I'm on Fish's side here, even if he is a bit of a girl.

Fez, a great indie game, gets its release fucked up by Microsoft.
It does really well, because its really good.
Fish releases a small patch to fix something.
The patch makes it worse.
Fish tries to patch it.
Microsoft want silly money to allow him to do so.
Fuck that.
Fish starts making Fez 2.
TAG calls Fish a whole bunch of names, despite doing nothing as challenging as make a game.
Fish cancels Fez 2, because "fuck TAG, thats why".

>be a huge shitbag
>be upset when people call you a huge shitbag
I didn't watch TSG's video, so maybe I disagree with why he was insulting Fish, but fact remains, dude's a fucking prick. He should be insulted.

Just from reading the article, Fish is only reinforcing his image as a whining dick. For fuck's sake, he told the guy that called him on his shit to kill himself. How the hell is that remotely justifiable?

EDIT: I've watched the video in question. The critique is harsh and bluntly worded, but it's not shit-talking for its own sake, it's an admonishment to grow up and learn some fucking social skills, things that BlowFish desperately need. Coming back at the guy by telling him to kill himself, then locking down his Twitter to protected status after the fact is a prime example of that fact, and it would be the best one had Fish not canceled a whole damn game (one that would have netted him a lot of cash and attention) over one guy's three minute monologue. As big of a shit-talker as Fish is, you'd think he'd have developed a little thicker skin to deal with these things like an adult.

Dude was right to be pissed off at this "I-dont-know-what-my-accent-is" Beer guy, he was a massive Cnut and unprofessional.

But that's what you get when you're in the spotlight, people being nobs. And Fish is kind of an ass, not saying Beer's rant was warranted though...

You forgot "Fish bashes a while region of games just to feed trolls" then tells people who says he's wrong to "suck his dick".

And yeah, telling someone to kill themselves=/=not cool.

Fish has clear mental/emotional problems, he's clearly prone to outbursts and people know this and capitalise on it because it creates a story that will just keep giving and all they have to do to milk the cow is bait this one nerdy guy. Fish is clearly out of his depth (LOLZ) in terms of his place in the media spotlight as the face of Fez (which from what I've heard is an absolutely phenomenal game), he should be behind a PR wall, but alas that's indie games for you.

I don't really know Fish and I'm sure as hell not long to brand him a minnie-moo-foo-foo cause he called Japanese games stupid (they are, quite often, tbh) but to me, he's lashing out like a kid who's been bullied, yeah, sure it's childish, but the way people bait him is nothing short of disgusting, exploitative, bullying that seems to have driven this guy to the brink of a full on break down.

BASICALLY, PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE IN THIS SITUATION HAS ACTED LIKE AN ASSHOLE HERE, but one guy as a response to some pretty appalling exploitation. He clearly loves what he does and the amount of time he put into Fez was colossal, and to have people treat you like shit after all that is probably enough to fuck with you.

Depends, not every one is bad. But dismissing every game from one region is pretty stupid. Telling people to suck your dick after being told you are wrong is going full retard.

Also, while it's sad Fish reacted this way, Beer is right. He called out "blowfish" for only putting their 2 cents in on indie issues when it gives them their 15 minutes. Those two act like they're the presidents of indie devs. And it gives other indie devs a bad name as it makes indie devs look like pretentious hipster assholes.

I couldn't sleep last night so I spent a fair amount of time reading about Fish and the things he's said, and there's some really good discussion on /r/games about it and so now I feel a bit more qualified to address some of the stuff Fish has said in the past. I mean, it should be pretty obvious that Fish doesn't think every Japanese game is shit, he's stated that his two favourite games are Rez and Katamari Damacy, and you don't need to look at Fez for more than 30 seconds to realise that he clearly holds games like Super Mario Bros in high regard.

He's also directly addressed that 'quote' and said that much of the media coverage of it " doesnt mention is the 10 minute bit immediately following the comment when me and jon blow expanded on our feelings about the current state of japanese game design." He goes onto say: "nobody ever mentions that. it's only ever the "they suck" bit, which admittedly, was the wrong this to say. and i realized that immediately, which is why i apologized on the spot. but again, you never hear about that part either. i blurted out something dumb, and then clarified what i meant in a much more thoughtful manner, but that wasn't reported on. so now im forever that "japanese games sucks" guy. so there you go, im a big racist! whoopdee fucking doo!" (Source)

I know a bit more about Blow than I do Fish (blowfish lolz) but I don't think either of them act like the presidents of indie devs, they act like creative types often do, like pretentious douchers who's conviction that what they can achieve is/will be better than the majority of stuff out there is what drives them to make outstanding games like Braid and Fez. I'm not saying every indie dev is like this, as that would miss the whole point of what an independent developer is... which is independent, but you'll find people like Fish and Blow in every creative medium, but from my view, Fish's confidence in his ability as a creative person is coupled with insecurities, and I think it's this paradox that throws up these confused, angry outbursts where he comes off like an asshole, when really he's just a victim of a vicious, exploitative media spotlight which is only exacerbated by the power that social networks and internet anonymity bestows upon the people who get off on calling his game shit.

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I'm sorry, but victims don't tell their antagonists to go and kill themselves. Fish isn't a victim here, or at least he's not the hapless puppet your making him out to be. I'll agree with you in that Fish has obvious mental and emotional problems, but the overriding factor there is that he doesn't understand the purpose of criticism or how to handle it, and anyone that presumes to criticize him should be met with the verbal equivalent of a kick in the balls so they'll stop criticizing him.

