Phil Fish Won


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The outspoken indie developer has had a troubled relationship with Microsoft, and stated in a recent interview that his planned platform for Fez II is "not Xbox."

 

Fish's Fez, which garnered high praise for its inventive, perspective-shifting puzzles, was released on Xbox 360. However, Fish became incensed when he claims Microsoft made it impossible for him to correct apatch problem that broke Fez for those gamers who had already completed the game. Fish said that Microsoft would have charged his company Polytron thousands of dollars to re-certify, making releasing a new patch economically impossible.

 

Obviously, the incident has left a bad taste in Fish's mouth, as it now appears that he won't be releasing his games for Microsoft platforms in the future. He did express possible interest in releasing Fez II for PlayStation 4. The original Fez also released on Steam for PC.

 

[source: Polygon]

 

 

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thats not surprising, after watching the film i can understand why he got frustrated with it all. 

 

At the end of the day each indie developer has to make a choice on which platforms they wish to develop for that will provide them with the most money and less stress. 

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Can't blame him. When someone messes you around you don't want to continue working with them.

 

I understand the need for MS to make sure none of the games contain anything nasty but this should be a procedure built in to the costs they already make from the games, not an extra few thousand dollars on top.

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Can't blame him. When someone messes you around you don't want to continue working with them.

 

I understand the need for MS to make sure none of the games contain anything nasty but this should be a procedure built in to the costs they already make from the games, not an extra few thousand dollars on top.

 

I'm pretty sure I remember people saying Sony charges for you to push out game updates as well.    One could say there's a incentive in charging devs this.  While on one hand it sucks because the little guy can't pay the costs right away, if it all, so the game takes long to get patched or never does.  On the other hand, if you know this policy ahead of time, and all of them did going in I'm sure, then all the more reason to beta test as much as you can before you send it out.

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The reality is it is the consumer who suffers if the game can't get patched. Apparently, MS costs for updates can be tens of thousands of dollars. One wonders why it has to be that high, especially for smaller devs who also have really popular titles which sell well.

 

On another note, Fez is 1/2 price on GOG.com if anyone wants to play the game for themselves.

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I really don't understand the thought behind charging for updates...  Some games don't get updates that came to their PC equivalents (Surely because of this).  I really wish Microsoft would drop (Or reduce if necessary) this burden.

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MS has generally been very good with smaller and indie developers who gives quality stuff, providing expert developer help and waiving fees. If he hadn't acted like an idiot they would probably have let him patch for free as well, oof course he shoudln't have released the game as it was to start with. 

 

So, if he won't release his game on Xbox... well then I won't buy his games... no reason to get a PS4 this.they're not that good. 


I really don't understand the thought behind charging for updates...  Some games don't get updates that came to their PC equivalents (Surely because of this).  I really wish Microsoft would drop (Or reduce if necessary) this burden.

 

 

It's supposed to prevent people from releasing games so badly made they're unplayable and then release patches on a conveyor belt only fixing minor issues and keep introducing new ones still making the game unplayable. Guess

 

it doesn't work on everyone... Maybe he should have said yes to some of those expert consultants MS provides to their platform devs if they want. 

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It's supposed to prevent people from releasing games so badly made they're unplayable and then release patches on a conveyor belt only fixing minor issues and keep introducing new ones still making the game unplayable. Guess

 

it doesn't work on everyone... Maybe he should have said yes to some of those expert consultants MS provides to their platform devs if they want. 

It doesn't work on anyone. Many developers still release games in unfinished states, the only difference being that they don't get fixed properly either.

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 and waiving fees. 

 

Can you offer any examples of devs who've had their fees waived? There might be some, but I've never heard of it.

 

If they are waiving the fees it completely negates the point of having fees to discourage poor development.

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It doesn't work on anyone. Many developers still release games in unfinished states, the only difference being that they don't get fixed properly either.

 

Dunno, outside of Fez, I haven't seen any of the "arcade" games on the 360 being released in such a terrible state, in fact I have been able to play through any of the ones that interested me enough to buy.

 

for bigger games, they afford the patch anyway, but most publishers are interested in the bottom line and don't want any more patches than necessary. 

Can you offer any examples of devs who've had their fees waived? There might be some, but I've never heard of it.

 

If they are waiving the fees it completely negates the point of having fees to discourage poor development.

 

There was a couple who was written about a lon time back. thoguh it was more about the publishign fees since Fez is the only developer I have seen who released such a badly coded game AND patch that he actually needed it. 

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Dunno, outside of Fez, I haven't seen any of the "arcade" games on the 360 being released in such a terrible state, in fact I have been able to play through any of the ones that interested me enough to buy.

 

for bigger games, they afford the patch anyway, but most publishers are interested in the bottom line and don't want any more patches than necessary. 

I was actually referring to bigger titles, but it applies to all. A developer shouldn't be penalized for wanting to fix bugs and/or improve a game. If anything they should get an award and those that don't bother should be the ones being charged.

