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Today we'll look into the chaotic rise of indie game developer Phil Fish and his game Fez.

This video is for documentary, educational, and artistic purposes.

 

[LordCBH]

Fez was such a sick sick game.

 

[Punished Miku]

Perfectly sums up the absurd and widespread anti-Japanese sentiment at the time.

 

[AJUMP23]

He made a great game and forgot to turn off social media. It drove him "crazy" so he walked away.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Fez was such a sick sick game.

And Phil Fish is a horse's ass.

 

[Sgt.Asher]

When I finally got around to playing Fez, I found it to be boring. The puzzles aren't that great and I don't give two shits about the meta puzzles. Back in the day it may have been a novelty, but now many indie games outclass it.

 

[Kacho]

I never played Fez. His persona in interviews and on Twitter soured me on it.

 

[IAmRei]

his attitude was unnecessary, he could soar above more if he is not awful back before.
his game is mid in my opinion

 

[CentralScrutinizer]

Fuck that guy. Not even worth the attention by watching that video.

 

[Zacfoldor]

lol I could never ever fucking forget Phil Fish.

Bad attitude. Reminiscent of The Professor in my mind. <3 May he find peace and love. Also I have and always will love Japanese games. Those who hate their games are not my kind of people. Edit: Hey Phil, hope everything is going well in your life bud!

 

[Mr Hyde]

His disrespectful attitude against japanese games is the only thing I remember him by. That interview he did made him look like a complete unlikeable asshole. But I guess it was the times too. The entire western media and games industry suddenly started to talk shit about japanese games and creators, huffing on their own farts like there was no tomorrow. They gave mediocre scores to cult classics like Nier and Dragons Dogma, wrote hit pieces on how sexist their games was, and called their tech dated and inferior while western tech broke new grounds everyday. Funny how things played out now with japanese game devs dominating the industry while western game devs regressed into irrelevancy. Including Phil Fish, who flamed out so hard on social media he never released another game. Wankers.

 

[adamsapple]

Fuck that guy. Not even worth the attention by watching that video.

It's not a flattering look on him, if that's what you're thinking.

 

[kpopSuperstar]

I remember him and Jonathan Blow talking shit about Japanese games, and the Invisible Walls podcast on GameTrailers bashing him so hard for it that he siezed development of Fez 2.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Still not as loony as Jonathon Blow. That dude is a total nut job.

 

[Holammer]

In every picture or video of the guy he's got the resting bitch face, like a male Greta Thunberg upset over something.
I do like Fez, but I never played it to completion.

 

[LordOcidax]

Perfectly sums up the absurd and widespread anti-Japanese sentiment at the time.

Thanks God the industry is slowly healing. The occidental influence over Japanese IPs fucked a bunch of franchises.

 

[YCoCg]

Still hilarious that he cancelled Fez II because of GamerGate and people not being nice to his best bud Zoey Quinn.

 

[yurinka]

I always found this guy very disgusting and his game really overrated

 

[Krathoon]

So, he only released one game and imploded?

I remember he said he was going to kill himself if Fez didn't sell.

What a tit.

 

[Signalis]

He's probably one of the biggest cunts to ever walk this earth.

 

[Coloress_Kafka]

Still not as loony as Jonathon Blow. That dude is a total nut job.

I'm still wondering why he revealed he had a piss jar near his desk. Like I don't see that as dedication, I just think you're a freak who hasn't evolved past teenage boy instincts.

Anyways, I've got mad respect for Phil for having the courage to call a spade a spade when it came to that era of Japanese games.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

This aged well /s

 

[Loomy]

Still not as loony as Jonathon Blow. That dude is a total nut job.

They're both nuts lol.

Jonathan Blow is like if John Carmack didn't have a personality.

 

[diffusionx]

Fez was great but this guy and Blow are needless to say pretty poor ambassadors of indie gaming. Thankfully Fish was not one for long. Wherever he is I am sure he is miserable and unhappy.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

 

[LordCBH]

And Phil Fish is a horse's ass.

You ain't wrong

 

[StueyDuck]

Id take a 1000 phil fish's being an asshole over what the fuck is happening in gaming at the moment.

We have devs literally wishing death on people... just remember that, in big AAA studios also, not small indies.

 

[Black_Stride]

Seeing Xbox 360 blades is too nostalgic.

 

[DenchDeckard]

made a sick game, seems insufferable.

 

[DarkShadowXI]

This aged well /s

What a dick! I've worked with guys like this is tech and they gave me migraines.

Never cared for the game because of this dude.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I thought Fez was a boring game in its own right, though I'll admit that it was also a case of the game just not being what I wanted it to be. The final product was way more of a highfalutin attempt at being a "sophisticated" puzzle platformer. Sorta like how Braid was a shitty platformer where you can practically see Jonathan Blow sitting there, drawing hair on the goombas because his game is classy while taking whiffs from a jar of his own farts.

