Update: Fez Dev Tells Media Member To Kill Himself

[Azaraxzealot]

If Phil Fish wants to be rude and insult everyone on Twitter that is his choice. He really has no right to get angry when people take offense to how he acts and criticize him for acting the way he does. I was actually thinking of getting FEZ but now that I know how Phil Fish acts I have decided not to buy it. I refuse to support someone that acts like a child and can't maintain even a shred of professionalism.

Y'know, when people post pictures of the things Phil Fish said, have you noticed that in all of them it's only basically soundbites that are shown or quotes taken out of context? They never show the WHOLE conversation from start to finish, and it demonstrates a level of bias only ever seen on FOX News with anything democrat related.

Also, "professionalism"? That's an arbitrary term from a bygone age. We should move past the old standards of "professionalism" as they represent older ideals that ultimately hold back progress in any medium. I agree with what the creator of Linux said we should do about "professionalism", and maintaining such an act is just presenting a false image of yourself to others, and it is taxing on a human being to maintain it. It's something that comes from the bygone age of before the internet, we should all be allowed to act as ourselves as long as we don't tread on other people's rights to act like themselves without this facade they call "professionalism".

 

[Cybylt]

The attack was over the twitter user calling out his hypocrisy in insulting a whole region of games when he can't release one game.

Also, I believe Fish was telling other indie devs to not participate in the IGF cause they were a scam or some shit, then he enters and wins(I dunno if it was the IGF or not).

From my understanding, not only was he trying to talk others out of showing up in the first place, he also tried to vote people out of it by claiming they had publishing deals with major corporations... while signing a publishing deal with a major corporation. And that's why Judas in the Team Meat games wears a fez.

 

[Bat Vader]

If Phil Fish wants to be rude and insult everyone on Twitter that is his choice. He really has no right to get angry when people take offense to how he acts and criticize him for acting the way he does. I was actually thinking of getting FEZ but now that I know how Phil Fish acts I have decided not to buy it. I refuse to support someone that acts like a child and can't maintain even a shred of professionalism.

Y'know, when people post pictures of the things Phil Fish said, have you noticed that in all of them it's only basically soundbites that are shown or quotes taken out of context? They never show the WHOLE conversation from start to finish, and it demonstrates a level of bias only ever seen on FOX News with anything democrat related.

Also, "professionalism"? That's an arbitrary term from a bygone age. We should move past the old standards of "professionalism" as they represent older ideals that ultimately hold back progress in any medium. I agree with what the creator of Linux said we should do about "professionalism", and maintaining such an act is just presenting a false image of yourself to others, and it is taxing on a human being to maintain it. It's something that comes from the bygone age of before the internet, we should all be allowed to act as ourselves as long as we don't tread on other people's rights to act like themselves without this facade they call "professionalism".

If people don't want to act professional that is their choice to do so. If an employee at MacDonald's wants to insult a customer for no reason at all that is their choice to do so. I don't believe the employee has the right to be angry or surprised when they are reprimanded and most likely fired by management for how they acted. People can act how they want but they should at least think of the consequences first. If Phil Fish wants to be rude and insult people for buying his game for $9.00 that is his right and choice to make. It is my right and choice to not support him for the way he acts.

 

[DanDeFool]

The moral of this story is that you can never control what people say and do to you. You can only control yourself, and how you respond to them.

But I guess Fish must have played all renegade through Mass Effect 1. Oh well.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

I like how in his response he said he wasn't going anywhere and then he promptly leaves, classic.

 

[Denizen]

All those constant attacks are deserved and the reality is that they aren't even attacks, or at least weren't. He did this to himself; plain and simple. He saw constructive criticism as attacks and replied exactly with what he thought they were, so in turn he attracted those types of comments he's now fixating and complaining about.

Despite all that said, there is another side to this.

I put most of the blame on indie gaming fanatics who follow the, "All indie is good! It's all indie or nothing!" mantra. I'm not saying that loving indie games makes you an indie game fanatic, there's a clear line. There's many great indie games out there but going by absolutes and then praising people with sensitive egos like this just sets them up for self-destruction. These fanatics were looking for a new indie king to worship, saw fez and a potential new idol, bloated this guy's ego to the point where it can't be contained, and here we are.

