm not saying Phil Fish isn't out of line sometimes, of course he is, but he's dealing with about 1000% more bullshit than the average person. And way more than Beer who if you ask me is setting a much worse example than anyone in this story. Calling two people 'wankers', 'tosspots' and 'fucking assholes' for basically doing NOTHING then telling them they have to 'suck it up' because they're prominent indie developers makes me fucking angry. I'd quit too.

I guess my point is that these guys are extremely talented developers who pour their hearts and souls into creating experiences for us for under a $20 price tag. The're human beings with opinions and feelings. What they're not is members of the Mickey Mouse Club. I just wish the internet could cut them a bit of slack sometimes...

The part I can't wrap my head around is that anybody watches fucking Invisible Walls. It's awful.

Annoyed Gamer is just Yahtzee without a sense of humor or personality.

What the hell? Fuck this, I'm also quitting video games!

Didn't see it pointed out in the thread (or in news articles.) But there was also the guy who was accusing Phil of threatening his (Phil's) ex-girlfriend with violence.

The twitter account has now been deleted.

It's the terrifying thing about twitter, and makes me totally understand why Phil would just quit.

@slydotcom: I'm not even sure what you're responding to. The last time I posted in this thread was well over a year ago.

Unfortunately, that's what happens when your hobby attracts children. I'd imagine most of these "people" (I use the word loosely) are teenage boys. The internet is both a blessing, and a curse. These people don't step back and go, "You know what? Maybe I shouldn't wish death upon someone for slightly changing the stats of a virtual weapon." Lost causes.

So he said some dumb shit, i'v said some dumb shit in my day. I think this got way overblown.

*peace of mind

Also, no one's forcing them to use twitter. You could literally start a funding campaign to save puppies from being euthanized and put into a caring home and there would be some backwards asshole giving you shit about it. Fuck those assholes, block them and be done with it.

Fish is crazy. Is anyone really that surprised that he went loony?