Let’s take a small step outside of gaming for a bit. Don’t worry, it’ll just be two paragraphs worth of text, and it’ll only be to set the stage.
Last June, former Boston Fire Chief Steve Abraira resigned from his post following public criticism about his response to the horrible Boston Marathon bombings, summarized in a letter signed by every other fire chief in the city department.
The baseless attacks by the Deputy Chiefs, especially their actions of making this a matter of public debate by leaking their letter of April 26 to the press, has made it impossible for me to continue to do my job.
Last week, actress Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds, Red 2, R.I.P.D.) mulled over the possibility of walking out of the spotlight after repeated exposure to hateful blog and social media comments, personal attacks, and the “mean culture” of the Internet.
I don’t know if you can imagine a friend sending you something they thought was funny, that was something mean someone wrote about you and there’s like 50 comments from complete strangers across the world about you - and you can say ‘Oh I let it roll off my back’ and ‘I wouldn’t take it personally’, but you have no idea until it happens to you. It doesn’t feel nice.
Yesterday, indie game developer Phil Fish (Fez) announced that he’s quitting the videogame industry because of “the negativity and criticism it’s brought.” This came after a particularly heated argument with known videogame, critic Marcus Beer.
Fez 2 is cancelled. I am done. I take the money and I run. This is as much as I can stomach. This isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign. You win.
Seriously. I would’ve loved a Fez 2 , even if I’d never played Fez myself. Why? Not just because it would be good for the videogame industry as a whole (yes, it would be, but fuck the industry). Not just because fans would love to see a sequel (maybe they do, maybe they don’t; fuck the fans). But because Phil Fish loves making games, and he shouldn’t be bullied into quitting just because other people seem to be more fond of ripping his work and public image apart rather than enjoying his creation.
That said…
Critics tend to be penises. Big, angry, throbbing penises. But that shouldn’t stop people from doing awesome things and making awesome stuff. And for every casualty of a critical hit, there’s another who rises to the challenge.
Take Michael Bay for instance. Critics hate the man. Just check out Rotten Tomatoes for the ratings of the movies he directed. The Rock? 67%, his highest-rated film; also his oldest. The Island? 40%. Bad Boys and Bad Boys II? 43% and 23%. His three Transformers movies? An average of 38%. All critical flops. All earned millions. You’d think that moviegoers would spend a little less money on films that critics say aren’t any good.
I think they reviewed the wrong movie. They just don’t understand the movie and its audience. It’s silly fun. I am convinced that they are born with the anti-fun gene. The reviews are just so vicious. A lot of them are more personal than anything else.
Then there’s Amanda Palmer, a former Dresden Doll who seems to be getting more attention when she’s away from the mic than in front of it. Everything non-musical about her has been talked about, from her poetry to her husband, from her nipslips [NSFW] to her unshaved armpits. The Internet haters will find that there is no short supply of things to fuel their teeth-grinding engines, but perhaps the thing they hate most? The feeling that she probably doesn’t give a fuck.
The worst part of it is how it cements the fear that young girls are already battling, that the world is just waiting to judge you, your clothes, your weight, your looks. It baffles me that the vast majority of comments on some of my YouTube videos that have over a million hits are about the existence of my armpit hair, not the music, not the actual artistic content. And it’s 2013. I thought this was supposed to be the future. What happened?
That brings us back to games. Boy oh boy are gaming critics such hard-asses. It’d be too easy to go on and on about how critics have panned games whose developers went on to become hugely successful, so I won’t do that. Instead, let’s bring up some ancient history. People are unreliable, so criticism - to some degree - can be taken with a grain of salt. But numbers don’t lie, and for Hironobu Sakaguchi as well as the rest of Square way back in 1987, the numbers were telling a difficult truth. People were voting with their money, the most honest criticism of all, and sales were down. If Final Fantasy failed, two things would’ve happened: Sakaguchi says he would’ve quit game development altogether, and - according to Final Fantasy’s musical composer Nobuo Uematsu - Square would’ve gone bankrupt. Needless to say, that didn’t happen.
Way back then, the spirit was that we weren’t making a product but a creation. It was putting our soul into the production – pouring all of your ideas into the game, even if they crop up during development; not saving anything for the sequel.
So, Phil. Mr. Fish. Dude. You’re frustrated and discouraged and you hate the games industry more than it hates you. You’ve got a lot of reason to be; not everybody can attest to putting up with the amount of shit dealt your way. But at the same time, not everybody can say they’ve found the one thing that drives them. You found your passion, and moreover, you acted on it. Nevermind that it resonated with people around the world, that’s secondary (but Achievement Unlocked! anyway). You did it first for yourself, and you’ll only be denying yourself the pleasure of continuing to chase your dream by quitting.