I'm not even saying that they're wholly responsible for his actions because it's obvious he was already prone to lashing out; but, it pushed him to the point where he started making those first awful comments shortly after he was hailed as a great indie developer. They gave him a license to be infallible (in his mind) and he still thinks this way. There's just no good side to this at all but it's way past the point where he needs to learn to accept reality, responsibility for what he's done and said, and so he can finally see what he's doing.

Spoiler

also fez wasn't even that good

 

[JudgeGame]

It kind of sickens me that people actually believe that anybody "deserves" to get hundreds of angry, violent messages every day because they said something. I'm willing to forgive the people who for lack of thought decide to vent their anger on someone along with another hundred drones and leave it at that. What I'm not willing to forgive are the frankly crazy people who keep following, listening and viciously reacting to the same guy for months and years. What is wrong with you? If you don't like some guys opinions at least unfollow them on Twitter. There's a block button. Use it! If you really can't help reminding Phil Fish how much you don't like him day after day, I'm sorry, you are a total jerk with no life. Unless Phil Fish is actively making people's life worse by other means than cluttering their Twitter feed with arguments, surely the inteligent and healthy thing to do would be to ignore him.

These people are part of the shame of the game community. They are no better, in fact much worse, than Phil Fish and the fact we pretend their actions are harmless when they've forced someone to leave the industry they work in for the benefit of nobody is a disgusting example of the complacency we have towards the cancerous apathy that is killing this culture.

It's embarrassing that I have to be surrounded by people who have the emotional maturity of school children and watch as they gang up on whoever they can so they can give themselves a pat on the back. The fact that news writers (I'm not saying which) play along with this bullshit is pathetic.

The same could be said for Phil Fish too though. If the abuse from the people on Twitter was that bad he could have easily just stopped using Twitter, blocked said people that criticized him, protected his account, or had a friend or professional PR person handle it. Plus, from other examples people have posted Phil wasn't all that innocent and provoked people like when he called the people who bought FEZ for $9.00 ingrates. Insulting the people who bought his game seems like a surefire way to kill sales and make people dislike him.

That is such a ridiculous and backwards solution. The solution is no different than Phil's current solution of leaving the games industry altogether, the difference is merely cosmetic. If I don't want to be catcalled is the solution to not walk in the street?

I don't know how much of my post you even bothered reading. My problem isn't that Phil Fish isn't bad. My problem is that the thousands of people who attack him constantly are just as bad if not more considering the real harm they are causing by acting like a braindead lynchmob. I don't care how horrible Phil Fish was to you, when you join together with another thousand people just to make his life miserable, where I'm from that's called bullying and it's what you expect of dumb children.

 

[uchytjes]

Is it really that hard to practice some basic self control and human decency? Honest question here.

For some, the answer is "why should I worry about other people's opinions of myself? They don't make me, I make me." While others actually care about how other people feel about them.

Personally, I fall into the second camp. It probably stems from my realization a while back that, simply put, the human race is just a bunch of copy-cats with very little true innovation made. Hell, even those that say they are unique and different are copying those that say the same.

 

[Bat Vader]

It kind of sickens me that people actually believe that anybody "deserves" to get hundreds of angry, violent messages every day because they said something. I'm willing to forgive the people who for lack of thought decide to vent their anger on someone along with another hundred drones and leave it at that. What I'm not willing to forgive are the frankly crazy people who keep following, listening and viciously reacting to the same guy for months and years. What is wrong with you? If you don't like some guys opinions at least unfollow them on Twitter. There's a block button. Use it! If you really can't help reminding Phil Fish how much you don't like him day after day, I'm sorry, you are a total jerk with no life. Unless Phil Fish is actively making people's life worse by other means than cluttering their Twitter feed with arguments, surely the inteligent and healthy thing to do would be to ignore him.

These people are part of the shame of the game community. They are no better, in fact much worse, than Phil Fish and the fact we pretend their actions are harmless when they've forced someone to leave the industry they work in for the benefit of nobody is a disgusting example of the complacency we have towards the cancerous apathy that is killing this culture.

