Fez Creator Talks Smack About Japanese Games, Takes to Twitter

See this image? Apparently this is from Fez creator Phil Fish’s Twitter, in which a Twitter user berates him over comments he made about Japanese games. Then, like a proper gentleman and esteemed individual, he replies to the Twitter user with, “I just won the grand prize at IGF tonight. suck my dick. choke on it.” Now, we tend to see this happen from time to time with other game developers, like David Jaffe and his sailor mouth. But hey, he’s got years on him, made Twisted Metal and God of War. He’s earned the right. But Fish, he’s still a relative newbie and still has one game under his belt that he hasn’t released yet. But why is all this happening?

Well, it all started after a Q&A for Indie Games: The Movie, in which game developer Makoto Goto asked Fish what he thought of Japanese games. Again, like a gentleman, he said to him, “your games just suck.” Yeah, just like that. The crowd in the room gasped at his answer. Soon, his comment circulated over many gaming sites and blogs, and Fish has received much hate mail and tweets over the comment. After having enough of this, he talked to a designer from Canada at GDC and admitted that he was wrong. What he meant by his statement was that it was Modern Japanese games that suck, which I really can’t complain about. He is right in this regard as the proportion of good Japanese games versus good Western games has shifted since this generation began.

If that was the case, he should’ve said this from the get-go. By simply saying “Japanese games suck”, you shit on over 25 years of games that Japan was gracious enough to give us when we were kids to when we grew up. He does state on his Twitter that he did apologize to Goto on the panel and that he has much love for the classics (which a huge commanding chunk of them were Japanese). But because of your wording, you’re going to get the hate mail from gamers. You’re going to get those angry tweets. He complains that his comment was blown way out of proportion. Well, look at what you said and who you said it to! Of course it’s going to be read into Fish! You should’ve clarified yourself right there instead of waiting for the hate to reach critical mass. Most modern J-games suck, yeah. In this case Inafune agrees with you. Jonathan Blow agrees with you. Heck, I agree with you. But dude, think a bit before you say something with that much weight on it.

And dude, best let the tweets tweet and not reply to them. You’re only making yourself look like a major gentleman.