‘I thought I might never work in another game again’: MindsEye and Mafia 3 star has wondered if he has ‘the sh*t brown touch’

The star of MindsEye and Mafia 3 has spoken about how being the protagonist in two critical disappointments affected his confidence.

In an interview with the FRVR Podcast, Alex Hernandez – who played Jacob Diaz in MindsEye and Lincoln Clay in Mafia 3 – spoke about the abuse he received for his roles in each game, and his reaction to the negative reception each game received.

Speaking of the online discourse following the disastrous launch of MindsEye, Hernandez said he received abuse from strangers online that he knew they would never say to his face.

“Video gamers are a unique species, and I’m one of them, where the attachment to the experience and the product is so strong, the feelings are so strong,” he explained.

“The internet is an anonymous place where people will share things they would never say to your face, ever. Even if they actually hated it, even if they thought it was a pile of trash, they just wouldn’t look you in the face and be like ‘everyone who worked on this game deserves to die, this is fucking awful, you people are idiots, how could you have done this’. No one would ever say that to your face.

“And I think at the same time, you’re entitled to that. You paid your $60, your £60, whatever you paid for the game, it’s the internet, you have your opinion, you want to share it.”

“I think for like 48 hours I had allowed the anticipation and the excitement of ‘it’s finally happening, it’s finally coming out’. And I’m not even going to lie – I’ll say this here, I’ll say it anywhere – the trailer was fire as fuck. The trailer they put out, while people did have the criticism, which was valid, that there wasn’t much gameplay in the trailer, but the actual trailer itself, I was like ‘this shit is fire, it looks awesome’.

“And so when you see that, you go ‘alright, maybe this is gonna pay a return, it’s gonna be the thing’. And when people have the response that they had – with all of the criticism, valid and otherwise, that they had – as resilient as I am, and as much in my career I have developed pretty thick skin, it was a good two days of ‘fuck’.

Hernandez said the reaction to the game made him worry that he would never get another video game role again, because people would associate himself with a massive flop.

“Just based on the response – not based on the work itself, not based on the work of the cinematographer, the game designer, of anyone, it’s not the actual work – but the response, I was like ‘I might never work in another game again’,” he said. “Because one of the caveats of being the face on the box is that people, rightly or wrongly, will associate all of their opinions and more importantly their emotions about this game with my face.

“And in the future, as they purchase games, as they perhaps go on to develop their own games, as they critique and share with their friends what games they should and shouldn’t buy, and their experiences with them, my name will now be associated with something that many people have regarded as pretty fucking bad.

“And as an artist, as a man, as a gamer, that hurts. It’s like wildly painful. And after about two days of allowing myself to wallow and my wife being very supportive and very like ‘I get it, this was something you had a lot of fun doing, you were really into, you thought it was going to be great, it looked awesome’, you move on. Because for me to sit in that wallowing, it doesn’t allow me to learn.

“For me, most important is that everything in life is a growth opportunity, the successes and the failures, and you learn more from failure than from success. And so in this particular instance, the biggest growth opportunity for me is that serenity prayer about accepting the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference, this for me was one of those moments.

“Because while there have been a number of people who have felt for whatever reason that I was the appropriate page, the appropriate Instagram account, the appropriate Facebook account to vent about gameplay and performance bugs and their graphics card which is one year old isn’t good enough to run this game – I don’t know why they thought I of all people was the one to take that on – that’s fine, I welcome that.

“Because there have also been a much higher number of people that, if they’re going to seek me out specifically, [give] comments of ‘the game is trash but you’re great’, ‘your performance is awesome, I wish you were in a better game’, and [I have to learn] that I did my job, I can’t be responsible for the whole thing even though my face is on the box.

“I have to accept the reality there are some amount of gamers who are going to carry that negativity with them, and let’s say I get cast in some massive project from (ironically of all places) Rockstar or something like that, a massive mocap project where again it’s my face. And I can already see the internet, the YouTube trailer flurried with ‘this is the guy from fucking MindsEye and Mafia 3, every game he was in was fucking trash and blah blah, it’s trash, it’s trash’. And like, that’s great, and to that all I can do is say ‘yeah, that’s a valid critique, that’s the way you feel’.”

Despite taking learnings from the experience, Hernandez said he did feel at times like he had something of an unlucky touch, having been the star in two separate poorly received games, but that he’s proud of his accomplishments regardless of the reception to the finished products.

“I’m not a superstitious man but there can’t help but be some Spidey Sense tingling that’s like ‘is it just me? Do I have the opposite of the golden touch? Like the fucking shit brown touch? Everything I touch turns to poop?’” he explained. “It is the flipside of the blessing that it is to be the guy on the box.

“But here’s the reality, and I say this with no ego attached to it. I have two boxes in my house that have my fucking face on them. I got to work on video games. I was a 13-year-old kid playing games who was like ‘I wanna do that one day’, and then I fucking did twice. In fact, I’ve done it 20 times, it’s just twice it’s actually my face, the rest of the time it’s just my voice. I am blessed to work in a job that I love with people who are incredibly talented and intelligent, and even when things go off the rails there’s still some excellent work.”