Philippe Poisson, born on November 1, 1984, is better known as Phil Fish. He is a former game designer from Quebec, famous for creating the 2012 platformer game Fez. He was born and raised in Quebec, where his early experiences with Nintendo games influenced his work. He studied game design at the Montreal National Animation and Design Centre. Before starting his own company, Polytron, in 2008, he worked at Ubisoft and Artificial Mind and Movement.
Fish was part of Kokoromi, a group that creates experimental games, and helped organize Montreal’s annual GAMMA games events. While working on Fez, he also developed other games at Polytron, such as SuperHyperCube and Power Pill. Fez was released in April 2012 after taking five years to make. The final stages of its development were shown in the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which made Fish well-known in the gaming world.
After an online argument and doxxing, Fish announced he would leave game development twice in the next two years. He cited unfair treatment from the industry as the reason. Later, Polytron released the 2015 game Panoramical, and Fish returned with Kokoromi to release SuperHyperCube in 2016.
Early life and career
Phil Fish was born Philippe Poisson in Montreal in 1984. He grew up in Quebec, where his parents shared their love for art and video games with him. His father translated The Legend of Zelda into French so they could play together. Fish says these early experiences were important and influenced his later work on the game Fez. He completed the 2004 Design and Digital Art for Video Games program at the Montreal NAD (National Animation and Design Centre).
Fish started his career at Ubisoft, a video game publisher, where he worked as a level designer on Open Season. At first, he was excited about the job. However, he became unhappy with the large teams and working conditions. Fish later called this experience "the worst of my life." He was eventually fired from the company.
On May 24, 2006, Fish won the Artificial Mind and Movement Award for Best Cut-Scene at the NAD Center Awards of Excellence Gala. Later that year, he worked as a level designer at Artificial Mind and Movement, designing games based on movies, such as The Golden Compass.
Fish is a founding member of Kokoromi, a group that creates and promotes experimental video games. In November 2006, he organized an event called GAMMA 01 Audio Feed at the Arcadia Festival, which included games that used live sound. He planned similar events, GAMMA 256 in 2007 and GAMMA 3D in November 2008 in Montreal. Fish was invited to speak about GAMMA 01 at the 2007 Game Developers Conference. He also wrote a review of the 1999 game Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver for the 2007 book Space Time Play: Synergies Between Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: the Next Level.
Sean Hollister of The Verge described Fish as "notorious for expressing angry, controversial opinions about video games." At the Game Developers Conference in March 2012, a Japanese developer asked Fish for his opinion on modern Japanese games. Fish responded, "your games just suck." Many people criticized this comment as racist. In 2023, Alex Donaldson of VG247 said the comment "became the banner-bearer" for racist Western attitudes toward Japanese-developed games. Keiji Inafune, co-creator of Mega Man, defended Fish’s remark as needed criticism. Fish initially defended his comments but later admitted he had been rude and apologized.
Polytron
Fish worked with Shawn McGrath, an indie developer from Toronto, to create a puzzle game based on McGrath’s idea of showing 3D spaces through 2D views. Fish designed the game’s artwork until the partnership ended because of creative disagreements. Fish wanted the game to be more of a platform game. He continued working on the project in his free time and added a feature called voxels, which are 3D pixels that can be viewed from four sides. The game became Fez, and its design, story, and artwork came from this mechanic. Fish found a programmer named Renaud Bédard through DeviantArt, and Bédard became the game’s programmer. 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, did not allow him to take time off to attend the event, so he left his job. He called this January 2008 moment “when I became indie.” The game gained widespread attention after being shown at the festival, which led Fish to start Polytron Corporation as a new company with help from a government loan.
Polytron later ran out of money and almost closed when its neighbor, Trapdoor, a developer-producer from Quebec, offered help without taking ownership of the game’s intellectual property. Fish said this partnership saved Fez. The game faced several delays over the next few years, which gained some attention.
In late 2009, Polytron presented an iPhone game called Power Pill at Pecha Kucha Montreal. The game features a pill that travels through human bodies and uses the iPhone’s multi-touch screen. The game was made with Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo, and a level editor was planned. While working on Fez, Fish revived a game project called SuperHyperCube, which used Wiimote motion capture and stereoscopic navigation. Fish thought the game would work better with Kinect motion tracking. The adapted version was a finalist at Indiecade 2011.
Fish and Fez were highlighted in the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which gave Fish unusual celebrity status among game developers. The film follows several indie developers during their game-making journeys and shows Fish preparing for Fez’s booth at PAX East in March 2011. The film also shows Fish dealing with a legal dispute with a former business partner, Jason DeGroot, who contributed music to the game. DeGroot is shown negatively in the film and does not appear on-screen. The film also shows Fish’s personal and emotional connection to Fez. Eurogamer called a scene where Fish resolves to kill himself if he does not release the game “the film’s most startling moment.” Rock, Paper, Shotgun described Fish as melodramatic, existential, theatrical, and neurotic compared to other developers in the film. Game Informer called Fish the film’s “most memorable developer.”
Near the end of Fez’s development, Fish felt “burnt out” and that his health had suffered. Fez was released on April 13, 2012, and sold 200,000 copies during its first year on the Xbox Live Arcade. Metacritic described the game’s reception as “generally favorable,” and the 2013 PC version received “universal acclaim.” While in development, Fez won the 2012 GDC Independent Games Festival’s Seamus McNally Grand Prize, the 2011 Indiecade Best in Show and Best Story/World Design, and the 2008 GDC Independent Games Festival’s Excellence in Visual Art. Eurogamer gave Fez a perfect score and named it “the perfect, wordless sci-fi parable” for their 2012 Game of the Year. The game sold one million copies by the end of 2013, and Fish announced plans for versions on most video game platforms. The New York Times compared Fish to “a Quentin Tarantino of 8-bit gaming.”
A Fez sequel was announced at the end of the Horizon indie game press conference during the June 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo. A Twitter argument between Fish and GameTrailers journalist Marcus Beer later led to the project’s cancellation and Fish’s announced exit from the industry. In an episode of his show Invisible Walls, Beer criticized Fish’s recent comments about Microsoft’s Xbox One self-publishing policy change. On Twitter, Fish criticized the industry for its negativity before his final tweet announced the cancellation and his departure. The news surprised Polytron, which has not commented on future projects except for ports since the sequel’s cancellation. Polygon listed Fish in their top 50 newsmakers of 2013 for the social impact of his “caustic use of Twitter.”
In June 2014, Fish launched Polytron Partners, a new effort by Polytron to fund and support indie game projects, like a publisher. For their first game, Polytron partnered with Finji to create an “interactive musical landscape anthology” game called Panoramical. Fish was an early target of Gamergate; his personal and company records were hacked and released publicly in August 2014. Fish responded by announcing that the company and Fez property were for sale.
After two times announcing his exit from the video game industry, Fish remained connected with Kokoromi. Together, they finished SuperHyperCube in late 2016 as one of the first PlayStation VR games. He also designed the boot-up animations for the Analogue Super Nt console in 2017.
Fish spoke about the cancellation of Fez 2 and his self-declared departure from the industry in a 2023 interview on the My Perfect Console podcast. He said the cancellation had less to do with the argument with Beer and more to do with his lack of interest in making a sequel. He called the Twitter dispute an “out” that came from his frustrations about becoming a public figure after Indie Game: The Movie and the pressure to create a sequel he did not want to make. Fish said Fez 2 only had basic concept art, making the cancellation decision easier. He claimed he was working on a new project, which he hinted might not be a video game.