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Phil Fish and the Internet’s war against creatives

130 points by cobrausn 13y ago

asdasf 13y ago
Phil wasn't just "swimming in a sea of shit", he was shitting in the sea of shit and splashing it at other swimmers. He is not some innocent victim, he has consistently been an abusive asshole. The fact that people responded in kind isn't wonderful, but it also isn't shocking.
- pmarsh 13y ago
  I find it interesting that his twitter icon is Andy Kaufman. An artistic troll if there ever was one.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
null_ptr 13y ago
That's what we get for breeding a society of consumers. If you don't have a meaningful way to express yourself productively, you pour all that tension into the wrong things. You become a buly, a stalker, a heckler, you name it. You get worked up about your experiences with other people's creative output, instead of channeling all that energy into your own endeavours. I think the world would be much better off if we encouraged everyone of all ages to develop creative hobbies, instead of spending all their leisure time passively consuming the work of others. Then they would all gain a better perspective on the whole creative process and feel more accomplished all around - and happier for it!
- pubby 13y ago
  There are tons of creative people who have an issue with Fish. It's slightly frustrating to see someone with mediocre talent become hugely popular, but it can be infuriating when they make comments like, "i just won the grand prize at IGF tonight. suck my dick. choke on it." He's given "indie" game developers a bad name.
  - GVIrish 13y ago
    Exactly. I do think a lot of people in the game industry get abuse they don't deserve, but Phil earned a lot more abuse than average with his personality.
- tks2103 13y ago
  I'm not sure that the responsibility lies with people or society at large. Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to attempt creative works? Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself? I believe that individuals making death threats or rape threats on the internet are generally making individual choices with full knowledge of the repercussions. I do not believe they have any reasonable excuse justifying their actions. The responsibility for understanding and identifying how deeply they can damage another human is solely theirs.
  - null_ptr 13y ago
    "Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to attempt creative works?" They do, but they're overwhelmed by the vast amount of empty content ready for consumption. It's so damn easy to chill out clicking this and that, and fall in a rut where that's all you do in the leisure time you spend at your desk. We should try to find a way to actively encourage people to pick up a creative hobby (or more than one!) as a form of therapy, even. "Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself?" I think outbursts like that come from immature, intellectually under-developed people who would grow immensely from pursuing a creative hobby.
    - superbaconman 13y ago
      The tools to create and the networks to share already exist but the trouble is getting people to enjoy creation. Fix this and you might create tomorrow's economy.
    - tks2103 13y ago
      My greater point was that I don't think "we should actively encourage people to pick up a creative hobby" in response to those people making death threats. There are already people who are choosing to pick up creative hobbies. Those people make games. People that make games get crucified by gamers who do not like their decisions. Those gamers make death threats. The people who make death threats can easily enough make something creative. Certainly there is no larger barrier for them when compared to someone like Phil Fish. I do not think we need to make it easier to expect better behavior from someone who is making a death threat. We need to prioritize the people who made the extra effort to actually get up and make something over the people who chose to directly threaten the lives of the creator.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  I think that's a part of it but it's not the whole story. It's not just a society of consumers, it's a society of ... well, children really, although that might be too insulting. "Dependents" might be better. A society of people who are increasingly urbanized, increasingly educated, increasingly always online. And some of that is good but it has come along with and enabled a culture of dependence. People expect that society at large and the state specifically is going to be there to help them out. Help them get their car back on the road, defend them from the bad guys, keep a roof over their heads, keep their bellies full, and so on. This is the "brave new world" route. A population that's blissed out and utterly incapable of self-reliance. Add to that a somewhat related phenomenon which I'll just call "fuck the rich". The idea being that those who are wealthy/famous/successful somehow "have more" than their "fair share" and therefore are less deserving of social niceties and are a valid target for abuse. The justification being that "they're rich" (or famous or whatever) and "can take it" or "deserve it". It's surprising how quickly this view has become lodges in the zeitgeist. Here's a revealing little test: if you could press a magic button which would randomly pick someone who made more than $200k/yr in the US and, via a robot or magic or whatever, punch them HARD in the face but at the same time pick someone randomly in the US who made less than $15k/yr and give them $1k in cash would you press the button? How many times? How many people would press the button? How much? Would they feel bad about it? Add to that the general vitriol that stews in some parts of the internet due to anonymity and a variety of other factors and you get the conditions that this story talks about. It's pretty disgusting, and it's probably not going to just magically go away just by hoping it does. So what are we going to do about it?
  - null_ptr 13y ago
    "So what are we going to do about it?" Be kind and empathic to those around you, and call out those around you who are not. Try to use technology to further liberate people's minds from the drudgery of everyday life and give them that time back, for them to invest in actively bettering themselves. Long term, institute a living wage such that everyone is freed from the worries of everyday survival and develops a kinder, less stressed mindset. A lot of the hostility we see on and off line would go away.
    - 13y ago
- lmm 13y ago
  >That's what we get for breeding a society of consumers. If you don't have a meaningful way to express yourself productively, you pour all that tension into the wrong things. You become a buly, a stalker, a heckler, you name it. You get worked up about your experiences with other people's creative output, instead of channeling all that energy into your own endeavours. Citation needed, because the correlation goes in the opposite direction - to me it looks like as more people take up creative endeavours, the hate they face grows ever faster.
Silhouette 13y ago
I expected this to be a piece about on-line piracy. In reality, it is about something that can be much worse. It's profoundly disturbing that so many people have such a lack of perspective that they can seriously threaten violence against someone and their family just because that person did their job and tweaked some game mechanics. Sure, most of the abusive people are probably kids, but that's no excuse. What kind of kid is old enough to be allowed unsupervised access to the Internet and yet so out of control that they can think this kind of behaviour is acceptable? Some of the things described in this piece are surely criminal, but somehow I get the feeling that sending the cops round would just be a badge of honour to people who've gone that far off the rails already. I'm not sure how you fix this without change on a society-wide scale, and I'm not sure how you could even start to effect that change if you're in the the kind of position described in the article.