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I prefer it when games are released without game breaking bugs personally more then patting peopel on the back for making a half done untested game and then for every time they fix their broken ######. 

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You're right in expecting games to be free of game breaking bugs, but sometimes it happens. When the patch was released, MS allowed it through the cert system, then pulled it, then agreed the 1% of save game corruption was pretty low so allowed it back.

 

I'd just say there is enough blame to go around.

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I prefer it when games are released without game breaking bugs personally more then patting peopel on the back for making a half done untested game and then for every time they fix their broken ****. 

 

True, but it's sorta ridiculous to expect anyone to be perfect. Even Microsoft's own games have their share of bugs and glitches. :ermm:

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So Microsoft gives him the platform with the audience for the game to sell over 200,000 copies. At $10 a pop,thats 2 million dollars. He knows the terms of XBLA, writes ###### code, and now blames Microsoft. What? why don't you pony up some of that money you made and stop blaming others you cheap ass.

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I prefer it when games are released without game breaking bugs personally more then patting peopel on the back for making a half done untested game and then for every time they fix their broken ****. 

I think it is unrealistic to expect games to be bug free on release (game breaking bugs at release are actually quite rare). But I don't want developers abandoning all improvements the second it is launched and "running". I want them to fix as many bugs as they can, improve mechanics, respond to user criticism and add new features or content if they feel like it. Several PC games I've got (some of which are relatively old) are still having bugs fixed and features improved.

 

The correct way to stop game breaking bugs on release is to vet the games pre-release. And let's face it, the companies most likely to release games in such a state are the same ones who basically abandon them post-release.

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So Microsoft gives him the platform with the audience for the game to sell over 200,000 copies. At $10 a pop,thats 2 million dollars. He knows the terms of XBLA, writes ****ty code, and now blames Microsoft. What? why don't you pony up some of that money you made and stop blaming others you cheap ass.

 

Did MS make nothing from the arrangement?

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Did MS make nothing from the arrangement?

 

listen, its part of the terms that he agreed upon,before hand. he has no right to complain. if he really cares about his customers,he will pay up, but since he doesn't want to pay, of course he is going to pass blame. that is his problem,and his only.

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I prefer it when games are released without game breaking bugs personally more then patting peopel on the back for making a half done untested game and then for every time they fix their broken ****. 

Games that are fine have been getting a lot of patches too, look for example at Blizzard who continually releases patches for their games. It's naive to conclude that patches are only good to fix "game breaking bugs".

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listen, its part of the terms that he agreed upon,before hand. he has no right to complain. if he really cares about his customers,he will pay up, but since he doesn't want to pay, of course he is going to pass blame. that is his problem,and his only.

No one is disputing that. 

 

The ###### patch released was vetting by the MS testing process. If MS cared about their customers perhaps they should have waived the recertification fee.

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Has anyone seen the Indie Developers documentary? This guy is an arrogant tool.

 

Agreed. Phil, Jonathan Blow & Tommy from Team Meat all come across as very difficult to work with. Phil's partner was tired of him so much he left the company (I'm sure there was more to it than that), Jonathan Blow pretty much admitted he doesn't/didn't like working with others and Tommy has ADHD iirc so he gets very irate. However, there is plenty of others like the RCR dev (forget his name right now), or Lanning from Oddworld who all share the same sentiments so I don't doubt for a second their "essentials" and demands are frustrating to work around. They made sense when XBLA was in it's infancy but they're desperately outdated today. That's why it's going to be such a problem for the X1 too IMO, they don't seem to be doing anything to solve them.

 

Before anyone mentions BUILD, I really couldn't give a **** about it. It's not going to be the turning point for MS & major restructuring is required.

 

I'm pretty sure I remember people saying Sony charges for you to push out game updates as well.    One could say there's a incentive in charging devs this.  While on one hand it sucks because the little guy can't pay the costs right away, if it all, so the game takes long to get patched or never does.  On the other hand, if you know this policy ahead of time, and all of them did going in I'm sure, then all the more reason to beta test as much as you can before you send it out.

 

Both MS and Sony charge for updates which, if you believe Double Fine, amounted to $40K. There obviously needs to be some sort of quality control in place to stop developers releasing buggy games. It shouldn't be there to stop people releasing "crapware" as some call it. One man's trash is another's treasure yadda yadda. That overhead needs to be paid for so it will never be free. Is it really worth $20K at a time? I don't think so, especially when they don't get it right and we see TU after TU from some.

 

Can you offer any examples of devs who've had their fees waived? There might be some, but I've never heard of it.

 

If they are waiving the fees it completely negates the point of having fees to discourage poor development.

 

While maybe not exactly what you guys were talking about the biggest example would be Minecraft iirc. The updates are both free to push for 4J and download for gamers.

 

I know Major Nelson has spoke about it before on his podcast and depending on the negotiations they will waive them too. So you could assume that means they'll let them update freely if they stay exclusive or something.

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