While I do think that cancelling a game because of one dickhead is a pretty dickish move in itself, the most outstanding and damning part of what Joe said was his closing words:



That right there is the problem, much as the COD gamers who inadvertently ruin every other FPS by making the devs go "if our game isn't like COD it won't sell", or those guys who bitched and moaned about Mirrors Edge being underwhelming, and then bitching and moaning when they get told there's no sequel, and then rejoiced to the heavens when they hear they're making a sequel, but will only fucking pirate it anyways because "LOL PAYING 4 GAEMS".

Its pretentious, self-idolising asstards who think that just because they have over 30 subscribers on Youtube that they're the Voice Of The Gaming World, and parade around the place spouting bullshit about developers and publishers like they're the greatest authority on things, when in actual fact all they've done is read the comments section of Kotaku and bam, fucking PHD in X-Developer Is A Fucking Douche.

So while Fish might indeed be a bit emotionally stunted, and he might have pulled a dickish move in cancelling Fez 2, I think its about time a developer actually stood up to those ignorant dicks who spout abuse at them for misprinted half-comments published on blogs and said "You want to be a prick? Fine. Because of you, all those people who actually liked Fez and who take the time to seek out the truth and understand what I really said and who wanted a sequel to this commercially successful indie game will now have to do without a sequel. I might not make money from it, but at least the world now knows who to blame for their loss."

Dickish, definitely. But its also long fucking overdue.

What did Beer say that was ignorant, abusive, or anything that was completely untrue that merited denying fans of the first game a sequel? "Self-styled kings of the indie genre"? Well, they did presume to make a movie and cast themselves as the central figures in it. Strikes me as a little egotistical, considering that they're no where near being the first or the biggest names on the scene. Accusing them of only dealing with the press if it costs them nothing and gains them shittons? Have you seen anything where that's not true?

We're forgetting about Fish's partner, too. Because Fish didn't want to deal with one man's criticism, Shawn McGrath won't be seeing any money from his game because Fish wanted to throw his toys out of his crib and pitch a fit. That's fucking childish, and no amount of criticism, no matter who it comes from, can justify screwing over a partner like that.

>implying Fish and/or Blow made that movie

Yeah, I'm done here.

If you think Fish has cancelled Fez 2 because of what Marcus Beer said (all of these guys have ace surnames) then you're failing to see the bigger picture. What he said was the straw the broke the camel's (or Fish's?!?) back, and subsequently got a disproportionate reaction from Fish that was completely out of line and undeniably a scumbag thing to do. I didn't really have an opinion on Fish before this all went down, so maybe my perspective on this thing is different to everyone else, but from where I'm standing Fish has been subject to A LOT of negative media coverage as well as a prevailing attitude amongst gamers that's clearly on display here:

Now I'm not saying that Terra is the problem here, and to be honest I can't help but feel that the statement I've quote there is something I wouldn't expect him to say, but the fact of the matter is that there are people out there with a similar attitude who think that because he comes off as a bit of an asshole sometimes that they have a right to insult him and they do so on Twitter, and there's hundreds, if not thousands of keyboard warriors who wouldn't fucking DARE say anything of the sort to their face (to be clear I'm not saying Terra is this type of person, but I think that there are people who hold similar beliefs who are willing to be like this. In the same way there's probably some degree of overlap between people that practice a religion and religious extremists), and Fish appears to be the same in some respects. However, I'm of the opinion that you treat people the way you expect people to treat you, so if people are willing to say "HE'S A DICK SO I GET TO BE A DICK TO HIM" and insult him and tell him that his passion project that he spent 5 very, very long years slaving over (risking lawsuits and having to start development from scratch three whole times) is shit, that he should eat shit, and I'm not 100% on this but I think someone started a rumour he physically threatened or beat up one of his exes, but don't quote me on that, but it's pretty clear there's an internet vendetta against the guy that extends from gamers to the press. Obviously Fish shouldn't have responded the way he has/does/will do (if he comes back) but it's quite clear to me, at least, that this is his biggest outburst yet, as I don't really remember anything else he's said causing THIS much trouble.


Uhhh, I don't think that's how Indie Game: The Movie, went down. I'm fairly sure Phil Fish wasn't involved in the Kickstarter that initially funded the film, he's one of the subjects of the documentary. Here's a link to the original kickstarter and unless I'm missing something, I don't see any mention of Blow/Fish being involved in the production side of things, heck, they aren't even mentioned as cast members (although filming locations are mentioned so I guess they'd already sounded out people) but, I'm happy to be proved wrong if you can show me evidence of Blow/Fish being involved in the conception, execution and casting of the film.

Also, with the McGrath thing, as far as I'm aware, McGrath wanted to make a game that's core mechanic was the dimension switching that Fez utilises on top of the platforming mechanics (which I would describe as its core mechanics) the two disagreed on how they should go forward and went their separate ways. I'm not 100% of this, as I've only read what I've read, and I'm more than happy to read evidence to the contrary as it'll do nothing but expand my knowledge on the subject.


Ultimately, I don't think Phil Fish is a 'hapless puppet', I think he's a creative type who's prone to pretentious-ness who also has problems filtering things, be it insults or 'criticism' or whatever you want to call it, and it's this problem that has played a role in escalating things to the point they are. HOWEVER, I think that this problem is something that has only been allowed to flourish and develop due to the problems with gamers/the press that I've listed before. This is a case of one disgusting thing bringing out a really fucking shitty side of a person, which then in turn feeds the disgusting thing, which in turn then... you get the idea, yadda yadda.