- sp332 13y ago
  Phil Fish also told one of the YouTube personalities to go kill himself. I think he's part of the problem.
  - kevingadd 13y ago
    I don't think it really makes much sense to say that a victim is 'part of the problem' when they respond to thousands of slurs, threats, and near-constant abuse by telling the abuser to go kill themselves. It's not as if they don't actually wish the abuser were dead... Yes, Phil Fish is part of the problem by existing. He's solved this by leaving the industry entirely. That's a helpful way of looking at it, isn't it?
    - cube13 13y ago
      I don't see how either party is excused here. Phil Fish constantly posted caustic, abusive remarks to everyone on his twitter feed. His public persona was one of a complete and utter asshole. Nothing excuses that behavior. While the internet's response to it is contemptible, I have absolutely no sympathy for Fish. He dished it out constantly, the fact that people replied in kind is expected. On the other hand, I have a ton of sympathy for the Treyarch dev. He didn't deserve or invite any of the remarks aimed at him, and he didn't do anything to get that level of response.
HCIdivision17 13y ago
It strikes a note of insanity: someone makes something, and another tries to bully them. There can't be a goal in mind, since there doesn't seem to be any pay-off. Fez was a hugely fun game, with layers of secrets and depth. And now we'll likely not see another... Because of what? The game guy's a jerk? We're surrounded by jerks that do nothing, and we tolerate them. I wonder if this is just an extension of GIFT [1], but instead of general online abuse, it's now aimed at the people building that entertainment infrastructure. [1] http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
Fuzzwah 13y ago
I was the front man for a HL2 mod called Dystopia. We never made it big, but we did have a decent sized, vocal and opinionated playerbase. I'd done my best to promote a positive community and for the most part all the feedback we received was fairly civil. I'm not trying to say that my experience was anything like what Fish and the guy from Treyarch have had to deal with. With those caveats out of the way; when I did have to deal with abusive feedback, I focused on two things: 1) I could easily separate my real life person from the "Fuzzy" persona I cultivated on the internet. 2) If our little game had prompted someone to get so worked up that they were going to rape and kill my kittens because we were making changes to a weapon, then we'd done something right. I'd been a hardcore, vocal gamer before I had to deal with hardcore vocal gamers. I wasn't abusive, but I had felt that passion from both sides. I didn't like, tolerate or condone people who were abusive, but I tried to understand where the passion was coming from.
- ncallaway 13y ago
  I think this attitude is a healthy one to view the abuse from. It's very unfortunate that this is necessary, though. It's great that you've made a game that people can get passionate about, but it's very depressing to me that people can't find an avenue to express that passion without resorting to violent threats. When the threats start talking about in person interactions (looking for your address, etc), I think the situation gets even more serious. As a side note, I played and loved Dystopia. It's a fantastic mod, and really fun to play. Well done, there!
  - Fuzzwah 13y ago
    Shucks :) As an aside, my best buddy, lead Dys programmer and co-project manager Teddy is now hacking around with Oculus Rift things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoj9EU7pWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoj9EU7pWs
- rdouble 13y ago
  The electronic hordes are much crazier now than in the past. That "Scooby" bodybuilder guy got doxed by 4chan the other week. In addition to the usual relentless stream of obscene online hate comments, they sent minions over to photograph his house, and call up his employer to let them know what they thought of his sexual orientation. He pretty much had the opposite online disposition of Phil Fish, too. It would be pretty hard to argue that he "deserved" any of that treatment.
daemonk 13y ago
In a way it's unfortunate that Phil Fish is becoming the poster child for this issue given his controversial public persona. I am not sure if people can dis-entagle his reputation from this real issue.
- ncallaway 13y ago
  In a legal setting, it's often true that to protect civil liberties you end up defending...less popular characters. Protecting first amendment rights often means protecting people whose speech you strongly disagree with. Perhaps the same is true of a social setting. In order to argue and campaign for more civility, you will necessarily be defending people most likely to fail to earn that civility.
mwfunk 13y ago
I think it's just what happens when you're exposing yourself to potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. From that sample size, there will always be a lot of abusive idiots, even though they might reflect a tiny fraction of the total audience. That small percentage can end up dominating the conversation because of the nature of (most) electronic communication. Unfortunately the medium itself is such that someone who is an abusive idiot is a gazillion times more likely to go out of their way to contact you or post something than someone who actually has something meaningful to say. The same goes for online forums and mailing lists. There's just a natural bias towards people posting extremely negative/inflammatory/abusive things. There's also a natural bias towards the people who have the least to contribute being the most likely to hop in with a comment, because they're the ones most likely to have strong kneejerk responses that they just have to share with the world right away. To make matters worse, there's some sort of signal:noise entropy dynamic. Anyone who was into Usenet in the 90's or has followed the same online community over the course of many years has probably seen this. Online forums tend to get worse over time, and never ever ever get better, aside from attempts to impose moderation which always meet with strong resistance. It seems like one lousy comment (or commenter) breeds two more, which drive away the good commenters (meaning, people who actually try and don't just post knee-jerk responses to things). This is how things like YouTube happen.
- panacea 13y ago
  I think it's incumbent on reasonable people to occasionally leave a positive comment, or send a short thank-you email to developers or creatives who have made something you've found enjoyable, useful or helpful. I do. "Do unto others, as you would have them do to you" is sage advice that's often forgotten.
eshvk 13y ago
I am confused; why do you, as the creative person, need to tell the world about the death of a family person or if you are getting married (Looking at you, Neil Gaiman)? Why has this become a thing? Why can't you STFU, get off twitter/facebook/whatever social network and go do your creative thing?
- ncallaway 13y ago
  Yes. How dare you use social media in a way that other humans do! If you contribute anything in the public space, social media should be nothing more than a marketing tool. I am, like you, infuriated that a public / marginally public figure would use social media to communicate a personal message. These marginally public figures should only be allowed to talk about their creative output in a public space. /s Edit: I guess the general point my unnecessary sarcasm was trying to make was this: Creative people are people first and foremost. They have the same drives and desires for using social media, AND they need to use it as a marketing tool. I think one of the major problems is it's super easy to dehumanize people when you're interacting with them over the internet. They aren't just content creation machines. Apologies for the unnecessary sarcasm.
