Bleszinski Appeals To Phil Fish: Get Back In The Game

Karloff

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Bleszinski Appeals To Phil Fish: Get Back In The Game



Beat the haters by outperforming, not by quitting, says Bleszinski.

"Never forget that the internet can be a fantastic thing," says Cliff Bleszinski in an open letter to Phil Fish, "but it can also be fantastically dumb." Bleszinski's hoping against hope that Fish can be persuaded to return to gaming, after Fish's flame-out a couple days back [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/126385-Update-Fez-Dev-Tells-Media-Member-To-Kill-Himself]. "I'm getting out of games because I choose not to put up with this abuse anymore," Fish said at the time. Bleszinski knows how Fish feels; he's had 20 years worth of the same kind of abuse thrown at him, but the only way to win, says Bleszinski, is to throw all that hate into your work. Then you "unleash one big giant motherfucking HADOKEN upon the community that wins awards and sells millions," leaving the haters to fester while you reap the rewards.

"You don't owe a damned thing to any gaming journalist," Bleszinski says. Journalists are just after hits, and they don't care how they get them. Journalists make sure that the audience only sees what journalists want it to see, "through their often very skewed lens." The argument that sparked this all off was between Fish and GameTrailers presenter Marcus Beer, which ended with Fish Tweeting a wish that Beer kill himself. There are too many 'Rush Limbaughs' out there, according to Bleszinski, but Fish doesn't owe them anything; Fish owes his community a great product, nothing less. "The industry needs people like you to speak with their hearts before their brains," says Bleszinski, "because I'm tired of hearing the PR approved appropriate response. I'm tired of games that feel like they've been developed by focus groups or clueless executives."

"Right before the Beer-Twitter explosion," says Bleszinski, "I saw that you acquired your Oculus Rift and your tweets about it were extremely exciting." To lose the kind of VR game that Fish might have made is intolerable; Bleszinski would put his own money into that product, if he could. "Come back, Phil," he asks. "We miss you already."

Source: Clifford Unchained [http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/post/56805389679/dynamite-fishing-an-open-letter-to-phil-fish]


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hazabaza1

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Nov 26, 2008
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Just want to add to this situation that a Polytron employee (possibly Blowfish, possibly not) may have acted as an enraged Fez 2 fan on 4chan. [http://i.imgur.com/4COiuwF.png]

Fun times.
 

Andy Shandy

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Jun 7, 2010
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Given some of the kind of shite he's come away with before, I never thought I'd say this but I agree pretty much everything that Cliffy B has written here.

I'd take an game developer with the attitude of Fish making good games over a games journalist with the attitude of Marcus Beer - which are dime a dozen at this point anyway
 

lancar

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Haters gonna hate. It's a fact of life, and is especially true on the internet. Knee jerk reactions are rarely the way to go for both sides, it's just that when normal internet denizens do it, they're "anonymous" (ie, one of the faceless masses) and don't have to face a public outcry over it. Public figures do. As for journalists, they thrive of all controversy, and the more aggressive ones probably couldn't care less about hate directed towards them.

I wholly understand Phil's original outburst, even if I can't condone it, but keeping on doing your thing is the better solution just like Cliff says.
 

SonicWaffle

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"You don't owe games journalists anything, especially not gratitude for all the buzz that turned Fez and therefore you into a big deal!"

I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like game journalism is a two-way street. Cliffy may dismiss it as just journalists trying to get hits, but what's he doing if not trying to sell games? He even says that the best way to stop "haters" is to win awards and sell copies. The two groups need each other to thrive, so it seems kinda childish to tell 'em all to fuck off.
 

Roander

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Karloff said:
Bleszinski Appeals To Phil Fish: Get Back In The Game


Beat the haters by outperforming, not by quitting, says Bleszinski.



The argument that sparked this all off was between Fish and GameTrailers presenter Marcus Beer, which ended with Fish Tweeting a wish that Beer kill himself quote from Futurama.



