What happened to Phil Fish?

I think Phil Fish handled the situation like 14 year old spaz, but Marcus is a dick.

Dozens upon dozens of people could do his job. He just takes the must obvious emotional response to news stories and swears a lot on camera. The whole point of journalism, even opinion pieces, is to filter out the raw emotion and base your content on actual substance.

Fish gets too much shit. It'd be nice if people paid attention to his games instead of him for a change.

Phil needs to take a page from the thousands of celebs on Twitter and other social media that undoubtedly receive comments ranging from mild criticism to death threats daily. Granted, not many celebs patrol their own Twitter accounts, but there are surely many that do that learned early on in their career to tune out the hate, because responding to it acknowledges and validates its presence.

There are Marcus Beer-types in every industry, and Phil needs to get over that. The onus is on him to be mature, not only as an adult but as a recognized presence in the gaming industry. Yes, those that make such inflammatory comments shouldn't, but as long as the Internet remains a vehicle of free speech (government surveillance notwithstanding), there's no real way to curtail the comments. Instead, Phil needs to adapt to the criticism.

Responding to Marcus--the Annoyed Gamer--is just a mistake, plain and simple. What did he expect to come of it? If anything, more people will now flock to Marcus, drawn by the drama of this back-and-forth (I hesitate to call it a repartee). I also hesitate to call Marcus Beer a professional troll, but, in short, he is paid to speak in absolutes and with vitriol. There's no greater success for people like Beer than for someone to respond to their nonsense. It's like the celebrities trailed by the paparazzi on shows like TMZ who respond to the cameramen and then get taunted for it by the guys in the TMZ room.

Mind you, Phil isn't being trailed by cameras on a daily basis and being forced to wear sunglasses wherever he goes. Twitter can be turned off, not only by cancelling the Push notifications but also by deleting one's account. Yes, it may signal defeat in some regards, but clearly that's what Phil needed: a chance to work on Fez II without interruption. Maybe he needed to cancel the game for his own sanity, but this was avoidable. He wasn't being trailed or prodded in real life; he responded, he engaged, and he validated. Those that apologize for his outbursts need to realize that he's the one causing this drama. There will always be haters, but the key is to ignore them.

The way he handled things was highly unprofessional and immature. I can understand him being angry at Mr. Beers comment, but a lot of public figures are scrutinized. You don't lash out at people by telling them to go kill themselves. Also, the fact that he canceled his game because of this little argument tells me he might have mental health problems. If he can't deal with this simple discussion, what will happen latter in his life? It doesn't matter what career he takes, people are always going to get on your nerves and that's when a mature individual has to communicate effectively in order to find ways of dealing with people.

While he does take a lot of heat, it has something to do by the way he's conducted himself throughout his career. No other indie game developer gets this much hate, surely it can't magically be because Phil is an artist.

Seeing how this thread was started a year ago, does this Fish person quit twitter every year?

@briangodsoe: So he's just like Yahtzee?

Nailed it, me.

@sanity: When you said your dumb things was it to the world wide web, and in a position of video game celebrity? If not I suspect your experience was not the same as his.

@milkman: yes you did nail it you

phil fish makes great points sometimes, but because he talks like the rest of the internet, saying hyperbolic things in all caps, the internet yells at him, saying hyperbolic things in all caps.

@dantefaustesq:

Fez 2 is still something we can talk about regardless of whether it exists in any tangible form or not. Games. And the quote marks you "fixed" my post with lend it a sarcastic tone that I didn't intend, you'd have been better off using apostrophes.

Yea, i suppose so, but i guess im of the mind that people make mistakes and shouldn't be harassed about it forever.

@sploder: Seeing as FEZ II doesn't exist my fixing of games to game stands. Yeah we can talk about it because it exists in our imaginations where it's the most revolutionary amazing game ever. Point is he's made one game.

Phil lost his shit once again and told a guy who admitted to a previous suicide attempt on his own show to go kill themself. He then got butthurt and rage quit the game industry via Twitter.

So a guy who was so low at one point in his life that he tried to kill himself, spends his time publicly berating people that he doesn't know and who didn't do anything to him.

Beer should know better. He's an even bigger piece of shit than I thought.

Stress happened.

So what is the difference between this thread and the one over here? Did this really need to be necro'd?

Remember Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler? I wish that was this.

I really dislike Phil fish. Enough to make a concious consumer decision and not purchase his game or play it.

You know what....I think I'm going to miss Phil. I've personally never played FEZ (it did look damn clever for what it was), but Twitter isn't going to be the same without him.

Many might call him an asshole, but he was sure as hell entertaining.

