(Not news) Fez developer is a whiny child. (News) Fez II cancelled post-tantrum.

[Amake]

What do you know, after sleeping on it I found an opinion. I think whatever damage Fish may have done to the indie game scene is ridiculously unimportant. Orson Scott Card's gay-hating tendencies damage the credibility of writers and give writers bad ideas more than this, and I'm fine with not giving him any of my money, but there's a lot of people for whom his work means a great deal, who have felt incredibly betrayed by the revelation of his bigotry, and yet they apparently deal with it without feeling the need to attack Card personally. Indie game enthusiasts have not shown the same dignity.

There's probably more than one hopeful young dev who might have made the Citizen Kane of games, but who maybe isn't too confident in their ability to maintain a tolerable public persona, and reads about this and learns what the Internet hate machine does to you if you don't keep your mouth shut and gives up and gets a honest job instead.

I would tell them, as I would have told Fish, that it doesn't matter what people think of you, you can say nothing, be a complete nonentity to your audience, and if your work is good then people will enjoy it. But I don't know if anyone can believe that, since we're apparently so damn eager to judge the quality of a work by the behavior of its author that we celebrate when a guy we hate stops making games. I think that's the real problem here.

[Ryong]

Originally Posted by Amake

I would tell them, as I would have told Fish, that it doesn't matter what people think of you, you can say nothing, be a complete nonentity to your audience, and if your work is good then people will enjoy it.

See: Nifflas ( guy behind the knytt series ), Konjak ( guy making Iconoclasts, made Noitu Love series, that one cool Legend of Zelda single stage game ) and a bunch others.

[Ramary]

Originally Posted by Amake

the Citizen Kane of games

I FUCKING HATE THAT PHRASE. STOP USING IT, HOW ARE GAMES GONNA BECOME THEIR OWN THING IF WE ARE STILL JUST TRYING TO APE HOLLYWOOD, FUCK HOLLYWOOD. PEOPLE KEEP THROWING IT ON BIG POPULAR GAMES AS SOON AS THEY ARE OUT, WHEN KANE WAS A BOX OFFICE FLOP AND IT WAS NOT TILL MUCH LATER THAT IT WAS RECOGNIZED.

Yes I went all caps because I am yelling at you. Yes I really do hate that phrase that much. Also King Kong was a much more important movie to film making then Citizen Kane.

[akaSM]

Originally Posted by Ramary

WHEN KANE WAS A BOX OFFICE FLOP AND IT WAS NOT TILL MUCH LATER THAT IT WAS RECOGNIZED.

The answer is Psychonauts...right?

About this guy, I barely heard of him or his game but, I'll ride the blowfish bandawagon because that's the cool thing to do.

Also, I don't like that guy.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Amake

Orson Scott Card's gay-hating tendencies damage the credibility of writers and give writers bad ideas more than this, and I'm fine with not giving him any of my money, but there's a lot of people for whom his work means a great deal, who have felt incredibly betrayed by the revelation of his bigotry, and yet they apparently deal with it without feeling the need to attack Card personally. Indie game enthusiasts have not shown the same dignity.

For what it's worth, the fans of Card's work mostly just seem to be defending all the money he gives to actual hate groups as "exercising his freedom of speech" and calls to have him not get paid for things since that money goes to funding said actual hategroups as "denying him his livelihood because you don't agree with his opinions."

Orson Scott Card is a fucking monster whose actions have helped lead to getting innocent people killed just because of how they were born and anyone who doesn't call him out on this is honestly an immensely worse person than phil Fish themselves.

The two are incomparable, and the fact that Fish gets more hate just for being a big spoiled baby who can't take criticism and has internet tantrums than Card whose actions have very real and very dire consequences for society is astounding. And don't think for a minute that means I think people are being unfair to Fish. Card just deserves considerably more hate than he's getting.

[Mr.Bookworm]

To be perfectly clear, since I've been sort of frustrated in this thread and not communicating very well, 95% of the bullshit Fish gets is probably bullshit. "Go kill yourself" or whatever with more misspellings is completely unacceptable no matter who's doing the slinging or who the target is.

It's just really dumb to lump in the relatively reasonable criticism of Fish and his asshattery with all of the "lol gay" school of Tumblr interpersonal communication.

I'm also far less inclined to be sympathetic to someone who is being an asshole and gets assholed back at than I am to one of the million people that are blameless but get bombarded by fuckwads anyway. Maybe that's a bad thing? I dunno.

Originally Posted by Amake

It has worked for me. In fact I don't know any other way that would possibly make it better when people think you're a horrible person no matter what you do.

There's a middle ground between basing your self-image around what other people think and just completely not giving fucks about what other people think. Neither is desirable. The ability to separate the reasonable criticism from the chaff is an incredibly important skill to have.

Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. You seem to be fine with less good games being made so long as the right people make them;

When on Earth did I say that? I'm not interested in Fez, either 1 or 2, partially due to the creator's obnoxiousness, but I recognize that there are people who want to play it, and I'm not really going to rag on them for doing so.

Also, man, I would be infinitely surprised if Fez 2 did not actually come out.

I think the work is more important than the author, and when I fail to not have my perception of the author influence my perception of their work it makes me sad.

Jesus Christ, middle ground. I'm playing Bioshock right now and I wouldn't give much of a fuck if I found out that Ken Levine had gone straight Republican in every election since he could vote.

On the other hand, you have, say, Orson Scott Card, who's vileness has been expounded on at length in this thread. I am not going to do anything that would put money in his pocket.

As POS said, Fish isn't anywhere near as bad as Card, but his assholery has done quite a bit to turn me off from ever playing his games.

Originally Posted by Amake

Yeah, then it works the same. If you don't care what people think of you, then you don't have much of a reason to make petty insults or tell anyone to die because they think badly of you. Or do you think Fish's problem is not that he wants people to think he's clever and cool?

If you don't care what other people think about you, you end up as a raging douchebag because you are unable to accept criticism of any sort.

And I have no idea what Fish's problem is and trying to speculate would be wasting words. The only thing we can judge is what we see.

Originally Posted by Ryong

Who's Stardock guy?

Stardock guy!