It's embarrassing that I have to be surrounded by people who have the emotional maturity of school children and watch as they gang up on whoever they can so they can give themselves a pat on the back. The fact that news writers (I'm not saying which) play along with this bullshit is pathetic.

The same could be said for Phil Fish too though. If the abuse from the people on Twitter was that bad he could have easily just stopped using Twitter, blocked said people that criticized him, protected his account, or had a friend or professional PR person handle it. Plus, from other examples people have posted Phil wasn't all that innocent and provoked people like when he called the people who bought FEZ for $9.00 ingrates. Insulting the people who bought his game seems like a surefire way to kill sales and make people dislike him.

That is such a ridiculous and backwards solution. The solution is no different than Phil's current solution of leaving the games industry altogether, the difference is merely cosmetic. If I don't want to be catcalled is the solution to not walk in the street?

I don't know how much of my post you even bothered reading. My problem isn't that Phil Fish isn't bad. My problem is that the thousands of people who attack him constantly are just as bad if not more considering the real harm they are causing by acting like a braindead lynchmob. I don't care how horrible Phil Fish was to you, when you join together with another thousand people just to make his life miserable, where I'm from that's called bullying and it's what you expect of dumb children.

I read your entire post. I have read all of the posts on this article actually. I have never insulted on twitter or spoken to Phil Fish. In fact,until I read this news article I never even knew who Phil Fish was. Just because other people and I may share the same opinion on the man doesn't mean I am joined with them. Yeah, abuse sucks and he had every right to get out of gaming because of it.

I just believe that he could have done things differently and still continued to make games.

 

[JudgeGame]

It kind of sickens me that people actually believe that anybody "deserves" to get hundreds of angry, violent messages every day because they said something. I'm willing to forgive the people who for lack of thought decide to vent their anger on someone along with another hundred drones and leave it at that. What I'm not willing to forgive are the frankly crazy people who keep following, listening and viciously reacting to the same guy for months and years. What is wrong with you? If you don't like some guys opinions at least unfollow them on Twitter. There's a block button. Use it! If you really can't help reminding Phil Fish how much you don't like him day after day, I'm sorry, you are a total jerk with no life. Unless Phil Fish is actively making people's life worse by other means than cluttering their Twitter feed with arguments, surely the inteligent and healthy thing to do would be to ignore him.

These people are part of the shame of the game community. They are no better, in fact much worse, than Phil Fish and the fact we pretend their actions are harmless when they've forced someone to leave the industry they work in for the benefit of nobody is a disgusting example of the complacency we have towards the cancerous apathy that is killing this culture.

It's embarrassing that I have to be surrounded by people who have the emotional maturity of school children and watch as they gang up on whoever they can so they can give themselves a pat on the back. The fact that news writers (I'm not saying which) play along with this bullshit is pathetic.

The same could be said for Phil Fish too though. If the abuse from the people on Twitter was that bad he could have easily just stopped using Twitter, blocked said people that criticized him, protected his account, or had a friend or professional PR person handle it. Plus, from other examples people have posted Phil wasn't all that innocent and provoked people like when he called the people who bought FEZ for $9.00 ingrates. Insulting the people who bought his game seems like a surefire way to kill sales and make people dislike him.

That is such a ridiculous and backwards solution. The solution is no different than Phil's current solution of leaving the games industry altogether, the difference is merely cosmetic. If I don't want to be catcalled is the solution to not walk in the street?

I don't know how much of my post you even bothered reading. My problem isn't that Phil Fish isn't bad. My problem is that the thousands of people who attack him constantly are just as bad if not more considering the real harm they are causing by acting like a braindead lynchmob. I don't care how horrible Phil Fish was to you, when you join together with another thousand people just to make his life miserable, where I'm from that's called bullying and it's what you expect of dumb children.

I read your entire post. I have read all of the posts on this article actually. I have never insulted on twitter or spoken to Phil Fish. In fact,until I read this news article I never even knew who Phil Fish was. Just because other people and I may share the same opinion on the man doesn't mean I am joined with them. Yeah, abuse sucks and he had every right to get out of gaming because of it.

