Phil Fish is the Kanye West of video games.

think about it.

Are you saying he's going to marry a Kardashian?

@kcin: I've said it twice and I'll say it again, my problem with him doesn't lie in his retaliations, but the way he responded to the backlash of those retaliations. Please please please read my other posts. He can can act freely and retaliate in whichever way he chooses (it's his damn right to do so) no matter if he's in the limelight or not (he is, and it doesn't matter how he got there) but in doing so he accepts the responsibility of the backlash he's going to get for showing his true persona (someone that will hit back) and when everyone is calling him out on not being the bigger man he gets pissed off and whines about it "i didn't ask for this blah blah blah it's hurting me mentally and emotionally." You didn't, but you're in that situation regardless and you should come to know what the backlash you're going to get for your actions is going to be, and if that's something you can't handle then just take the high road. If it's something he can handle then by all means be who you wanna be, but be mentally and emotionally tough for the backlash that's going to come with being in the limelight (whether you asked for it or not).

In life you'll find that you're put into situations that you don't necessarily ask to be put in, but you need to adapt to it for your own sake if need be. In his case he needed to adapt in the way he carry's his public persona because he wasn't emotionally and mentally tough enough to take the backlash of being his true hit back self. He basically broke down and bitched that he wasn't tough enough to take what was being hurled at him, which was hurled at him for him "not taking the high road," because he wants to be real, which his real self is a pretty arrogant person (and there's plenty of documented moments of him being arrogant without responding to someone, like the WAY he speaks highly of himself).

This is close to the same situation in which everyone found split opinions on Richard Sherman: one side said "I think it's great Richard Sherman is acting because that's what you want out of an athlete, someone who truly thinks they're the best regardless and aren't afraid to show it" and the others saying "I don't mind him saying he's the greatest, but it's his attitude and the way he carries himself and handles that belief of greatness that I don't agree with."

In the end, nobodies right, and everyone's entitled to their own opinion of the guy based on the way he acts. But we're also arguing two different points, you saying his retaliations are justified, and me saying his reactions to the backlash of the retaliations are childish. (And yes I'm also still saying he's arrogant in how he carries himself when he's not reacting to others.)

Also, someone brought up the analogy of Phil being the kid who gets caught fighting back in school and getting blamed for the fight.

I'll use this analogy and say that Phil is the kid who's known for being the Star on whatever school team organization and getting pushed around by some undersized kid and then the Star fighting back. If both the kid and the star face the same consequences, the repercussions of the consequences are worse for the star than the kid, and the star needs to come situation knowing that. And lets also draw a comparison saying the star never wanted those great responsibilities, he just wanted to have fun on the field and have fun. Well he can't because the responsibility comes with being good at the fun, it's just how it works. Now the whole school can't believe the star fought back against the kid, while nobody even remembers the kid. If the star was a nobody, then the repercussions are insignificant, but that's not the case whether the star wants it that way or not. It's just the way the cause/effect works in the situation he put himself in by ACCEPTING the responsibility of joining into that organization.

In this case, Phil Fish (should have) accepted the responsibilities of joining into the games industry (any market where you carry yourself publicly) (you make a great game, you get publicity). But he didn't accept those responsibilities and thus broke down when he realized the repercussions of his actions (whether right or wrong) were too much to bear and bitched about it.

If he didn't want publicity, then he shouldn't have released a game to millions of people.

I want to be a firefighter without all of the constant pressure of maintaining a positive image when I'm in the public that I serve and rather just be my goofy self all the time, but that's a responsibility that I accept (that life is going to put me in that situation whether I like it or not) by going into this career.

That is actually not entirely inaccurate a comparison.

I finally watched the video and it is very well done. I personally never had a single problem with Phil Fish. In the same way I don't have a problem with Kanye West. Both are a little loud, but both are extremely talented. Both can be turned into a few quotes or gestures, but actually amount to much more.

