Fez programmer “will probably not be working at Polytron” again

Did you know that Fez was programmed by one guy? He won’t be doing that again anytime soon.

“I will probably not be working at Polytron after Fez,” Renaud Bédard told Edge Online. “We’ve been a really close-knit team for five years, and that’s not necessarily healthy.”

“Being a lone programmer is a great experience: you do everything in the game, but you never have anybody to learn from or bounce ideas off. There’s the internet and forums, but that’s not the same experience as being part of a proper team, and I think that’s the experience I’m after now.”

He also blames the game’s five-year development time and numerous delays on his own lack of experience, as well as Fez creator and world famous Japanese game hater Phil Fish’s high standards.

“[My] experience was a big part of it,” he explained. “I was the only programmer, it was my first game, and it turned out to be a game of such scope.”

“We also didn’t have a clear methodology that allowed us to set clear goals. We’d always say, ‘OK, it’s coming out in six months,’ but we didn’t really know what that meant.”

“There’s also perfectionism, and that’s down to Phil. If it’s not up to the standards we set ourselves, it’s not good enough. At many points, me and other people in the team were like, ‘We need to get this out. Everyone’s complaining. Everyone’s burnt out.’ But that’s Phil, his personality, and his vision of himself: he can’t just say, ‘That’s good enough, and that’s what you’re going to get.'”

The game got a 90 over on Metacritic, though, so that worked out.