Maybe we can finally put this crazy (but slightly entertaining) saga to bed. GoNintendo posted the rejection letter that developer Robert Pelloni received from Nintendo.
We have completed our evaluation of your application and are unable to offer your company Authorized Developer status at the present time.
With many stunts behind him during a time that is traditionally slow for video game news, maybe Bob can get himself a job with a viral marketing firm. Bob’s website has gone pretty cuckoo now, too.
Are you happy to see this story is finally over? (Or is it?)
For me it was over until this post.
*Returns to previous status*
I still don’t see why Nintendo didn’t green light the project – to me it all seems very strange behaviour on both sides.
sad story in every regard. crazy people just can’t win, turns out. too bad the crazy ones usually have the most entertaining stuff. i’m sure we’ll see it on some platform. hopefully on a homebrew’d DS.
I dunno…I still think that Bob (y’know, before he went batshit insane) should’ve been greenlighted. It would be cool to see the world of homebrew games and the world of the professionally produced games collide.
I’ll end up playing at it whenever and wherever it comes out; he went through so long putting it together and now has quite clearly gone crazy…it’ll certainly be interesting.
I don’t really see the problem that people have with Bob getting rejected. Nintendo has a policy for greenlighting developers and hundreds of developers still manage to get approved and make games for their systems. If Bob really has a great game then he needs to organize his business like all the other DS or Wii developers do and let us enjoy it. There are plenty of opportunities on PC or even XBLA Community games for those who want to develop a game and not invest in building a business around it. I wish Bob the best of luck but if he isn’t willing to play by the rules then I wish he would stop complaining about it.
The problem is that we’re in no way getting the full story from Bob’s end. Getting a developer’s license for the DS is NOT that difficult (have you seen some of the bullshit on the DS???). Bob is not very forthcoming in telling everyone that he is in fact falling short on other important criteria for the license. He is simply milking the rejection/inadequacy thing for attention and publicity. I’m sure he’s a smart guy when it comes to the tech (he’s definitely not an artist), but he apparently has no business since. If he really was so dedicated and really had something worthwhile constructed and playable, why didn’t he shop around to smaller publishers or other licensed developers and work something out? Seems to me that he is completely ignorant of exactly how the modern game industry actually works and that Nintendo can clearly see this. I applaud his hard work and creativity, but if he were truly serious about independently making games and releasing them to the world, Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox Live Community Games are by far the most accessible and straight forward.
And the stupid stunts that Bob keeps pulling are not helping his credibility in any way with anyone. They are unprofessional and downright juvenile.
And another thing…if he’s a hardcore Nintendo fan, why didn’t he just make it Wii-ware?
The way I see it, Nintendo won’t give it to him because they don’t see his company as a legitimate game developer business. Here is the quote directly from Bob’s site that quotes Nintendo’s letter:
“In evaluating developers, Nintendo looks for relevant game development experience.
In addition, Nintendo looks for secure business facilities, sufficient equipment and staffing, financial stability and other attributes that would distinguish the developer.”
They also said that cannot reevaluate it again until 6 months have passed, so I am sure this is not the end of Bob’s saga. We are definitely going to hear more stuff within the next 45 days that his protest is supposed to continue. I won’t be surprised if he appears again in 6 months.
As for his sanity, I highly doubt he is insane. Do you really think his friends and family would allow an insane person to continue without getting proper attention. Do you really think that his friend(s) would go with him to the Nintendo store in Manhattan if he was insane? I highly doubt that.
His stunts were most likely not supposed to get Nintendo’s attention, rather they were directed at the public in order to promote his game. You know what they say, any publicity is good publicity. Some people praise the game here, others put down the game there, either way the word gets out about Bob’s game. Maybe half the world population says screw it Bob is crazy, but the other half wants to play the game, what does Bob care, he is still going to make money. This was all just to get people’s attention, not Nintendo.
@Kale: The requirements for becoming a DS developer are the same as developing for WiiWare. So Bob would need the same application approval and he would need all those things that Nintendo rejected him for this time like “secure business facilities, sufficient equipment and staffing, financial stability and other attributes that would distinguish the developer”. I would agree with Attilio that Bob is not stupid, he just doesn’t have the experience, knowledge, and funding to establish himself as a developer in order to be approved, and so he is resorting to theatrics to place himself in the public eye. If I were a publisher I would have serious reservations about handling a game developed by someone with Bob’s level of immaturity, but I do hope that if he feels passionatly about the game we will see it become available in some form in the future (PC Bob, PC).
I feel that Bob’s antics may have done the complete opposite of paving the way for indie devs.
@ Paul
Ditto
To me Bob’s game ended on Jan 6, 2009 with his rant post saying that he was “..the GREATEST GAME DEVELOPER THAT EVER LIVED.” Note to future independent game developer’s this is not how you publicize your game. This is my speculation as to what happened:
- Bob works on Bob’s game for 5 years, learns how to make a game from scratch and wants to publish it on a Nintendo platform.
- Contacts and shows it to Nintendo. They sense that it has potential, but it still needs a lot of work to move it from indie to professional game status. A lot of developers have come to Nintendo in similar situations as Bob.
- The Bob’s Game website goes up and his game gets A LOT of press, he gets contacted by some smaller publishers.