Obviously, they are both from entirely different worlds. The record industry and the video game industry are completely different. But still...

I do not get why some people dislike Fish as much as they do. He's said some really dumb stuff on Twitter and in person, but that's it. For me he has always come across as a decent guy. Good video by the way.

Phil Fish doesn't deserve to be threatened or harassed constantly, this is true, I don't think anyone really does. If he wasn't such a dick to just about everyone who disagreed with him on anything I'd feel sorry for him.

As for the video, I was with it till about the 18 minute mark, where it kind of went a bit off the deep end in claiming anyone who wasn't a white "cis-gendered" male could expect to receive violent rebuttals for having an opinion of any kind on the internet (a wild and ironically kind of ethnocentric exaggeration of the situation). Beyond that it was interesting, well presented and fairly reasonable in its assertions about internet fame.

I love Fez , and I love Phil Fish . That is all ..

The video is wrong in a very key point. When answering a question on Japanese games he didn't say "they suck". He said to the guy asking the question "Your games just suck". That's a world of difference, also the guy asking the questing seemed nervous and English clearly wasn't his first language. All these things combined makes Phil's response pretty rude.

I'm somewhere in the middle. He doesn't deserve all the abuse he gets but he's just as willing to dish it out. He told people to kill themselves via twitter. Patrick has written my articles about how this type of behaviour is never ok and I also believe that.

@matt said:

... and yet Patrick has also fallen into the trap on several occasions, despite knowing that it's not okay. For example, on Twitter, he suggested that people who use AdBlock should die in a fire. Everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately, when you're (internet) famous, your mistakes go on your permanent record.

I use adblock. Deal with it, Patrick!

The video raises some interesting points. that being said he still seems like an ineloquent dude taking everything into consideration.
Also taking into acount the new statements about streaming. (stance aside, it could of been of been put better.)

He might not be a giant dick, but probably still a dick. It might be a bit amplified but. In a way i wish more people got called out for their behaviour.

Very intelligent and 'objective' analysis. I really liked it!

I don't think Phil is an asshole, he's just a guy who talks on the internet like a normal person would, he doesn't care that he's internet famous. Even in real life he speaks his opinion, I wish more of the world did that to be honest.

If everyone tried not to offend anyone the world would be a dull place, I like honesty and passion. He never appeared malicious only opinionated to me.

Also I loved Fez so maybe I'm biased, but hey, long live Phil Fish!

This is being quoted a lot, and it's a perfect compliment to one of the major bullet points in the video. I don't care for celebrities in general. I don't partake in the occasional gossip threads that pop up here and I couldn't name one song Kanye has released in the past five years without a google search. All I know is that he's a person who makes music and probably loves his mother, and an appropriate response from me may as well be "Who the hell is Kanye West?"

When people type something along these lines they may be using their names, but they aren't talking about the actual human beings that likely love puppies and kittens. When you have people disconnect their name from their individuality in such a way, you end up with these kinds of situations. Is your judgement of these two people your own? Or the one that the media cherry-picks every time they stumble across the wrong line?

There are shitty human beings out there; but that should be for you to have the misfortune of finding out yourself. This one-sided mass media twitter copy-pasting is as juvenile as a grade school rumor that the new kid has cooties. I'm not going to shame people for partaking in such exchanges of information; Phil Fish said "They suck" once and it was impossible to go to a video game related website without it being headline news. Just make sure the opinions you form in response are your own.

I also feel bad for him. People seem to give him way more shit than he deserves. I remember when him and Alex Navarro got into a Twitter argument a couple years back before Fez shipped. Alex said something along the lines of "Phil shouldn't talk shit because he never shipped a game." Naturally everyone jumped on Alex's side because A) Fuck Phil Fish and B) Giantbomb Defense Force. But really it was Alex who came off as the hypocrite Scumbag seeing how he makes a living talking shit about games on the internet and has never made one himself.