  - eshvk 13y ago
    I am not clear what your point is. Are you saying that it is a normal human instinct to broadcast all your shit to the world? Just because a few people think that cultural consumption should work like that, doesn't mean that everyone does think the same way.
    - ncallaway 13y ago
      > "Are you saying that it is a normal human instinct to broadcast all your shit to the world?" To some extent, yes. Death in the family and informing people about an upcoming marriages are things that I frequently see people post on social media. Really any very important event in someone's life often gets posted on social media. I'm just saying, it's easy to think of people on the internet as abstract things, and not realize that you're saying: "Hey, actual person shut about about that major event in your life, no one cares, get back to work". Let me ask you this: if your friend posted a message about a death in their family on twitter would your response be "Why can't you STFU, get off twitter, and get back to work"?
williamcotton 13y ago
Part of making anything and telling the world about it is sticking your neck out. The absolute worst thing is making something that ends up having no impact. When you do make something that garners some attention you need to realize that a lot of people will be jealous. Their only valid rebuttal would be to make something that is better than your thing. People don't say these things to your face because on top of being jealous, they are also cowards. The fear that drives their life is the reason why they never make anything in the first place. If you make things that are a bit more intelligent and refined you won't attract the kind of idiots who are gonna post a bunch of mindless crap on Internet message boards... but then you might have to deal with a very intelligent and refined review from a noted critic. But no worries, as Frank Zappa summed up brilliantly: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Just make stuff. Haters gonna hate.
- jonny_eh 13y ago
  I totally agree. But I think the main reason people don't admit that they're jealous is because they don't even realize it themselves.
stackedmidgets 13y ago
The norm that creatives should be accessible at all times directly from Twitter or whatever is an extremely new one. The norm that people should use the internet all the time to socialize is also new. It's becoming more and more apparent that the internet sort of sucks for a lot of the purposes that people tend to use it for (socialization in particular). The distance and abstraction of the internet can promote antisocial behavior. Creative people need isolation and cultivation to produce great art. Exposing yourself to too much unfiltered internet makes you too familiar and diminishes your cultivation by exposing it to too much deleterious 'democratic' influence. Down one road is Bach, down the other is Buzzfeed. I know which artistic mode will last, and which will expire. The open internet is relentlessly mediocre. Excellence needs to be protected and cultivated, away from the destructive influence of dirty crowds, digital or otherwise. Shakespeare may have put on plays for commoners as well as nobles, but he didn't ask fishmongers for writing advice. The 'internet' isn't at war with anyone. I suggest that Phil Fish is being mercilessly selected for removal by the forces of nature. Perhaps artists who want to persist and be remembered in the future ought to adopt different norms of behavior around internet communications than he did.
moot 13y ago
I should syndicate my 4chan inbox somewhere. 10 years of "FAK U FAGET" has left me with a mountain of wonderful e-mail.
- Shank 13y ago
  I can only assume you have a private email that you use for normal communication - do you read the inbox of moot@4chan fairly often/if at all?
  - moot 13y ago
    I read every e-mail I receive at moot@4chan.org, usually within minutes.
    - glomph 13y ago
      Do you use google mail or something else to manage your email domain?
- zalzane 13y ago
  I like to think that the more passionate people get over something on the internet, the saltier the stuff they tend to write about it.
  - moot 13y ago
    Sexier* Fixed that for you.
- mapgrep 13y ago
  Then I'll try and be a little more civilized here: Along with some nice things, 4chan is also a notorious breeding ground for some of the worst and most noxious media and hateful activity (e.g. harassment campaigns) on the internet. This has continued to be the case for many years. It doesn't seem much has changed. Don't you feel any responsibility for the behavior of your users? http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-your-fault.html http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assh...
drhayes9 13y ago
FEZ is among my favorite video games of all time. I believe that it is a perfect expression of a 20-something's love of video games, a game mechanical representation of spiritual enlightenment, and a fiendish hedge maze of fractally spiraling content all at once. I played the hell out of that game, all the way to the end with every secret (rare for me), and devoted many pages of a notebook to walking that hedge maze. Truly a great work of art. I have tremendous respect for Phil Fish, but I would never want to work with him. His kind of passion, devotion, and energy would probably chew me up and spit me out so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. And, yeah, he gives as good as he gets in the Land of the Trolls. But, man, he made a helluva game. Right now I'm selfishly hoping that the need to create overwhelms the desire to heal and we'll see another few games out of him before too long.
zalzane 13y ago
I think this is a good article, but it was a mistake to start out by citing Fish's situation. Fish is absolutely not an innocent player in this scenario. He would fill his twitter feed with rage-filled comments in reply to people who would criticize his game. By giving trolls exactly what they wanted (a reaction), more of them jumped on the bandwagon to harass him. Combine that with Fish regularly telling people to go suck a dick, kill themselves, and all sorts of disgusting garbage littering his twitter feed, and you have a character who is extremely easy to vilify and incite others to harass. Of course, more people harassing him means that he replies with even more caustic comments, making him even easier to vilify and dislike. I've seen firsthand people trying to start hate machines on boards like 4chan's video game board where they make collages of all the disgusting things phil fish says in order to get more people to harass him. Anyone who has ever dealt with bullying in their life can tell you that the absolute worst thing you can do is react to it. If every ugly comment someone made went into a black box and was ignored, it's very unlikely that they would continue to post.
- ceol 13y ago
  Fish responding to trolls in no way excuses the trolls harassing him. That's textbook victim blaming, and it's disgusting for it to come up here.
  - Macsenour 13y ago
    I agree with your comment, but from the text it appears that anyone sending criticism was met with rage as an answer. That's not trolling.
    - ceol 13y ago
      That's really not true. Almost all of his caustic responses were to people sending him shit. His post on the Steam forums was in response to trolls trashing his game. Just take a look at his forum posts.[0] Most are completely normal, while one or two are replying to jerks. Fish isn't exactly a saint, and I'd venture to say he's quite a jerk (I'm not a fan of the shit he said about Japanese games.[1]) But the number of times Fish has dished it out is vastly outweighed by the number of times he's taken it. [0]: http://steamcommunity.com/app/224760/discussions/search/?author=38844154 http://steamcommunity.com/app/224760/discussions/search/?aut... [1]: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-07-fez-creator-phil-fish-declares-modern-japanese-games-just-suck http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-07-fez-creator-phi...
