Over the weekend the internet’s own Phil Fish canceled the follow up to his smash hit indie game Fez. In a statement on the Polytron web page that reads:

FEZ II is cancelled. i am done. i take the money and i run. this is as much as i can stomach. this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign. you win.

The news strikes me as kind of sad and sadly inevitable. The inevitability that eventually the internet would publicly break someone and we as a society would lose something.

In a seemingly divine twist of fate, Indie Game: The Movie, the film that featured Mr. Fish, released a downloadable content pack (in 2013 the world is such an awesome place) which dealt with internet trollsmanship and how it affected Team Meat. Edmund McMillen, the designer and artist of Super Meat Boy, got so stressed out by internet hate that he basically went Amish and stopped reading about himself and his games. Tommy Refenes the game's programmer and Senior Lady Mac’er, stopped work and had to close down the free “Meat World” service that allowed user created levels for their infamously difficult and addictive million selling Super Meat Boy because of an internet troll.

Imagine that. Two grown men, successful in a field they love, had to abandon something they were passionate about because of the toll it took on their souls. That is chilling. It is so hard to make a dream come true in its self. There is nothing about programming a video game that prepares you for people trying to hurt you.

Phil Fish makes games and has opinions. Disagree or agree and move on. If you feel very strongly, disagree with the point publicly or in person but stay on topic. Disagree without being disagreeable to borrow a hackneyed expression. That bit of advice applies to life and is not exclusive to Phil Fish or game developers. You will never be objective if you think you are arguing with Satan. Then again I am applying rational thinking to irrational people. In those special cases I use a powerful tool I call “Fuck’em.”

What makes the Phil Fish episode so strange to me is that this time the disparaging remarks came from a “professional.” I put the quotes around professional because Im not sure of his profession. It doesn’t appear to be journalism the way he called out two prominent developers for being ‘hipsters’ and ‘toss pots’ (very classy move on the latter sir.) Now we may lose Fez 2 as a community. I dont love or hate Phil Fish, Ive never met the man, but it is a shame that we lose a work of art and passion.

Part of me hopes Phil backs down and finishes the game. Part of me wants him to hold to the cancellation. There would be some tragic poetry in that. Ultimately I wish people would be more opinionated but more human. I know. I am a hopeless dreamer.

    Off the bat, I thought I would say that I know this is an odd place to post about sports. I am something of a Journalism student and every summer my writing skills atrophy which leads to poor writing in the Fall, which then leads to a mad scramble to save my grade in December. So I made a 4th of July Resolution to write more. Even if they never see the light of day or are about any particular topic, just the act of tapping on the keyboard will hopefully keep the rust away. Now, movin’ on.
 
     The MLB all star teams were announced over the weekend and for those who don’t know, the starters are chosen by the fan votes and the reserves are chosen by the All Star team manager. Now I am not a fan of fans, and I lose faith in democracy every time "John Coffee" wins a democratic primary in South Carolina, but this year I think the fans put most of the right people in the game. 

     I can’t even argue with the Derek Jeter selection this year, (God knows Id like to, but its not a Yankee thing, its a Jeter thing, today Rob Cano is MVP) but he has been genuinely good. Personally, I would have liked to see the Toronto Blue Jays’ Alex Gonzalez get on the team as he has 7 more home runs and 30 points of OPS on Jeter. But I have come to grips with the fact that I live in a world where The British Bulldog is dead and Jake the Snake is still just walking around in the physical world and Derek Jeter will receive a million All-star votes 3 years after he retires.

Ok I heard it first here on the GB forums about Pepsi's partnership in a Rockband2 giveaway.  I have a job where I am on the road every morning at 6am and I religiously stop at gas stations to buy a soda as I am not a coffee drinker and 6am is really fucking early.  I figured I am going to buy a bottle of pop every morning and I dont have a problem drinking Diet Pepsi, I might as well win some songs. 

I entered 15 codes and won 15 tracks no big deal (sidenote: I have been thinking of a way to give away some of these free tracks to the community as I ran out of songs I need to download).  So I figured what the hell, Ill throw a point on winning a Full Rockband2 special editiion Kit... And I won again...  Im not complaining but good lord I just have the magic touch on this contest.

I was drunk in Walmart (it happens more than you would guess) and walking through the cheap bin of games and in that state and on that night... I just had to have Lips...

All the Enthusiasim but only Half the People in this pictureO

At the time: Conker's Bad Fur Day, but it really didnt age well.

All the Banjo Kazooie games have a timeless humor so Ill just say that whole series.

I feel good being able to read about games with out taking a remedial business class.