- Nintendo takes a long time with their response for a developers license. Due to the goodwill and press surrounding his game and to speed up a response from Nintendo he starts a 100 Day Protest.
- The protest doesn’t go as well as planned. Begging turns into threats which culminate into the trashing of his work area on Jan 6, 2009.
- Realizing that Jan 6 post was a mistake he tries to do damage control and cover up the error. The “Bob’s Game” website turns into the “Bob’s Game” game website where the website is a game. He posts about how he is going to destroy Nintendo, each post is a level, etc.
- Nintendo denies his game developer request either due to the fact that he could potentially leak proprietary info or would rather not work with him due to his conduct.
It’s sad because I was looking forward to playing the game before all of the publicity stunts.
@Joe
I have to disagree about him trashing his work area. That really seemed staged, especially because his monitor was nicely placed against the wall, and suddenly worked normally (unless he got a new one). No monitor can take a hit like that and live to tell about it.
On top of that, from what I can tell, his PC vanished and there were more papers in the room then ever before. The piano he had on the side vanished as well.
Then suddenly the entire room was back to normal. There is no doubt in my mind that he staged the entire thing. Unless someone can say that they saw him trash everything through his live feed and prove what I’ve said as false, then my mind won’t be changed.
People like Bob need to get a grip. Go find a third party developer if you really think you have something. Acting all crazy and what not is not a way to get Nintendo to listen to you.
I sure as heck hope this story is over and done with. I’m done with Bob, that’s for sure.
@Attilio
You could be right, to me it doesn’t matter too much. I still think that his Jan 6th post was a genuine mistake because he was frustrated/tired from the protest and subsequent posts and storylines were trying to cover up that fact. In the end even if his plan was to punk everybody from the start (which I doubt) it doesn’t matter because he destroyed his reputation with the fans and press.
Good. Can’t say I’m surprised.
I never liked the guy. Too poser. Too Joker.
@Joe
His reputation is definitely tarnished, although I’m sure there are tons of people who could care less about him and just want to play his game already. Personally I’d like to give it a trial run and see why he says his game is so great. It may be horrible and it may be good, I don’t know, but I still wanna try it. The way he has acted really hasn’t changed my opinion on that, just my opinion of him.
Bob is an idiot. The way he keeps acting like a child for his ‘game’ to not get licensed for the DS isn’t going to help his cause, at all. Nintendo will look at that and say “This guy doesn’t seem too reliable” and therefore not allow Bob to make his game. Grant it, game developers do act whacky, but if they can’t get a game published, they won’t thrash around like a two year old would. They would continue to look for a publisher. If they can’t find one, then time to put it on the shelf and work on a new project. Yes, that is a waste of money, but so what. Every company faces the moment that a game goes gold or get’s shelved.
Also, how some of you have been saying that he should just put it onto XBLA or PSN or whatever service. I don’t think he wants to invest more time into having to recode nearly everything from the bottom screen. As we know, both those services don’t support touch screen or the specific code required. However, he could keep all his touch screen based code, smash the crap of what’s happening on the top screen into the bottom screen as well, put it on the iPhone and release it that way.
And to say that he’s the “Greatest Game Developer in the World” is such a stupid ignorant move. Every company has that belief, but they won’t say it out loud. Why? because if they release multiple triple A titles year after year, then one day they make a game that’s pure crap, guess what, that saying isn’t so true anymore. You just made an ass of yourself. If Bob were as ingenious as he thinks he is, why not sell yourself to a DS developer or something. I’m sure EA would make an attempt to help improve said game and even publish. THey wouldn’t lose too much money on it because the game is already built. All they need to focus on is upgrading the graphics so it doesn’t look like an early SNES game. Also improve the music and dialogue as well. But until Bob can get his crap together, his game will only see it’s release as a homebrew/ROM application.
I for one, have too many, better, games to play than someones highschool pet project. Plus I can list several game designers who is infinitely better than him. Here’s the list:
Cliff Bleszinski – Unreal, Gears of War
Hironobu Sakaguchi – Final Fantasy, Blue Dragon
Shinji Mikami – Resident Evil
Gabe Newell – Half-Life/Valve corp.
Hideo Kojima – Metal Gear franchise
Gunpei Yokoi – Metroid, Kid Icarus, Game Boy
and last, but definitely not least
Shigeru Miyamoto – Legend of Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, Wii, DS (Truly a god among men, THE BEST DEVELOPER the world will ever see)
Sorry Bob. What these fellows have in common is that each of their games they developed respectively has sold more than 1 million copies each if not more some reaching over 3 million units. You’re game won’t see those sales numbers at all. And to say that you are better than Miyamoto, is blasphemous. How can you say that you are better than the guy who single handedly brought video games back from nothingness, and turn it into a mainstream form of entertainment, all with the help of a 8-bit plumber, then of course helped design two juggernaught systems that you, yourself are trying to get published on, the DS and the Wii? You might want to think about what you say when dealing with Nintendo and of course Shigeru.
@Lance
I agree that him saying he is the greatest developer ever is pretty damn stupid. I think anyone involved with gaming should bow down to the greatness known as Miyamoto and is Italian plumber friend. All hail King Miyamoto and King Mario! lol Sorry I had to say it.