CleanedStar 13y ago
First world problems...right now the US is arming Syrian rebels so more Syrians can get blown to bits. You're surprised that the culture perpetrating atrocities around the world like that would also hurt the feelings of some upper middle class white "creative type"? Let me break out my violin. What happened, you opened up the window of your ivory tower and didn't like what wafted in? Take off your rose-colored glasses and take a look around you.
- veytastic 13y ago
  You have the right idea. Really puts it into perspective, when these people act like their on a moral crusade defending a upper middle class assholes because he got mean comments from other middle class assholes.
CanSpice 13y ago
This needs to be paralleled with the story of Caroline Criado-Perez, who campaigned to get a woman to replace Winston Churchill on the ten-pound note. After it was announced that Jane Austen will be on the ten-pound note, Criado-Perez received "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours." This sort of abuse isn't limited to creative people. It's endemic. Make a stand on something, anything, and you run the risk of having people say they're going to rape you, your family, and your dog. It's really quite horrible. Luckily for Criado-Perez Manchester police arrested a 21-year old man on "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours." Lucky for her, but unfortunately there's an entire sea of horrible people out there to sling the shit.
- DamnYuppie 13y ago
  Did that actually pass? People actually believe that Jane Austin is more worthy then Winston Churchill? I love her books but come on....
  - rjsw 13y ago
    The designs on UK banknotes need to change every so often, why not put Jane Austen on one for a bit.
  - klodolph 13y ago
    The £10 note had Florence Nightingale, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and it is soon to have Jane Austen. I can understand "I don't like her books" but that's not part of the criteria.
  - IvyMike 13y ago
    There's an informal tradition of rotating through people about every ten years.
    - DamnYuppie 13y ago
      That makes more sense then. Who is on our notes does not change often so I guess I was predisposed that this was a bigger deal then it really was.
speeder 13y ago
I make games, and the few "abusive" comments I received were obviously from astroturfed competitors. Maybe because although I am a caustic person, I never go around telling people to kill themselves, or suck my dick, or other "wonderful" things that some people like to do. Also my games usually don't feature violence.
kreutz 13y ago
Haha bullshit. I submitted this hours before and it got nothing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6122743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6122743
- Slackwise 13y ago
  This isn't Reddit. (Thankfully.)
GVIrish 13y ago
The Internet has a way of returning negative behavior ten or even a hundred or a thousand fold. Phil Fish has a decently long history of negativity and insults and that's what he received back in spades. I find a lot of people who are dismissive, arrogant, condescending, and insulting often can't take that same behavior directed back at them. Fish seems to fit that mold. I certainly wouldn't equate Phil Fish's situation to that of David Vonderhaar. Vonderhaar got harassed for merely doing his job. Fish got harassed because he crafted a persona of jerkiness.
skylan_q 13y ago
Where have all the grown-ups gone?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dvt 13y ago
Obviously people on HN aren't quite aware of who Phil Fish is. Try reading the forums over at TIGsource where you'll see that the general sentiment (in the indie community) is that he's a pompous douche and general asshole who probably should not have been even featured in the indie game documentary that came out 2 years ago. What's happening to him is shitty, true. He also has done shitty things to people in the past. One does not justify the other. However, my only point is only that the indie community (talking about devs/designers/artists) as a whole would rather have him gone.
norswap 13y ago
I have a hard time considering "bullying" on the internet or "smear campaign" a real issue. I just think "just ignore the suckers". As long as you do have people behind you as well as opposing you, it should be alright. Maybe the problem is that, having never been in the situation, I don't really understand how it feels. It really makes me wonder how I'd hold up in the situation.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  I think part of the problem is that the bullying/intimidating/smear campaign business uses the same communication channels as the supportive/constructive/engaging comments. And, even if you can thicken your skin to the point where the horrible insults don't wear you down, how do you feel about physical threats? Against your loved ones? This stuff is more terrible than you can expect a reasonable person to just shrug off.
- purplelobster 13y ago
  You're 22 and you think you know anything you piece of shit. Just fucking kill yourself you fat french fuck, you deserve to die so just do it or else I'm gonna find you wherever in france you are and I'm gonna rape your family and make you watch, then kill you slowly. How's that? That's pretty difficult for me to write, but about sums it up what these people have to deal with several times a day. I do not blame Phil Fish for lashing out, if people weren't on him like flies in the first place he probably be less agitated.
  - norswap 13y ago
    Too obvious, made me smile :) There might be a bit of desensitization involved, think 4chan culture. Still, a stranger or the internet, or simply a stranger, does not mean anything to me if I don't know him beforehand. I also would like to clarify that I do not doubt that this kind of abuse it is hard to deal with or anything. Just saying that it is pretty hard for me to relate, and that's probably the reason why not everyone is immediately siding with Phil Fish and other abuse victims.
mmanfrin 13y ago
What a terribly example for an article about bullying to lead with. Bullying is bad, but Fish bullied others and contributed in the vitriol.
tsotha 13y ago
This doesn't have anything to do with anyone's "war on creatives" (ugh, I hate that word). Anybody who rises to even minor prominence on the internet is going to get abuse. Sure, it's game creators, but it's also cat bloggers and people who make instructional language videos. It's athletes and politicians. It's anyone who whose name has bubbled to the top of a news cycle.
gnarbarian 13y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw It's not like Phil fish never asked for it.
Sickle 13y ago
this isn't a war on creatives. this is a war on phil fish, who's probably been the most annoying, condescending, gopher-hybrid moron-baby in recent history. phil fish and his ilk can get fucked and go be forgotten as if he ever did anything of note. calling this a "war on creatives" is patently ridiculous, and only those who suck his dick because he's some kind of over-hyped indie messiah would make this overgrown child's "take my ball and go home" stunt into some horrible crime of undeserved victimization.
- veytastic 13y ago
  Exactly. The video game industry needs to take a hard look at itself as to why they are trying to justify victimization and criticize "cyberbullying" when Fish has acted exactly like the trolls they criticize.
dotoiii 13y ago
You people are amazingly irritating. Why do you believe that whenever a person disagrees with you it's "trolling"? Fez was a truly terrible game, and Phil Fish a terrible influence on videogames. He, and many people like him, are transforming videogames into something truly horrifying. I can elaborate as to why if you wish.
unkoman 13y ago
What a fucktard