Anyway, Phil was also a douche and I don't feel the slightest bit bad that people harrassed him out of working in the industry. Frankly, I wish we could do the same to Randy Pitchford.

 

[Clear]

Phil Fish was/is an insufferable twat.

The only smart move he made was fucking off before it became apparent to everyone he was a one-trick pony.

 

[saintjules]

Id take a 1000 phil fish's being an asshole over what the fuck is happening in gaming at the moment.

We have devs literally wishing death on people... just remember that, in big AAA studios also, not small indies.

 

[Sgt.Asher]

The funny thing is that at the time Japanese devs were trying to emulate the west and it wasn't working. Now they went back to doing their own thing as the western studios that made the 2000's and early 2010's imploded from terrible social practices.

 

[Krathoon]

I always find it funny how developers expect the audience to align to their vision without question.

Then they get all mad when their game does not sell.

 

[StueyDuck]

And thats worse than wishing death on people... we literally had devs say its ok a man got assassinated In cold blood in front of his family.

Phil fish is an egotistical asshole but you can simply ignore him like most big boys do, no one is gonna get hurt unlike what modern devs wish on others.

And thats minus the blatant racism and sexism we've also seen in modern developers, thinking obsidian guy, the (cancelled) black panther game dev etc

Edit: also fez was actually a great game too.

 

[Generic]

Still waiting for Fez 2.

 

[Harlock]

Fez was ahead of his time. But since then, Phil has been behind his time.

 

[HJuggernaut]

one hit wonder

 

[Killer8]

He was completely right about Japanese games at the time.

 

[Neilg]

I didn't have a problem with him being abrasive, he was crass but could be funny. People went at him hard and he responded in kind. His problem was caring too much and paying attention to it. It got under his skin and the way he responded just made it all worse.

The Internet sees a crack in a public figure, they'll pile on with an infinite amount of energy. Hard to spend 5 years working on something difficult by yourself when hundreds of people are calling for failure every day, no wonder it broke him.

 

[Topher]

He was completely right about Japanese games at the time.

I don't know how "right" he was, but he was still a dick for what he said either way. The whole panel really.

 

[March Climber]

This aged well /s

The second and third speakers were right at the time. Quite a few JP devs were tutorializing their games to an extreme degree during that gen. It's one of the many reasons that generation was looked at as the weakest generation for Japanese games on console (non-portables).

They were also right about their Zelda take of the tutorials/introductory part feeling like they're lasting up to 20 hours of 'press the A button to do ____' dialogue before you feel a slight hint of freedom. That was one of the biggest problems of both Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.

Demon's Souls/Dark Souls was a necessary moment in gaming to break out of that way of doing things.

They had the right messaging, but the Phil Fish explained it in the most crass and disrespectful way possible. That was the actual problem.

 

[Thurible]

This aged well /s

That is so rude. Also, the Japanese are kings of game design. I can't imagine what video games would be like without Nintendo, Capcom, Square, etc. If I recall correctly the industry wouldn't exist today without Nintendo filling the void after the fall of Atari.

 

[Wildebeest]

He single handedly made the indie game scene lame with his anger and entitlement.

 

[Boss Mog]

A mentally ill degenerate piece of shit. He shit on Japanese games, but his game was nothing more than a combination of ideas stolen from several Japanese games.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

He was completely right about Japanese games at the time.

If my quick Google search is right, he said that in 2012. Dark Souls had released a year prior. Guess what game keeps influencing half of the stuff that releases every year, while Fez is basically forgotten and Fish's name can't get mentioned without dozens of people calling him a cunt.

The Internet sees a crack in a public figure, they'll pile on with an infinite amount of energy. Hard to spend 5 years working on something difficult by yourself when hundreds of people are calling for failure every day, no wonder it broke him.

Oh, so basically the treatment the whole Japanese gaming industry got for the good part of a decade every time a game didn't adhere to the standards of Feminist Frequency and the whims of the woke mob? Again, guess who sailed through all of that and is still making great games, while this dude is the laughing stock of the gaming community.

 

[ghairat]

Didn't Phil Fish develop the GUI for Analogue Mega SG and Analogue Pocket?

 

[March Climber]

Also, the Japanese are kings of game design. I can't imagine what video games would be like without Nintendo, Capcom, Square, etc. If I recall correctly the industry wouldn't exist today without Nintendo filling the void after the fall of Atari.

It is okay to give companies their credit for being first time innovators, but when the HD generation hit, a lot of things were starting to move forward without them and quite a few devs needed a wake up call.

I think people here are forgetting the split personality in gaming that happened during the PS360 gen. There is a reason this image of the 2011 list only has a few JP games on it:

And the image is still missing huge games like Minecraft. This is what gamers thought of 2011. That's 10 years after this:

The JP:NA ratio flipped in just over one generation.

 

[bender]

He was completely right about Japanese games at the time.