🐱 Why Fez II Was Canceled

Why Fez II Was Canceled

New fans of Fez might wonder why it hasn't received a sequel. The answer lies in its creator's contentious relationship with the games industry.

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New fans of Fez might wonder why it hasn't received a sequel. The answer lies in its creator's contentious relationship with the games industry.
A Nintendo Switch port of Fez was announced during April's Indie World Showcase. In spite of originally being released in 2012, the seminal indie game was one of the highlights of a presentation that featured newer games like TMNT: Shredder's Revenge and Skul: The Hero Slayer. Players introduced to Fez on the Switch through its surprise launch might why there's never been a sequel to the innovative platformer. It's understandable that they wouldn't know the story behind the cancellation of Fez II by its creator, Phil Fish.

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Fish was the main creator behind Fez, and the final, arduous phase of its five year development cycle was chronicled in the documentary Indie Game: The Movie. That spotlight gave the developers chronicled (Fish, Braid's Jonathan Blow, and Super Meat Boy's Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen) a higher profile than the average indie developer. That proved to be a double edged sword for Fish.

Fish became a polarizing figure. He was outspoken, especially on Twitter, where he frequently commented on his distaste for the gaming industry and gamers themselves. This helps to explain how the developer of such a beloved game could have such a toxic reputation, even if his comments didn't warrant the level of hate Fish received.


Fish's comments that Japanese games "just sucked" following a Game Developer's Conference screening of Indie Game: The Movie are an example of how he rubbed people the wrong way. Fish leveled his criticism at Japanese developer Makoto Goto after Goto asked for his opinion on modern Japanese games. Fish responded with his trademark brutal honesty. He and Jonathan Blow critiqued the Japanese gaming scene circa 2012, with Blow calling them "joyless husks" according to a later account from Fish. Fish took most of the heat online, though he would later apologize to Goto, who thanked him for his honesty.

The seeds of Fish's departure from the industry were the further planted with his company Polytron's contentious relationship with Microsoft. The Xbox 360 version of Fez, which was exclusive to the console for a year, needed a post-launch patch to iron out some bugs. Unfortunately, the patch caused save corruption issues for one percent of the game's players.

Polytron withdrew the patch, planning to submit a new one to correct the save corruption. Unfortunately, Microsoft's policy at the time would have cost Polytron a fee for subsequent patches. Rather than incur the costs, Polytron restored the problematic patch. Fish became a vocal critic of Microsoft and announced he had no plans to bring Fez II to the Xbox One.


Ironically, Fish's lack of a response was the inciting incident for Fez II's cancellation. Shortly after the game was announced in 2013, Fish and Blow chose not to comment on Microsoft's rumored decision to allow self-publishing on the Xbox One, citing a lack of information on the policy. Commentator Marcus Beer criticized the pair on the Invisible Walls podcast for their outsized presence in indie gaming, mocking them as the "self-styled kings of the indie genre" who only talked to the media when it benefited them.

Beer was especially vitriolic toward Fish, with "hipster" being the nicest thing he called the developer. Fish responded on Twitter, and the situation escalated to the point where Fish suggested that Beer compare his life to Fish's and kill himself. This may have been a poorly timed reference to a line from Futurama's Bender.

The incident was a breaking point for Fish. He announced the cancellation of Fez II and his exit from the gaming industry, saying that he chose "not to put up with this abuse anymore." The following year, Fish was hacked and doxxed by Gamergate supporters due to his support of Zoe Quinn. He vowed to leave gaming and Twitter once again, this time adding that the Fez IP and Polytron were up for sale. Fish has kept a low profile in recent years. He did work on the early PlayStation VR game SuperHyperCube with experimental gaming collective Kokoromi. However, Fez II remains cancelled, leaving the original to stand on its own.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Phil Fish is a Phucking Phaggot.

Fish is an idiot who has no integrity. People who think that the indie game scene will lead the gaming industry to a new golden age are massive faggots themselves

This.

The indie scene is filled with hipster faggots like Phil Fish and is as creatively bankrupt and stupid in it's own way as the AAA scene is.

Just something about the indie scene has never made me take much interest, I think it's because of the climate of people like Phil Fish just always set off my Spidey Sense from the word go even before I really understood what was going on.

For another example of that kind of assholerly there's "The Path" and "Sunset" dev Tale of Tales.

