Bleszinski Appeals To Phil Fish: Get Back In The Game

Beat the haters by outperforming, not by quitting, says Bleszinski.

“Never forget that the internet can be a fantastic thing,” says Cliff Bleszinski in an open letter to Phil Fish, “but it can also be fantastically dumb.” Bleszinski’s hoping against hope that Fish can be persuaded to return to gaming, after Fish’s flame-out a couple days back. “I’m getting out of games because I choose not to put up with this abuse anymore,” Fish said at the time. Bleszinski knows how Fish feels; he’s had 20 years worth of the same kind of abuse thrown at him, but the only way to win, says Bleszinski, is to throw all that hate into your work. Then you “unleash one big giant motherfucking HADOKEN upon the community that wins awards and sells millions,” leaving the haters to fester while you reap the rewards.

“You don’t owe a damned thing to any gaming journalist,” Bleszinski says. Journalists are just after hits, and they don’t care how they get them. Journalists make sure that the audience only sees what journalists want it to see, “through their often very skewed lens.” The argument that sparked this all off was between Fish and GameTrailers presenter Marcus Beer, which ended with Fish Tweeting a wish that Beer kill himself. There are too many ‘Rush Limbaughs’ out there, according to Bleszinski, but Fish doesn’t owe them anything; Fish owes his community a great product, nothing less. “The industry needs people like you to speak with their hearts before their brains,” says Bleszinski, “because I’m tired of hearing the PR approved appropriate response. I’m tired of games that feel like they’ve been developed by focus groups or clueless executives.”

“Right before the Beer-Twitter explosion,” says Bleszinski, “I saw that you acquired your Oculus Rift and your tweets about it were extremely exciting.” To lose the kind of VR game that Fish might have made is intolerable; Bleszinski would put his own money into that product, if he could. “Come back, Phil,” he asks. “We miss you already.”

Source: Clifford Unchained