PS4 Developer Talks About The GIF That Made Him Famous

Nate Fox feels kind of weird about seeing his face everywhere on the Internet. Wouldn’t you?

Fox, a longtime employee of Sucker Punch and the director of the upcoming PlayStation 4 game Infamous: Second Son, achieved a certain level of Internet fame in February, during the big PS4 reveal conference, when he made a funny face and it was caught on camera.

You can see the GIF above. You’ll also find it frequently used as a reaction on message boards like NeoGAF and Reddit. That’s kind of our fault, although Fox’s expression likely would have been GIF-alyzed with or without our help.

Last month in Seattle, when I visited Sucker Punch and met the people behind Second Son, I asked Fox what it’s like to be Internet-famous. Here’s how it went:

Jason Schreier, Kotaku writer: So, Nate, I have to ask: how do you feel about that GIF of your face being plastered all over?

Nate Fox, Infamous: Second Son director: It is humiliating.

Schreier: Is it?

Fox: Well, it’s not humiliating, it’s fine.

Schreier: I feel like it’s goodhearted—it’s not like people are making fun.

Fox: So, alright, here’s what happened. We made this video, this really cool video that featured that kind of 2D art style of the game which you saw today. It had these kinda neat transitions and sound effects. And I timed my speech out against the video—I thought, this’ll be great, people will be looking at the video. I’m just some bag of meat talking, right?

So I timed what I’m saying against this big snazzy transition in the video, and in one of them, I’m waiting while there’s this transition happening. And my sentence, you know, I’ll stop halfway because it’s being accented by the movie, but in the transmission of the show they put the camera on me. So I’m just saying sentences that stop halfway through and it doesn’t make any sense at all. And then I’ll pick it up again and I didn’t know they would be looking at me.

Schreier: Oh no.

Fox: So I did not feel very cool. But it’s fine. It’s cool. Whatever.

Schreier: When was the first time you saw your face in GIF form?

Fox: I was at work, and my face lit up like Rudolph’s nose. It was a little embarrassing. Whatever. You know, it’s fun—that event was the highlight of making Second Son for me so far. It was so great, both to be able to talk about the game that we’ve been working on for a while, and talk about a theme that I’m really passionate about, this security—environment that we live in. And to be around other people that were making PS4 content.

It felt like we’re all in it together man. Behind stage, the feeling was, you know, we’re scared, we’re nervous. And then when we got done giving our speeches, there was high-fiving in there, this sense of community. It was great.