I just believe that he could have done things differently and still continued to make games.

I wasn't implying that You were responsible for abuse. Just for the record. I was just using that figure of speech. I'm don't really want to be making any judgements on Phil Fish's actions I just want to point out that I think people normalizing the kind of abuse Phil Fish has been recieving for years now is fucked up.

 

[WarpZone]

Man. I would not last five minutes on Twitter.

Some people just can't handle their own P.R. Phil Fish is clearly one of these people. Sad thing is, I think I sort of get where that mentality comes from.

Start with a guy who got used to the internet back when almost nobody was on it, and everyone was more or less anonymous unless they picked a fight with a sysop. Or any random swearing 12-year-old on Xbox Live. Any online community that ISN'T constantly policed to be made nice and safe and pretty. When you're forced to operate in that type of environment, you do two things: You start ignoring the haters, and you start lashing out at the haters. It's human nature. That's WHY the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theorem is so prevalent in the first place. I'm not saying you can't not be a dick on Xbox Live, but some of us have to work a lot harder than others to resist being sucked into a shouting match with strangers.

Next, allow him to think that anyone more popular than him in the new social-media-based internet is some kinda social parasite, manipulating the stupidity of the masses to camwhore their way to success despite lacking any talent, skills, or ideas worth sharing. (This may seem like an extremely myopic viewpoint, because it is, but admit it, we all felt that way for a split second when we heard who Rebecca Black or Justin Beiber was.)

You now have a person for whom all criticism is invalid and intended to be hurtful, and for whom the ingrained response to haters is to hate them right back twice as hard. Instant flaming troll. Unlimited escalation. This works well enough when you're just a nobody surrounded by other nobodies who are all dicks anyway. But when you're a celebrity on a drama factory like Twitter or Facebook, you have infinitely more to lose than your haters. Phil Fish probably understood this intellectually, but he lost his head in the heat of the moment, and now he feels like he's trapped by one bad move.

On a bad day, this could happen to anyone. But some people are more prone to it than others.

 

[Bat Vader]

It kind of sickens me that people actually believe that anybody "deserves" to get hundreds of angry, violent messages every day because they said something. I'm willing to forgive the people who for lack of thought decide to vent their anger on someone along with another hundred drones and leave it at that. What I'm not willing to forgive are the frankly crazy people who keep following, listening and viciously reacting to the same guy for months and years. What is wrong with you? If you don't like some guys opinions at least unfollow them on Twitter. There's a block button. Use it! If you really can't help reminding Phil Fish how much you don't like him day after day, I'm sorry, you are a total jerk with no life. Unless Phil Fish is actively making people's life worse by other means than cluttering their Twitter feed with arguments, surely the inteligent and healthy thing to do would be to ignore him.

These people are part of the shame of the game community. They are no better, in fact much worse, than Phil Fish and the fact we pretend their actions are harmless when they've forced someone to leave the industry they work in for the benefit of nobody is a disgusting example of the complacency we have towards the cancerous apathy that is killing this culture.

It's embarrassing that I have to be surrounded by people who have the emotional maturity of school children and watch as they gang up on whoever they can so they can give themselves a pat on the back. The fact that news writers (I'm not saying which) play along with this bullshit is pathetic.

The same could be said for Phil Fish too though. If the abuse from the people on Twitter was that bad he could have easily just stopped using Twitter, blocked said people that criticized him, protected his account, or had a friend or professional PR person handle it. Plus, from other examples people have posted Phil wasn't all that innocent and provoked people like when he called the people who bought FEZ for $9.00 ingrates. Insulting the people who bought his game seems like a surefire way to kill sales and make people dislike him.

That is such a ridiculous and backwards solution. The solution is no different than Phil's current solution of leaving the games industry altogether, the difference is merely cosmetic. If I don't want to be catcalled is the solution to not walk in the street?

I don't know how much of my post you even bothered reading. My problem isn't that Phil Fish isn't bad. My problem is that the thousands of people who attack him constantly are just as bad if not more considering the real harm they are causing by acting like a braindead lynchmob. I don't care how horrible Phil Fish was to you, when you join together with another thousand people just to make his life miserable, where I'm from that's called bullying and it's what you expect of dumb children.