Phil Fish will be back once he has calmed down

Marcus Beer takes a break from Annoyed Gamer to avoid looking like a jackass by antagonizing everyone in the gaming industry. Goes on to act like an unprofessional jackass anyway on Invisible Walls.

Phil Fish needs a hug. The guy gets way too much hate. Where's Ryan Davis when you need him?

:(

He totally has mental health issues dude. That's one of the many reasons why this whole thing just makes me feel dirty.

@warlordpayne I agree with you. Anyone that's been through something like that and come out the other side should know better.

Scroll through the comments on the Polytron site. Fucking atrocious.

http://polytroncorporation.com/fez-ii-cancelled

I've been following him on twitter for about half a year now and not once have I read anything that came off as more than slightly abrasive. Mostly he just played up to the crowd, and was honest about his opinions. Yet every few days a barrage of vitriol was thrown in the dude's face, criticising his game, his personality, even his appearance. Regardless of if he said some mean thing off-the-cuff about the japanese game industry over a year ago, or was snarky about a game you liked, the amount of abuse that got thrown this way was pretty much bunk. It's fine to not care for Phil Fish, but if you're one of the thousands of people that seemed to loudly parade around the assessment of "I don't know him but he seems like an asshole", you have contributed to this whole shitty situation. How long do you think you could put up with massive amounts of people just assuming you're a prick, and making snap-judgments on everything about you because of it?

I'm sure Phil definitely knew that

I am not going to defend people who are use abusive language or attack someone on a daily basis but I cannot think of a single other developer who receives this much critique, hate, flack or negativity towards his person. And he only created a single game. Just as the people who post hateful comments towards him, he also should take a serious look at himself. Because blaming this all on "the internet" seems to be not completely fair in this situation.

How isn't it? He's a human being and he acts like one. He hasn't said anything that warrants this much hate at all

So because he didn't know that makes what he said ok?

So people just woke up one morning and decided to hate him? Seems a bit unlikely to me.

@nictel said:

If I remember right the internet hating him thing kind of started out slow, as it usually does with most controversial internet celebrities. Then he started responding to shitty comments with his own shitty comments, and it just spiraled out of control from there. I don't blame him for wanting it to stop, but his attempt to get it to stop involved making more shitty comments and antagonizing people, like mocking the people who said they wouldn't buy his game. Not to say he's evil or anything, he's a flawed guy just like everyone else. But he should have had the foresight to realize just what he was getting into when he started antagonizing/retaliating against his own consumer base.

Don't you love it when year-old threads you made pop up again out of no where? I don't even remember making it.

The internet hated him because he pretty much gave them reasons to hate him. The JRPG thing - which while partly accurate, was said without much tact - instead of voicing opinions, he came off as confrontational, as if he were calling them out over differing design philosophies.

Following that, he's frequently come off as snobbish, and quick to lord his success over whoever happens to be giving him flak at the time. He would pick fights on twitter, the steam forums, and anywhere else someone dared to go against him. In many cases, Fish was probably in the right, saying things that other developers or public figures would think, but just let slide.

I feel that at the end of the day, he was in the wrong, and so was Beer. So were the untold hundreds of self-important people who felt the need to fill Fish's twitter with insults over the last couple years. Beer

If we (the internet, and fans of video games) learn anything from this sort of thing, it should be to keep in mind - theres a person at the other end of the words you send into the internet - even if they're just working a PR job, manning the twitter account of some company.

Twitter is an incredibly fast form of communication, but sometimes we should probably slow down - get a handle on our emotions and think about our words before we hit Send.

He went all the way up his own ass and is now lost somewhere in there

Never heard of this Marcus Beer guy before all this, but he seems like kind of a spiteful asshole. But saying "compare your life to mine and then kill yourself" is the most arrogant, douchy thing I have read in a very long time. It was a reminder of why I unfollowed him on twitter over a year ago - he's a huge asshole.

Marcus is an Internet clown. I can't believe anyone would take him seriously.

I feel bad for the nameless people who actually worked to create Fez and Fez II. They have to deal with the juvenile temper tantrums and publicity stunts but still have crank along an actually produce something.

@fram: I dunno, I think some of those (that aren't just ascii or CHOKE ON IT spam) are actually pretty funny.

"Mankind ill needs garbage games such as this," etc, even if Fez is actually pretty cool.

Correct

There was one other dude at Polytron, called Renaud, who now works at Capy. Fez was just him and Phil. Well, Disasterpiece did the music but he's not a Polytron employee. As far as I know Polytron is currently just Phil.

You can't possibly be serious.

The guy has Andy Kaufman as his profile pic. He's messing with all of you, media included.