130 points by cobrausn 13y ago

Phil wasn't just "swimming in a sea of shit", he was shitting in the sea of shit and splashing it at other swimmers. He is not some innocent victim, he has consistently been an abusive asshole. The fact that people responded in kind isn't wonderful, but it also isn't shocking.

pmarsh 13y ago
I find it interesting that his twitter icon is Andy Kaufman. An artistic troll if there ever was one.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

null_ptr 13y ago

That's what we get for breeding a society of consumers. If you don't have a meaningful way to express yourself productively, you pour all that tension into the wrong things. You become a buly, a stalker, a heckler, you name it. You get worked up about your experiences with other people's creative output, instead of channeling all that energy into your own endeavours. I think the world would be much better off if we encouraged everyone of all ages to develop creative hobbies, instead of spending all their leisure time passively consuming the work of others. Then they would all gain a better perspective on the whole creative process and feel more accomplished all around - and happier for it!

pubby 13y ago
There are tons of creative people who have an issue with Fish. It's slightly frustrating to see someone with mediocre talent become hugely popular, but it can be infuriating when they make comments like, "i just won the grand prize at IGF tonight. suck my dick. choke on it." He's given "indie" game developers a bad name.
- GVIrish 13y ago
  Exactly. I do think a lot of people in the game industry get abuse they don't deserve, but Phil earned a lot more abuse than average with his personality.
tks2103 13y ago
I'm not sure that the responsibility lies with people or society at large. Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to attempt creative works? Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself? I believe that individuals making death threats or rape threats on the internet are generally making individual choices with full knowledge of the repercussions. I do not believe they have any reasonable excuse justifying their actions. The responsibility for understanding and identifying how deeply they can damage another human is solely theirs.
- null_ptr 13y ago
  "Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to attempt creative works?" They do, but they're overwhelmed by the vast amount of empty content ready for consumption. It's so damn easy to chill out clicking this and that, and fall in a rut where that's all you do in the leisure time you spend at your desk. We should try to find a way to actively encourage people to pick up a creative hobby (or more than one!) as a form of therapy, even. "Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself?" I think outbursts like that come from immature, intellectually under-developed people who would grow immensely from pursuing a creative hobby.
  - superbaconman 13y ago
    The tools to create and the networks to share already exist but the trouble is getting people to enjoy creation. Fix this and you might create tomorrow's economy.
  - tks2103 13y ago
    My greater point was that I don't think "we should actively encourage people to pick up a creative hobby" in response to those people making death threats. There are already people who are choosing to pick up creative hobbies. Those people make games. People that make games get crucified by gamers who do not like their decisions. Those gamers make death threats. The people who make death threats can easily enough make something creative. Certainly there is no larger barrier for them when compared to someone like Phil Fish. I do not think we need to make it easier to expect better behavior from someone who is making a death threat. We need to prioritize the people who made the extra effort to actually get up and make something over the people who chose to directly threaten the lives of the creator.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
I think that's a part of it but it's not the whole story. It's not just a society of consumers, it's a society of ... well, children really, although that might be too insulting. "Dependents" might be better. A society of people who are increasingly urbanized, increasingly educated, increasingly always online. And some of that is good but it has come along with and enabled a culture of dependence. People expect that society at large and the state specifically is going to be there to help them out. Help them get their car back on the road, defend them from the bad guys, keep a roof over their heads, keep their bellies full, and so on. This is the "brave new world" route. A population that's blissed out and utterly incapable of self-reliance. Add to that a somewhat related phenomenon which I'll just call "fuck the rich". The idea being that those who are wealthy/famous/successful somehow "have more" than their "fair share" and therefore are less deserving of social niceties and are a valid target for abuse. The justification being that "they're rich" (or famous or whatever) and "can take it" or "deserve it". It's surprising how quickly this view has become lodges in the zeitgeist. Here's a revealing little test: if you could press a magic button which would randomly pick someone who made more than $200k/yr in the US and, via a robot or magic or whatever, punch them HARD in the face but at the same time pick someone randomly in the US who made less than $15k/yr and give them $1k in cash would you press the button? How many times? How many people would press the button? How much? Would they feel bad about it? Add to that the general vitriol that stews in some parts of the internet due to anonymity and a variety of other factors and you get the conditions that this story talks about. It's pretty disgusting, and it's probably not going to just magically go away just by hoping it does. So what are we going to do about it?
- null_ptr 13y ago
  "So what are we going to do about it?" Be kind and empathic to those around you, and call out those around you who are not. Try to use technology to further liberate people's minds from the drudgery of everyday life and give them that time back, for them to invest in actively bettering themselves. Long term, institute a living wage such that everyone is freed from the worries of everyday survival and develops a kinder, less stressed mindset. A lot of the hostility we see on and off line would go away.
  - 13y ago
lmm 13y ago
>That's what we get for breeding a society of consumers. If you don't have a meaningful way to express yourself productively, you pour all that tension into the wrong things. You become a buly, a stalker, a heckler, you name it. You get worked up about your experiences with other people's creative output, instead of channeling all that energy into your own endeavours. Citation needed, because the correlation goes in the opposite direction - to me it looks like as more people take up creative endeavours, the hate they face grows ever faster.

Silhouette 13y ago

I expected this to be a piece about on-line piracy. In reality, it is about something that can be much worse. It's profoundly disturbing that so many people have such a lack of perspective that they can seriously threaten violence against someone and their family just because that person did their job and tweaked some game mechanics. Sure, most of the abusive people are probably kids, but that's no excuse. What kind of kid is old enough to be allowed unsupervised access to the Internet and yet so out of control that they can think this kind of behaviour is acceptable? Some of the things described in this piece are surely criminal, but somehow I get the feeling that sending the cops round would just be a badge of honour to people who've gone that far off the rails already. I'm not sure how you fix this without change on a society-wide scale, and I'm not sure how you could even start to effect that change if you're in the the kind of position described in the article.

sp332 13y ago
Phil Fish also told one of the YouTube personalities to go kill himself. I think he's part of the problem.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  I don't think it really makes much sense to say that a victim is 'part of the problem' when they respond to thousands of slurs, threats, and near-constant abuse by telling the abuser to go kill themselves. It's not as if they don't actually wish the abuser were dead... Yes, Phil Fish is part of the problem by existing. He's solved this by leaving the industry entirely. That's a helpful way of looking at it, isn't it?
  - cube13 13y ago
    I don't see how either party is excused here. Phil Fish constantly posted caustic, abusive remarks to everyone on his twitter feed. His public persona was one of a complete and utter asshole. Nothing excuses that behavior. While the internet's response to it is contemptible, I have absolutely no sympathy for Fish. He dished it out constantly, the fact that people replied in kind is expected. On the other hand, I have a ton of sympathy for the Treyarch dev. He didn't deserve or invite any of the remarks aimed at him, and he didn't do anything to get that level of response.

