Insert Fish Pun Here

As you may or may not have heard, Phil Fish has cancelled Fez II, and is giving up on making games. He says that this decision comes at the end of “a long, bloody campaign”, and it has been confirmed that he is totally serious. People have made a really big deal about this on both sides of the camp, with some people really upset that Fez isn't getting a sequel, and others glad that Phil Fish won’t be making any more money.

If you've seen Indie Game: The Movie, you probably know that Phil Fish is a bit of a weirdo. He reminds me of a game developer version of Edgar Allen Poe, kind of sad, misunderstood and a bit of a dick. Fez turned out to be a fantastic game, but only after years of development and multiple revisions. Regardless, I have a lot of respect for Phil Fish as a developer, the conditions and situations he had to face while developing Fez we’re terrible but despite that he managed to make a great game. If he wasn't so abrasive toward his fans and didn't respond to criticism with such hostility he could have become a well-known and beloved game designer.

Honestly, this isn't really news. Game companies form and collapse all the time, and Indie companies aren't any different. The only real difference is that this decision was made by one person while he was overly emotionally invested. Was it a sensible move to make? No, but it is his decision. If he really believes that random people on the internet have been working in tandem to offend him and get him to stop making games, then there’s nothing else to say. As anyone who does any job in the public eye knows, you need to be thick-skinned about most of the things people say. You’ll drive yourself insane if you try to rationalize and internalize everything anyone says about you.

In reality though, Phil Fish is just a guy who either never really cared about making games in the first place, either that or someone who takes internet insults really really badly. I wonder what he’s going to do now that he’s out of the game business. It’ll be interesting to see if he takes up another “public creativity” career like writing, and if he does how badly he reacts to being called a hack all over again.