I miss 2016. The internet was still fun and Leafy and Metokur made good content.

You know things are bad when even 2016 is preferable to now.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Because Fez was a mediocre platformer that ripped off Super Paper Mario and Fish's 'creative' well is dry until someone at Nintendo comes up with another idea he can suck out of their dick.

It didn't hit me until now that he did indeed take straight from SPM..

 

[DumbDude42]

The indie scene is filled with hipster faggots like Phil Fish and is as creatively bankrupt and stupid in it's own way as the AAA scene is.
Just something about the indie scene has never made me take much interest, I think it's because of the climate of people like Phil Fish just always set off my Spidey Sense from the word go even before I really understood what was going on.

it's their arrogance and unwarranted self-importance that is so off-putting. they come across as if they think their game (shitty pixel platformer #2152) is gonna be the next minecraft so they expect people to treat them as god's gift to gaming, when in reality they're just lazy and pretentious hipsters.

 

[Dom Cruise]

it's their arrogance and unwarranted self-importance that is so off-putting. they come across as if they think their game (shitty pixel platformer #2152) is gonna be the next minecraft so they expect people to treat them as god's gift to gaming, when in reality they're just lazy and pretentious hipsters.

I tend to look back at what hipster culture was circa 2010 with some nostalgia and fondness today, but the truth is they were mostly douchebags and today’s SJWs were often yesterday’s hipsters.

I guess that’s why despite spending some time around hipsters myself I never became one.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

This.

The indie scene is filled with hipster faggots like Phil Fish and is as creatively bankrupt and stupid in it's own way as the AAA scene is.

Just something about the indie scene has never made me take much interest, I think it's because of the climate of people like Phil Fish just always set off my Spidey Sense from the word go even before I really understood what was going on.

For another example of that kind of assholerly there's "The Path" and "Sunset" dev Tale of Tales.

Indies are not called enough for being a really incestuous and overwhelmingly unoriginal industry. There are more enjoyable AAA games in the last few years than indies (despite the latter being several times larger).

 

[Dom Cruise]

Indies are not called enough for being a really incestuous and overwhelmingly unoriginal industry. There are more enjoyable AAA games in the last few years than indies (despite the latter being several times larger).

I agree completely, people gives the modern AAA scene a lot of shit but it's still pound for pound more interesting than the indie scene.

 

[X Pac Heat]

I never played Fez. Mostly because I had this unconcious rule at the time not to play games where I heard more about the developer than I did about the game. It is the telltale sign of it being a shitty "art" game. (also in my experience a really good rule to follow even in the AAA industry, as seen with Hideo Kojima and CDPR recently)

Like to this day I know Phil Fish is a massive faggot, but I still don't know a god damn thing about his game besides the fact it's like a side scroller where you manipulate a 3D map or something?

 

[Drain Todger]

Because Phil Fish is a massive faggot and a tool and he got rich off Fez and didn't want to make another game because he really doesn't give a fucking shit.

Imagine.

Imagine people taking PubeBeard Hipsterglasses McChipmunkTeeth seriously for even a moment. Our forefathers stormed the beaches of fucking Iwo Jima so this herniated testicle wouldn’t have to speak Japanese.

Sometimes, I like to imagine that Phil Fish is the great, great grandson of the serial killer Albert Fish.

Albert Fish - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I wonder how long it will be before Phil’s genetic tendencies resurface, and he starts on some self-acupuncture of his taint?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I agree completely, people gives the modern AAA scene a lot of shit but it's still pound for pound more interesting than the indie scene.

Going more in depth. You can split indies pretty well into three categories:
* Emotional games - Your "deep" games that journos love and can be completed in 2 hours tops. They are just a presentation and/or a shitty depression metaphor.
* Gimmick/derivative games - A game that is based on some play on a popular formula. Either a gimmick like a unique control scheme, that gets old fast and the devs quickly run out of things to do with it, or some derivative of a genre like (or really always) "Dark Souls in X".
* Retro games/developer baby - A game that could have been good had it come up 30 years ago.

 

[X Pac Heat]

Sometimes, I like to imagine that Phil Fish is the great, great grandson of the serial killer Albert Fish.

He is gray in both appearance and demeanor

 

[Facts Over Feels]

Fish is French-Canadian, his actual name is Phillippe Poisson. I'm not making that up.