HCIdivision17 13y ago

It strikes a note of insanity: someone makes something, and another tries to bully them. There can't be a goal in mind, since there doesn't seem to be any pay-off. Fez was a hugely fun game, with layers of secrets and depth. And now we'll likely not see another... Because of what? The game guy's a jerk? We're surrounded by jerks that do nothing, and we tolerate them. I wonder if this is just an extension of GIFT [1], but instead of general online abuse, it's now aimed at the people building that entertainment infrastructure. [1] http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Fuzzwah 13y ago

I was the front man for a HL2 mod called Dystopia. We never made it big, but we did have a decent sized, vocal and opinionated playerbase. I'd done my best to promote a positive community and for the most part all the feedback we received was fairly civil. I'm not trying to say that my experience was anything like what Fish and the guy from Treyarch have had to deal with. With those caveats out of the way; when I did have to deal with abusive feedback, I focused on two things: 1) I could easily separate my real life person from the "Fuzzy" persona I cultivated on the internet. 2) If our little game had prompted someone to get so worked up that they were going to rape and kill my kittens because we were making changes to a weapon, then we'd done something right. I'd been a hardcore, vocal gamer before I had to deal with hardcore vocal gamers. I wasn't abusive, but I had felt that passion from both sides. I didn't like, tolerate or condone people who were abusive, but I tried to understand where the passion was coming from.

ncallaway 13y ago
I think this attitude is a healthy one to view the abuse from. It's very unfortunate that this is necessary, though. It's great that you've made a game that people can get passionate about, but it's very depressing to me that people can't find an avenue to express that passion without resorting to violent threats. When the threats start talking about in person interactions (looking for your address, etc), I think the situation gets even more serious. As a side note, I played and loved Dystopia. It's a fantastic mod, and really fun to play. Well done, there!
- Fuzzwah 13y ago
  Shucks :) As an aside, my best buddy, lead Dys programmer and co-project manager Teddy is now hacking around with Oculus Rift things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoj9EU7pWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoj9EU7pWs
rdouble 13y ago
The electronic hordes are much crazier now than in the past. That "Scooby" bodybuilder guy got doxed by 4chan the other week. In addition to the usual relentless stream of obscene online hate comments, they sent minions over to photograph his house, and call up his employer to let them know what they thought of his sexual orientation. He pretty much had the opposite online disposition of Phil Fish, too. It would be pretty hard to argue that he "deserved" any of that treatment.

daemonk 13y ago

In a way it's unfortunate that Phil Fish is becoming the poster child for this issue given his controversial public persona. I am not sure if people can dis-entagle his reputation from this real issue.

ncallaway 13y ago
In a legal setting, it's often true that to protect civil liberties you end up defending...less popular characters. Protecting first amendment rights often means protecting people whose speech you strongly disagree with. Perhaps the same is true of a social setting. In order to argue and campaign for more civility, you will necessarily be defending people most likely to fail to earn that civility.

mwfunk 13y ago

I think it's just what happens when you're exposing yourself to potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. From that sample size, there will always be a lot of abusive idiots, even though they might reflect a tiny fraction of the total audience. That small percentage can end up dominating the conversation because of the nature of (most) electronic communication. Unfortunately the medium itself is such that someone who is an abusive idiot is a gazillion times more likely to go out of their way to contact you or post something than someone who actually has something meaningful to say. The same goes for online forums and mailing lists. There's just a natural bias towards people posting extremely negative/inflammatory/abusive things. There's also a natural bias towards the people who have the least to contribute being the most likely to hop in with a comment, because they're the ones most likely to have strong kneejerk responses that they just have to share with the world right away. To make matters worse, there's some sort of signal:noise entropy dynamic. Anyone who was into Usenet in the 90's or has followed the same online community over the course of many years has probably seen this. Online forums tend to get worse over time, and never ever ever get better, aside from attempts to impose moderation which always meet with strong resistance. It seems like one lousy comment (or commenter) breeds two more, which drive away the good commenters (meaning, people who actually try and don't just post knee-jerk responses to things). This is how things like YouTube happen.

panacea 13y ago
I think it's incumbent on reasonable people to occasionally leave a positive comment, or send a short thank-you email to developers or creatives who have made something you've found enjoyable, useful or helpful. I do. "Do unto others, as you would have them do to you" is sage advice that's often forgotten.

eshvk 13y ago

I am confused; why do you, as the creative person, need to tell the world about the death of a family person or if you are getting married (Looking at you, Neil Gaiman)? Why has this become a thing? Why can't you STFU, get off twitter/facebook/whatever social network and go do your creative thing?

ncallaway 13y ago
Yes. How dare you use social media in a way that other humans do! If you contribute anything in the public space, social media should be nothing more than a marketing tool. I am, like you, infuriated that a public / marginally public figure would use social media to communicate a personal message. These marginally public figures should only be allowed to talk about their creative output in a public space. /s Edit: I guess the general point my unnecessary sarcasm was trying to make was this: Creative people are people first and foremost. They have the same drives and desires for using social media, AND they need to use it as a marketing tool. I think one of the major problems is it's super easy to dehumanize people when you're interacting with them over the internet. They aren't just content creation machines. Apologies for the unnecessary sarcasm.
- eshvk 13y ago
  I am not clear what your point is. Are you saying that it is a normal human instinct to broadcast all your shit to the world? Just because a few people think that cultural consumption should work like that, doesn't mean that everyone does think the same way.
  - ncallaway 13y ago
    > "Are you saying that it is a normal human instinct to broadcast all your shit to the world?" To some extent, yes. Death in the family and informing people about an upcoming marriages are things that I frequently see people post on social media. Really any very important event in someone's life often gets posted on social media. I'm just saying, it's easy to think of people on the internet as abstract things, and not realize that you're saying: "Hey, actual person shut about about that major event in your life, no one cares, get back to work". Let me ask you this: if your friend posted a message about a death in their family on twitter would your response be "Why can't you STFU, get off twitter, and get back to work"?