I read your entire post. I have read all of the posts on this article actually. I have never insulted on twitter or spoken to Phil Fish. In fact,until I read this news article I never even knew who Phil Fish was. Just because other people and I may share the same opinion on the man doesn't mean I am joined with them. Yeah, abuse sucks and he had every right to get out of gaming because of it.

I just believe that he could have done things differently and still continued to make games.

I wasn't implying that You were responsible for abuse. Just for the record. I was just using that figure of speech. I'm don't really want to be making any judgements on Phil Fish's actions I just want to point out that I think people normalizing the kind of abuse Phil Fish has been recieving for years now is fucked up.

I understand. I was just stating where I stood on the matter. I have read of the abuse he has received. It is just difficult for me to understand why he didn't do away with Twitter when the abuse didn't stop and instead got worse. I have always found it easy to cut ties with things. I used to enjoy playing multiplayer in Call of Duty but after all the insults I received I started muting everyone. I would still sometimes get insulting messages from people after the game and decided to stop playing the COD multiplayer. I still play multiplayer in other games like TF2, Chivalry, and other games. Just not COD anymore.

I try to put myself in other people's shoes as much as I can but sometimes when I see a conclusion that is easy for me I don't understand why others didn't take it.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Not only is he a guy who tells people to kill themselves, he's also racist and ignorant of one of the largest gaming markets today. I'm glad he's not in this industry anymore.

 

[Hazy]

-snip-
Not only is he a guy who tells people to kill themselves, he's also racist and ignorant of one of the largest gaming markets today. I'm glad he's not in this industry anymore.

It's astonishing how newcomers to the gaming industry can have a panel where they patronize other, more established game developers who are far more successful than themselves, and certainly ones that have more than a handful of games under their belts.

And let's not forget that they themselves borrow heavily from these bigger franchises to put into their games, in the vain of trying to show how unique and original they are.

 

[JoshuaMadoc]

Critics don't "ruin others", they criticize.

Since when was this a perfect world?

 

[lacktheknack]

The attack was over the twitter user calling out his hypocrisy in insulting a whole region of games when he can't release one game.

Also, I believe Fish was telling other indie devs to not participate in the IGF cause they were a scam or some shit, then he enters and wins(I dunno if it was the IGF or not).

From my understanding, not only was he trying to talk others out of showing up in the first place, he also tried to vote people out of it by claiming they had publishing deals with major corporations... while signing a publishing deal with a major corporation. And that's why Judas in the Team Meat games wears a fez.

O___O

My mind has been entirely blown.

Man, Edmund McMillan can be subtly vicious.

 

[Lightknight]

Eh, he was already showing signs of extreme stress and aversion to the kind of media interaction he was getting. The media poking him with a stick repeatedly was bound to create this kind of outlash at some point. Some kinds of reporters are just leeches. Some kinds are a true benefit to society in a number of ways. While I think telling someone to go kill themselves is distasteful, I at least understand Fish's frustration as a creator of things being insulted by one who was just tearing things down for personal gain.

Then again, I have no reference of Beer's work. I don't know what reporter he is beyond this circumstance. No do I really care enough to research what exactly was said here besides "blowfish".

Either way, Fish has some personal issues he needs to work out. He definitely places himself on a pedestal and such people deserve to be knocked down as callous as that may sound. But they should only be knocked down in the most honest ways possible.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Indeed. Especially in Fish's case, who gets abuse more or less constantly. Doesn't matter who you are, deal with that for a year or two straight and it wears you down. At this point his patience for insults is pretty much gone, so yeah. Totally understandable to see him react this way.

It's totally understandable but not totally undeserved. He's arrogant and rude to both his fans and his critics and expects the royal treatment for making a platformer with a gimmick, the indie equivalent to the multiplayer FPS.

 

[Reeve]

Personally, I admire Mr Phil Fish. He's inspirational, if you ask me.

 

[hutchy27]

He sounds like a horrible guy. Never heard of him before, I heard of Fez but never took my interest.