Phil Fish: The Indie Game Dev Who Lost His Mind

I saw Phil I fish and I I thought Phil Spencer had a new nickname.
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I don't know how "right" he was, but he was still a dick for what he said either way. The whole panel really.

Mean spirited? Absolutely.

Correct? Makoto Goto, the man he was answering, said as much:


Mega Man creator and legendary Capcom producer Keiji Inafune (who himself crashed out with Mighty No. 9) was so disillusioned with the state of the Japanese industry in 2009 that he said after a TGS show:


He later praised Fish's comments as honest.

Kojima also warned at the time, in more constructive terms, that Japanese developers lacked global outlook and technological skills. No shit when so many ignored HD development for handhelds, phones and the Wii.


It was a dire time for Japan. This was the gen of Final Fantasy XIII ("HD towns are hard") and Resident Evil 6, some of the worst AAA disasters of all time. I think either people were just too young to remember all this, or are viewing the era with extreme revisionism just because Japan had a huge comeback in the eight gen.

"But Japan are experts in game design!" - yeah, and in the time when Phil Fish made his comments those experts were balls deep making fucking gacha for iPhone and outsourcing their development to Canadians.
 
Ah yes, a con man who overpromised and underdelivered big time, and another man who's games have all been wannabe American movies are just the perfect people to judge the state of Japanese game making, in just any time period ever.
 
or are viewing the era with extreme revisionism just because Japan had a huge comeback in the eight gen.
This is what it probably is, mixed with forgetfulness. We are about to enter a new gen in a few years and the nostalgia goggles have already been fully activated for the 2006-2013 generation.

That gen had a lot of great stuff, but it had a lot of BS and snake oil too.

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Him being a complete dick to the Japanese dev asking a question only to end up leaving the industry in tears because people said mean things about him on podcasts and social media will never stop being funny.

Don't dish it out if you can't take it.
 
Bro I am a huge Japanese games nut but he was right at the time, 2007-2013 was a rough era for Japanese games. There were a few hits but this was during the time all the Japanese publishers were shitting the bed. Final Fantasy sucked, Resident Evil sucked, even Zelda sucked at that point.
 
Ah yes, a con man who overpromised and underdelivered big time, and another man who's games have all been wannabe American movies are just the perfect people to judge the state of Japanese game making, in just any time period ever.

Perhaps if the two Japanese studios who made the game for him hadn't spent the majority of that generation making handslop (many such cases), the result could've been better:

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He made an incredible game. At the perfect time to make that exact type of game. It's just a shame he never got to make more but at the end of the day - that one game is still a much more impressive legacy than lots of game developers who work their entire life in the industry. So respect to that.
 
Hope this video covers the one particular Phil Fish shitfit where he went on 4chan to try and sockpuppet as someone mad at the announcement of Fez II being cancelled...only to get exposed in the very same thread because he couldn't bother to even try covering his tracks.

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Even with Fez being revered (haven't played it, I've got no opinion on it), Phil Fish earned his shitty reputation as one of the progenitors of the "Obnoxious narcissist who can't log the fuck off from social media and keeps melting down" situation that you've seen so often in entertainment in the years after.
 
I'll never forget that one section of the Indie Game- The Movie, where Phil Fish is swimming in a pool by himself to build this lame dramatic tension. The interview asks "What happens if you can't finish the game?", and Phil responds: "I will kill myself".

The most cringe millennial bullshit I've ever watched, felt like my eyes were gonna roll up and bounce inside my skull. Fez was neat, but Phil Fish is such a hack douche of a human being.
 
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I loved Fez. I think it was mostly the soundtrack that got me, but I also loved the cozy pixel art style which wasn't completely done to death at the time for Indies.
 
FEZ is great but almost too complicated for me, if you want to solve all of the puzzles. I got caught up in some of them but it was tough.

I think I read that he ended on bad terms with Microsoft and didnt want to publish on Xbox anymore? FEZ is one of the few great games that still is not backward compatible which is odd. There is a PC version still available on the store. But no Xbox BC.

 
The guy was totally right about Japanese games though. Most of Kojima's games suck ass and the only Souls-like game worth playing is the original Dark Souls.

in my opinion :)
 
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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:

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

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The JP:NA ratio flipped in just over one generation.
People really seem to forget this. The Japanese devs were not prepared for the HD transition at all.
 
Guy's an insufferable prick.

He was right about Japanese games at the time of the statement, weebs got butt hurt because they took it too seriously, but Japanese devs weren't firing on all cylinders for a while there.

Fez is outstanding.

He talks way too much shit considering he only released one game, regardless of how good it is.

He probably could make a great game again if he could pull his head out of his taint long enough to stop wiffin his own scent and get to work, but it seems he's content to be a one trick pony.

All of these things can be, and are, true.
 
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