Creativity goes lo-res

>> Indie developer Phil Fish works the
gaming industry his own way

NO CORPORATE TIMETABLE: Fish

by ERIK LEIJON

Twenty-three-year-old Montreal developer Phil Fish has a funny story about a recent appearance on the MusiquePlus’s video game show M. Net. The show’s crew and a Ubisoft Montreal employee were admiring how great Assassin’s Creed looked in HD. “Sure beats something made by two guys in a basement,” the Ubisoft employee said within earshot of Fish.

But, ironically enough, that’s precisely what Fish is proudly doing, and his Mario/Sonic homage Fez (in demo form) was nominated in the design innovation and excellence in visual art categories at the 10th annual Independent Games Festival, being held this February in San Francisco. The former Ubisoft Montreal designer is part of a growing wave of independent game makers.

“The whole indie [gaming scene] comes from a big frustration in the gaming industry,” he says. “A lot of people glamorize it, but 99 per cent of the time, you’re working for a client and you don’t get to do what you want. It’s really not as creative as some people make it out to be.”

The Fez development team consists of only Fish and engine creator Renaud Bédard, along with two contributors. Named in honour of the stylish headwear, the minimalist yet innovative Fez stars a two-dimensional hero who must make his way through a Mario-style 3D world. The game always looks 2D, but players can rotate the camera around the character, revealing the levels are actually made up of 3D cubes. Fish calls them trixels, since every cube is a six-sided figure with pixels (which is single dot on a computer graphic) on each side. He created the pixels on Photoshop before incorporating them into the game.

Fish is also a co-founder of Kokoromi, a local game collective made up of similarly minded developers. Since 2006, they’ve organized two GAMMA events at the SAT, which provide a chance for indie developers from around the world to show off their low-res creations.

Unencumbered by a corporate timetable, Fish is giving himself a year to release the completed game to the public, which means sometime in 2008. Since he constructed the game using Microsoft XNA computer game design tools, PC and Xbox Live Arcade releases are possible.

“I think we’re at a special point in time with [pay-online game download] distribution systems—there’s now an outlet for these games in a commercially viable setting,” he says. “It’s attractive for the platform holders because a two-man team is inexpensive and they’re looking for content.

“Today, one guy can do what a team of 25 could do back in 1995 on a Sega Genesis game.”