This explains why he is such a gigantic crybaby faggot.

 

[Socrates]

The only good things coming out of the indie scene nowadays seem to be strategy/sim games aimed at a specific slice of the population that actually gives a shit about fun and interesting games. Stuff like Prison Architect, Project Zomboid, and Grim Dawn come to mind, where it's obvious that the devs give a fuck about their craft and the feedback of their audience. Everything else is 2deep4u walking simulators or the aformentioned Darksouls / Generic pixel platformer clones.

 

[polyqueerandrosensual]

Going more in depth. You can split indies pretty well into three categories:
* Emotional games - Your "deep" games that journos love and can be completed in 2 hours tops. They are just a presentation and/or a shitty depression metaphor.
* Gimmick/derivative games - A game that is based on some play on a popular formula. Either a gimmick like a unique control scheme, that gets old fast and the devs quickly run out of things to do with it, or some derivative of a genre like (or really always) "Dark Souls in X".
* Retro games/developer baby - A game that could have been good had it come up 30 years ago.

I knew something seemed lacking with indie games. You managed to sum it up perfectly.

 

[derpherp2]

I agree completely, people gives the modern AAA scene a lot of shit but it's still pound for pound more interesting than the indie scene.

They just can't comprehend the sheer amount of people making indie games, then applying those amounts to the amount of the making ONE decent game (seriously they just need to look at patron/itch, and they'll probably understand).

Then applying that amount to the indie devs making TWO.
Then applying that amount to indie devs that survived all of that and became a bigger dev studio.
Then surviving THAT sheer girth of staff and making a decent game.

I can count only like.... 1-4 that did all of that, and only one is solid in said "counting" (Owlcat has paizo on it's back so it probably has a solid footing, Larian's success is... spotty even with WoTC, DE/GGG/CDPR are sinking, etc.).

Then they forget that AAA studious used to be "indie" studious until they passed all of those hurdles and survived, true probably from decades ago, but still. They survived for a reason.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Also Fez wasn't that good. Never got the hype. It's another middle of the road indie jerk-fest.

The hype was due to the late 7th console gen being a bit of a dark age for gaming. People wanted something that wasn't brown and grey, a military cover shooter, DLC up the ass, bland, and overly serious. This is why indie games were hyped as the savior of gaming.

Keep serving ultra bland and some people will decide Kraft mac and cheese with salt and pepper on it is far more exciting.

 

[Drain Todger]

Fish is French-Canadian, his actual name is Phillippe Poisson. I'm not making that up.

This explains why he is such a gigantic crybaby faggot.

What is it with these indie gamedev hipsters and changing their names to the shittiest names imaginable? It really reveals their state of mind, doesn’t it?

Take Zoe Quinn, for instance. Her name used to be Chelsea Van Valkenburg, which sounds like some badass metal singer, but because of her daddy issues clearly being off the fucking charts, she changed it to Zoe Tiberius Quinn. Likewise, Phil Fish had the opportunity to be literally anything other than Phil Fish. He could’ve been John Conrad or Richard Pfister or something even slightly memorable or interesting, but instead, he chose to translate Poisson into English. He chose to be Phil Fish.

Phil Fish sounds like a fucking grub. It sounds like a slimy yellow thing you’d pull out of a rotting tree stump with long-cuff neoprene gloves on your hands during a field trip. “Class, this is the Fulfish, an amphibious sea slug that was first sighted invading coastal Nova Scotia and has worked its way all the way down here. Don’t touch the gills with your bare hands. They secrete a neurotoxin that causes permanent brain damage.”

Phil Fish. Jesus.

 

[Dom Cruise]

One indie game I did like was Thimbleweed Park, but that was a case of an old veteran returning, not some Johnny come lately developer.

Going more in depth. You can split indies pretty well into three categories:
* Emotional games - Your "deep" games that journos love and can be completed in 2 hours tops. They are just a presentation and/or a shitty depression metaphor.

I've played a few games like that, namely Dear Esther and Gone Home.

Dear Esther was interesting because it was basically the first game like that, so there was some novelty, Gone Home was interesting in how it tried to recreate 1995 and had a few other interesting aspects.

They've come out with other games like that but that's all I've played because the novelty really does wear off fast, at the end of the day a game where all you do is walk around and look at stuff or listen to dialog just isn't great game design.