williamcotton 13y ago

Part of making anything and telling the world about it is sticking your neck out. The absolute worst thing is making something that ends up having no impact. When you do make something that garners some attention you need to realize that a lot of people will be jealous. Their only valid rebuttal would be to make something that is better than your thing. People don't say these things to your face because on top of being jealous, they are also cowards. The fear that drives their life is the reason why they never make anything in the first place. If you make things that are a bit more intelligent and refined you won't attract the kind of idiots who are gonna post a bunch of mindless crap on Internet message boards... but then you might have to deal with a very intelligent and refined review from a noted critic. But no worries, as Frank Zappa summed up brilliantly: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Just make stuff. Haters gonna hate.

jonny_eh 13y ago
I totally agree. But I think the main reason people don't admit that they're jealous is because they don't even realize it themselves.

stackedmidgets 13y ago

The norm that creatives should be accessible at all times directly from Twitter or whatever is an extremely new one. The norm that people should use the internet all the time to socialize is also new. It's becoming more and more apparent that the internet sort of sucks for a lot of the purposes that people tend to use it for (socialization in particular). The distance and abstraction of the internet can promote antisocial behavior. Creative people need isolation and cultivation to produce great art. Exposing yourself to too much unfiltered internet makes you too familiar and diminishes your cultivation by exposing it to too much deleterious 'democratic' influence. Down one road is Bach, down the other is Buzzfeed. I know which artistic mode will last, and which will expire. The open internet is relentlessly mediocre. Excellence needs to be protected and cultivated, away from the destructive influence of dirty crowds, digital or otherwise. Shakespeare may have put on plays for commoners as well as nobles, but he didn't ask fishmongers for writing advice. The 'internet' isn't at war with anyone. I suggest that Phil Fish is being mercilessly selected for removal by the forces of nature. Perhaps artists who want to persist and be remembered in the future ought to adopt different norms of behavior around internet communications than he did.

moot 13y ago

I should syndicate my 4chan inbox somewhere. 10 years of "FAK U FAGET" has left me with a mountain of wonderful e-mail.

Shank 13y ago
I can only assume you have a private email that you use for normal communication - do you read the inbox of moot@4chan fairly often/if at all?
- moot 13y ago
  I read every e-mail I receive at moot@4chan.org, usually within minutes.
  - glomph 13y ago
    Do you use google mail or something else to manage your email domain?
zalzane 13y ago
I like to think that the more passionate people get over something on the internet, the saltier the stuff they tend to write about it.
- moot 13y ago
  Sexier* Fixed that for you.
mapgrep 13y ago
Then I'll try and be a little more civilized here: Along with some nice things, 4chan is also a notorious breeding ground for some of the worst and most noxious media and hateful activity (e.g. harassment campaigns) on the internet. This has continued to be the case for many years. It doesn't seem much has changed. Don't you feel any responsibility for the behavior of your users? http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-your-fault.html http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assh...

drhayes9 13y ago

FEZ is among my favorite video games of all time. I believe that it is a perfect expression of a 20-something's love of video games, a game mechanical representation of spiritual enlightenment, and a fiendish hedge maze of fractally spiraling content all at once. I played the hell out of that game, all the way to the end with every secret (rare for me), and devoted many pages of a notebook to walking that hedge maze. Truly a great work of art. I have tremendous respect for Phil Fish, but I would never want to work with him. His kind of passion, devotion, and energy would probably chew me up and spit me out so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. And, yeah, he gives as good as he gets in the Land of the Trolls. But, man, he made a helluva game. Right now I'm selfishly hoping that the need to create overwhelms the desire to heal and we'll see another few games out of him before too long.

zalzane 13y ago

I think this is a good article, but it was a mistake to start out by citing Fish's situation. Fish is absolutely not an innocent player in this scenario. He would fill his twitter feed with rage-filled comments in reply to people who would criticize his game. By giving trolls exactly what they wanted (a reaction), more of them jumped on the bandwagon to harass him. Combine that with Fish regularly telling people to go suck a dick, kill themselves, and all sorts of disgusting garbage littering his twitter feed, and you have a character who is extremely easy to vilify and incite others to harass. Of course, more people harassing him means that he replies with even more caustic comments, making him even easier to vilify and dislike. I've seen firsthand people trying to start hate machines on boards like 4chan's video game board where they make collages of all the disgusting things phil fish says in order to get more people to harass him. Anyone who has ever dealt with bullying in their life can tell you that the absolute worst thing you can do is react to it. If every ugly comment someone made went into a black box and was ignored, it's very unlikely that they would continue to post.

ceol 13y ago
Fish responding to trolls in no way excuses the trolls harassing him. That's textbook victim blaming, and it's disgusting for it to come up here.
- Macsenour 13y ago
  I agree with your comment, but from the text it appears that anyone sending criticism was met with rage as an answer. That's not trolling.
  - ceol 13y ago
    That's really not true. Almost all of his caustic responses were to people sending him shit. His post on the Steam forums was in response to trolls trashing his game. Just take a look at his forum posts.[0] Most are completely normal, while one or two are replying to jerks. Fish isn't exactly a saint, and I'd venture to say he's quite a jerk (I'm not a fan of the shit he said about Japanese games.[1]) But the number of times Fish has dished it out is vastly outweighed by the number of times he's taken it. [0]: http://steamcommunity.com/app/224760/discussions/search/?author=38844154 http://steamcommunity.com/app/224760/discussions/search/?aut... [1]: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-07-fez-creator-phil-fish-declares-modern-japanese-games-just-suck http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-07-fez-creator-phi...

