Phil Fish

Philippe Poisson (born 1984), better known as Phil Fish, is a French Canadian former indie game designer best known for his work on the 2012 platform game Fez.

He was born and raised in Quebec, where his experiences with Nintendo games in his youth would later influence his game design.

Phil Fish was born Philippe Poisson in Montreal in 1984.

He was raised in Quebec, where his parents shared their interest in art and gaming with him.

Fish's father translated The Legend of Zelda into French so the two could play together.

Fish credits these memories as formative, and later cited their influence on Fez.

He also wrote a review of the 1999 Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver in the 2007 book Space Time Play: Synergies Between Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: the Next Level.

Fish has been characterized by Sean Hollister of The Verge as "notorious for voicing angry, controversial opinions about the state of video games".

He graduated from the 2004 Design and Digital Art for Video Games program at the Montreal NAD (National Animation and Design Centre).

Fish began his career at the video game publisher Ubisoft, where he worked on Open Season as a level designer.

He was initially excited for the job but grew disenchanted with their large development teams and working conditions.

Fish later described it as "the worst experience of [his] life".

He was later fired from the company.

On May 24, 2006, Fish won the Artificial Mind and Movement Award for Best Cut-Scene at the annual NAD Center Awards of Excellence Gala.

Later that year, Fish began work as a level designer at Artificial Mind and Movement, where he designed for film tie-in games including The Golden Compass.

Fish is a founding member of Kokoromi, a group that designs and promotes experimental video games.

His November 2006 Arcadia Festival event, GAMMA 01 Audio Feed, featured games that incorporated live sound.

Fish planned a similar event, GAMMA 256, for 2007, and a third event, GAMMA 3D, for November 2008 in Montreal.

Fish was invited to present a lecture on GAMMA 01 at the 2007 Game Developers Conference.

Fez was first announced in July 2007 and was nominated for two awards at the 2008 Game Developers Conference Independent Games Festival.

Fish's employer, Artificial Mind and Movement, would not let him take leave from work to attend, so Fish quit.

He studied game design at the Montreal National Animation and Design Centre, and worked at Ubisoft and Artificial Mind and Movement before starting Polytron in 2008.

Fish was a founding member of Kokoromi, a collective that explores experimental gameplay ideas, and organized Montreal's annual GAMMA games events.

While Fez was in development, Fish worked on other unreleased games at Polytron including SuperHyperCube and Power Pill.

He marked this January 2008 moment as "when I became indie".

The game received widespread attention upon its showing at the festival, leading Fish to open Polytron Corporation as a startup company with a government loan.

Polytron later ran out of money and was on the verge of folding when the company's Québécois neighbor, developer-producer Trapdoor, offered to help Polytron without transferring its intellectual property rights.

Fez was released in April 2012 to widespread acclaim after a protracted five-year development cycle.

Its final phases of development were shown in the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which brought Fish fame unusual for game developers.

Following an online argument and doxxing, Fish publicly announced his exit from game development twice over the next two years, citing long-term mistreatment by the industry.

In a notable incident at the Game Developers Conference in March 2012, a Japanese developer asked Fish for his opinion on modern Japanese games, to which Fish replied, "your games just suck".

Many condemned Fish's comment as racist; Alex Donaldson of VG247 wrote in 2023 that it "became the banner-bearer" for racist Western attitudes towards Japanese-developed games.

Conversely, Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune defended Fish's remark as necessary criticism.

Fish initially defended the comments, but later acknowledged that he had been rude and apologized.

Fish began to work with Toronto-based indie developer Shawn McGrath on McGrath's idea for a puzzle game that showed 2D views of a 3D space.

Fish provided the project's art until the partnership crumbled due to creative differences: Fish wanted their product to be more of a platform game.

Fish continued to work on the game in his spare time, and incorporated the idea of voxels (3D pixels), where a 2D pixel could be seen from four sides.

The game would become Fez and the game's design, lore, and art derived from this game mechanic.

Fish searched for a programmer on DeviantArt and Renaud Bédard, the first person to apply, became the game's programmer.

Polytron later published the 2015 Panoramical, and Fish returned with Kokoromi to release SuperHyperCube in 2016.