* Gimmick/derivative games - A game that is based on some play on a popular formula. Either a gimmick like a unique control scheme, that gets old fast and the devs quickly run out of things to do with it, or some derivative of a genre like (or really always) "Dark Souls in X".

I don't think I've ever really bothered with a game like that, at least not to completion.

Part of this is due though to just good old fashioned choice paralysis, there's so many indie games out there that I just can't be bothered to sort through it all, but part of it is... I simply don't care, there's just something about an "indie game" that just isn't interesting to me and I will admit that's purely a subjective thing for me, others may feel differently and that's fine.

But I do think overall what I said is true, it's just as creatively bankrupt in it's own way as the AAA scene and the AAA scene for all it's faults is still a lot more interesting.

* Retro games/developer baby - A game that could have been good had it come up 30 years ago.

A lot of it comes down to this, if I wanted to play a pixel art 2D game, I'd play something actually old, not a modern indie "retro" styled game trying to imitate the 2D era.

The hype was due to the late 7th console gen being a bit of a dark age for gaming. People wanted something that wasn't brown and grey, a military cover shooter, DLC up the ass, bland, and overly serious. This is why indie games were hyped as the savior of gaming.

Keep serving ultra bland and some people will decide Kraft mac and cheese with salt and pepper on it is far more exciting.

It really was a pretty bad time for gaming, although there were still plenty of gems (Batman: Arkham Aslyum, Arkham City and Fallout: New Vegas just to name a few) but overall it was indeed a dark age for gaming.

It's depressing to realize just how long gaming has simply been in a not great state though, if it's not hipster faggots trying to infiltrate the hobby, it's the pure greed of the AAA scene.

The hipster faggot zeitgeist goes back basically to 2012, it's depressing to think we're talking almost a decade ago now, but gaming has had problems that go back even before then.

Basically if the evolution of gaming was a line on a graph, that line once went steadily up and up as time went on, but then after a point the line started to go up and down, rather than a steady upward climb.

I would mark 2007 or perhaps 2008 as the last years the line only went upward, after that point it's been a mixed bag ever since, plenty of great games, don't get me wrong, but it still can only really be described as a mixed bag, not a steady climb upward.

Still, it could be a lot worse, a fair number of all time classics have come out since 2007/2008 and the age of Phil Fish types really getting the spotlight has pretty much already passed, but I do think a certain magic was lost after 2007/2008 and I think the main reason why is gaming had become popular enough by that point that it inspired a lot of greedy assholes to try to exploit that newfound popularity, be it greedy AAA company execs or hipster carpet baggers like Phil Fish, prior to that point gaming was for gamers, but talk of it becoming a "new Hollywood" brought a lot of sharks that smelled blood in the water.

 

[Haramburger]

One indie game I did like was Thimbleweed Park, but that was a case of an old veteran returning, not some Johnny come lately developer.

We scarcely deserve Mark Ferrari, what a fucking legendary artist.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

The indie scene is filled with hipster faggots like Phil Fish and is as creatively bankrupt and stupid in it's own way as the AAA scene is.

Going more in depth. You can split indies pretty well into three categories:
* Emotional games - Your "deep" games that journos love and can be completed in 2 hours tops. They are just a presentation and/or a shitty depression metaphor.
* Gimmick/derivative games - A game that is based on some play on a popular formula. Either a gimmick like a unique control scheme, that gets old fast and the devs quickly run out of things to do with it, or some derivative of a genre like (or really always) "Dark Souls in X".
* Retro games/developer baby - A game that could have been good had it come up 30 years ago.

Oh, come on guys, the indie scene isn't all bad! I mean, there's Cave Story....which, technically could be lumped into the third category, now that I think about it. There's Shovel Knight.......which is also in the third category..........ummmmmm, A Hat in Time - you know what, fuck it, you're right. The indie scene is stale AF.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Oh, come on guys, the indie scene isn't all bad! I mean, there's Cave Story....which, technically could be lumped into the third category, now that I think about it. There's Shovel Knight.......which is also in the third category..........ummmmmm, A Hat in Time - you know what, fuck it, you're right. The indie scene is stale AF.

A Hat in Time is one of the indie games that do interest me, I own it already on Steam, but I just haven't worked up enough interest to justify playing it as opposed to the many other games I can play yet.