CleanedStar 13y ago

First world problems...right now the US is arming Syrian rebels so more Syrians can get blown to bits. You're surprised that the culture perpetrating atrocities around the world like that would also hurt the feelings of some upper middle class white "creative type"? Let me break out my violin. What happened, you opened up the window of your ivory tower and didn't like what wafted in? Take off your rose-colored glasses and take a look around you.

veytastic 13y ago
You have the right idea. Really puts it into perspective, when these people act like their on a moral crusade defending a upper middle class assholes because he got mean comments from other middle class assholes.

CanSpice 13y ago

This needs to be paralleled with the story of Caroline Criado-Perez, who campaigned to get a woman to replace Winston Churchill on the ten-pound note. After it was announced that Jane Austen will be on the ten-pound note, Criado-Perez received "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours." This sort of abuse isn't limited to creative people. It's endemic. Make a stand on something, anything, and you run the risk of having people say they're going to rape you, your family, and your dog. It's really quite horrible. Luckily for Criado-Perez Manchester police arrested a 21-year old man on "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours." Lucky for her, but unfortunately there's an entire sea of horrible people out there to sling the shit.

DamnYuppie 13y ago
Did that actually pass? People actually believe that Jane Austin is more worthy then Winston Churchill? I love her books but come on....
- rjsw 13y ago
  The designs on UK banknotes need to change every so often, why not put Jane Austen on one for a bit.
- klodolph 13y ago
  The £10 note had Florence Nightingale, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and it is soon to have Jane Austen. I can understand "I don't like her books" but that's not part of the criteria.
- IvyMike 13y ago
  There's an informal tradition of rotating through people about every ten years.
  - DamnYuppie 13y ago
    That makes more sense then. Who is on our notes does not change often so I guess I was predisposed that this was a bigger deal then it really was.

speeder 13y ago

I make games, and the few "abusive" comments I received were obviously from astroturfed competitors. Maybe because although I am a caustic person, I never go around telling people to kill themselves, or suck my dick, or other "wonderful" things that some people like to do. Also my games usually don't feature violence.

kreutz 13y ago

Haha bullshit. I submitted this hours before and it got nothing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6122743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6122743

Slackwise 13y ago
This isn't Reddit. (Thankfully.)

GVIrish 13y ago

The Internet has a way of returning negative behavior ten or even a hundred or a thousand fold. Phil Fish has a decently long history of negativity and insults and that's what he received back in spades. I find a lot of people who are dismissive, arrogant, condescending, and insulting often can't take that same behavior directed back at them. Fish seems to fit that mold. I certainly wouldn't equate Phil Fish's situation to that of David Vonderhaar. Vonderhaar got harassed for merely doing his job. Fish got harassed because he crafted a persona of jerkiness.

skylan_q 13y ago

Where have all the grown-ups gone?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

dvt 13y ago

Obviously people on HN aren't quite aware of who Phil Fish is. Try reading the forums over at TIGsource where you'll see that the general sentiment (in the indie community) is that he's a pompous douche and general asshole who probably should not have been even featured in the indie game documentary that came out 2 years ago. What's happening to him is shitty, true. He also has done shitty things to people in the past. One does not justify the other. However, my only point is only that the indie community (talking about devs/designers/artists) as a whole would rather have him gone.

norswap 13y ago

I have a hard time considering "bullying" on the internet or "smear campaign" a real issue. I just think "just ignore the suckers". As long as you do have people behind you as well as opposing you, it should be alright. Maybe the problem is that, having never been in the situation, I don't really understand how it feels. It really makes me wonder how I'd hold up in the situation.

MartinCron 13y ago
I think part of the problem is that the bullying/intimidating/smear campaign business uses the same communication channels as the supportive/constructive/engaging comments. And, even if you can thicken your skin to the point where the horrible insults don't wear you down, how do you feel about physical threats? Against your loved ones? This stuff is more terrible than you can expect a reasonable person to just shrug off.
purplelobster 13y ago
You're 22 and you think you know anything you piece of shit. Just fucking kill yourself you fat french fuck, you deserve to die so just do it or else I'm gonna find you wherever in france you are and I'm gonna rape your family and make you watch, then kill you slowly. How's that? That's pretty difficult for me to write, but about sums it up what these people have to deal with several times a day. I do not blame Phil Fish for lashing out, if people weren't on him like flies in the first place he probably be less agitated.
- norswap 13y ago
  Too obvious, made me smile :) There might be a bit of desensitization involved, think 4chan culture. Still, a stranger or the internet, or simply a stranger, does not mean anything to me if I don't know him beforehand. I also would like to clarify that I do not doubt that this kind of abuse it is hard to deal with or anything. Just saying that it is pretty hard for me to relate, and that's probably the reason why not everyone is immediately siding with Phil Fish and other abuse victims.

mmanfrin 13y ago

What a terribly example for an article about bullying to lead with. Bullying is bad, but Fish bullied others and contributed in the vitriol.

tsotha 13y ago

This doesn't have anything to do with anyone's "war on creatives" (ugh, I hate that word). Anybody who rises to even minor prominence on the internet is going to get abuse. Sure, it's game creators, but it's also cat bloggers and people who make instructional language videos. It's athletes and politicians. It's anyone who whose name has bubbled to the top of a news cycle.

gnarbarian 13y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw It's not like Phil fish never asked for it.

Sickle 13y ago

this isn't a war on creatives. this is a war on phil fish, who's probably been the most annoying, condescending, gopher-hybrid moron-baby in recent history. phil fish and his ilk can get fucked and go be forgotten as if he ever did anything of note. calling this a "war on creatives" is patently ridiculous, and only those who suck his dick because he's some kind of over-hyped indie messiah would make this overgrown child's "take my ball and go home" stunt into some horrible crime of undeserved victimization.

veytastic 13y ago
Exactly. The video game industry needs to take a hard look at itself as to why they are trying to justify victimization and criticize "cyberbullying" when Fish has acted exactly like the trolls they criticize.

dotoiii 13y ago

You people are amazingly irritating. Why do you believe that whenever a person disagrees with you it's "trolling"? Fez was a truly terrible game, and Phil Fish a terrible influence on videogames. He, and many people like him, are transforming videogames into something truly horrifying. I can elaborate as to why if you wish.

unkoman 13y ago

What a fucktard