Sunday, July 28, 2013

Thoughts on Fez II Cancellation



So, Fez II is cancelled.

This fueled the fires of many Phil Fish haters as is evident by scrolling through some of the comments of the post that announced his departure of the game and, seemingly, from the gaming world. He writes on that post:


"FEZ II is cancelled.
i am done.
i take the money and i run.
this is as much as i can stomach.
this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign.

you win."

Like I mentioned before, this prompted many people to say how weak he is, how much of a jerk he was, how they never liked his game, etc. 

All of this prompted me to think about something: Fez is one of the most beautiful, well-designed, and most fun games I have ever played. And, come to think of it, almost all of the games that I gave that distinction to are indie games (e.g. Minecraft, To the Moon, etc.) and they are made by small groups or individuals. This is one of the main reasons they usually are so much more impactful and more rich than titles that the bigger gaming companies churn out. When more people work on a project, less and less individuality makes its way into the final product which, may not always be a bad thing, but in the case of games, it is usually a very nice thing. With all of the almost monotonous, big-budget titles being released today, most indie games are a breath of fresh air. They are more unique and beautifully complex than their bigger counterparts.

Yes, I have heard that Phil Fish has not been the nicest to people and have heard he can seem at times pretentious. But, with indie games, people have to realize that, when playing an indie game, they are dealing directly with the thoughts and the personality of a person; people are not perfect and those who follow a game developer should deal with that fact of life. Phil is not just "the maker of Fez", he is a person and with the pages and pages of pure hatred about him, I think people are starting to forget that.

After scrolling through the comments on his farewell post and judging from Indie Game: The Movie, it seems though as Phil has gotten a ton of hate, more than any other game developer I have heard of. Although Phil Fish haters probably acquired more proof for their argument after this they're probably the reason Phil left in the first place. Although I'm sure many people praised his game (including myself), maybe he found the hate outweighed the praise (and maybe it actually did) and the internet was too big for him to handle; the great land of opportunity that we call the internet has many dark corners and Phil might have been caught in a couple.

I hope that Phil only takes a break and returns to make Fez II or another game of his creation. But no matter where he goes, judging by his work so far, he will do wonderful and beautiful things.

 - Aidan

Edit: There is some really good Reddit discussion going on about this topic.

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