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Seems silly now, doesn't it.
 

roushutsu

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I mentioned it in the initial news thread, but I do think Phil taking some time out for himself would probably do him wonders. All that stress can't be healthy for him, if he hasn't suffered a complete mental breakdown already. If he truly wants to continue work on Fez II, then maybe put it on hiatus or something, no need to outright cancel it like that.
 

Alfredo Jones

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Wait, did Cliff Bleszinski just say something the I agree with? Pardon me while I check to see if the sky is falling and the seas are running red with blood.

Joking aside Cliff is right about not letting abuse on the internet get you down. It's like the old saying "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me". The haters can spew as many curses, slurs, and death threats at you that they want, but unless one of them actually makes an attempt at killing you it's all just pointless words.
 

shadowmagus

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Cliff, if we could drive you and your backwards opinions off of the internet and gaming in general, we would. Otherwise, we take solace that we could drive off "people" like Phil.
 

Eve Charm

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I'm sure Cliffy B sees a lot of himself in fish as far as the same personally. But B has a ton more ground to stand on when dishing back at criticism. But he did really say the best thing for fish. If fish comes back he should stay out of the spotlight, leaving twitter and not commenting on things would really be the best thing for him.

When the creator's outspokenness has done nothing but rightfully made people not purchase fez, it's better off that they don't speak anymore, That's why PR was invented.
 

Baresark

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Phil Fish is a twat. Blescinski is a useless douche. That said, just because some stupid fuck game media talking head said something bad about you, you shouldn't quit. No matter how big of a twat or useless douche the developer is, no worthless ass pundit should prevent you from doing the things you want to do. Fez was cool. I would play Fez 2. I just don't want to hear Phil Fish's or Cliff Bleszinski's opinion about any of gaming. And that is why Blow and Fish have a bad reputations, because they chose to be huge assholes in the public light. People disliking them should be inconsequential. Especially when a good portion of how people feel about them is there own fault.
 

thebakedpotato

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Jun 18, 2012
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I have said it before. I will say it again. Everything about this, from almost every angle, shows how much the whole video game community needs to grow up...

And that twitter's the fucking devil.
 

josemlopes

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Jun 9, 2008
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T-Shirt Turtle said:
Wait, did Cliff Bleszinski just say something the I agree with? Pardon me while I check to see if the sky is falling and the seas are running red with blood.

Joking aside Cliff is right about not letting abuse on the internet get you down. It's like the old saying "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me". The haters can spew as many curses, slurs, and death threats at you that they want, but unless one of them actually makes an attempt at killing you it's all just pointless words.
The guy actually had a panel in GDC about 2 years ago where he talked a lot about this sort of things, and you know he gets a lot of flack for most of the things he says.

And to the people that say that the twit was a Futurama reference, unless Fish actually clarified that I somewhat doubt it considering other things that he already said.
 

Fasckira

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Oct 22, 2009
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I get the feeling Fish is hoping people will start sticking up for him, doing the whole "Oh please dont go Fish!" etc. The fact that so far the overwhelming vibe has been "If you're going to be a little ***** then good riddance" is probably not doing much for his ego right now.
 

Steven Bogos

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Jan 17, 2013
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thebakedpotato said:
I have said it before. I will say it again. Everything about this, from almost every angle, shows how much the whole video game community needs to grow up...

And that twitter's the fucking devil.
Twitter isn't the devil, it's people with no attention spans that can't keep their opinions to themselves that are the devil.

Before I post anything on twitter, I ask myself two questions:

1.) Would I be OK with my boss seeing this?

2.) Would I be OK with my grandma seeing this?

I feel this two step process should be mandatory for everyone who wishes to use the service. Fish isn't the first guy to be ruined by stupid twitter comments and he probably won't be the last.
 

Quiotu

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This is all well and good if your games are good and sell to your audience. Like we've seen with Gearbox and Colonial Marines, you pull this entitled shit when your game is terrible, and you will get no sympathy.

Phil's on shakey ground now. If you come back after this, keep having tantrums, and your next game turns out to be sub-par or bad... you won't ever get the same leeway as before.

Respect is earned, Fish. You made ONE game... a good game, but only one. You don't get Hideo Kojima respect, or even Edmund McMillen respect until you show you can do it again.