Like many artists who throw their entire being into a single artistic endeavor, indie developer Phil Fish had reached a point of utter exhaustion while creating his Xbox Live Arcade game,
Fez.
And after so many years of working on a single title, Fish isn't really sure where his future lies once it's all over -- the game is under certification at Microsoft and slated for release early next year. "I seriously have no clue [what I'll do next]," he admits in a
new Gamasutra feature interview. "Now I own [my studio] Polytron 100 percent, I can do whatever I want with it, and I don't know what I want to do with it."
He questions, "Do I want to just stay really small, and keep collaborating on weird little small-scale things with my friends? Or do I want to hire a couple of people, do I want to become [
Flower's] thatgamecompany?"
While the latter is something that Fish is leaning towards, he notes, "I don't know if I'm ready for that, because it's a huge commitment."
"If I just started a company and have a bunch of people that depend on you for salaries and all that, I would need a business plan. I would need a partner that I could trust that would run the company while I make the game. I really don't know; I really don't know what's going to happen."
He is also very much aware that when people think of the name "Phil Fish," they think of
Fez -- and he worries that much he has learned while making the game will be nontransferable.
"I am going to have to completely redefine myself at that point, because I feel like most of the skills that I've acquired making
Fez only apply to
Fez he says.
"You know, the way the pixel art works in that game only works like that in that game. I'm not going to be able to take what I learned from that and put it in another game, unless I end up making something very similar to
Fez, which is not the case."
The full feature-length interview is
now live on Gamasutra.
