Robert Pelloni, a self taught game developer who single-handedly created a self described twenty-hour long “retail quality” DS game, recently locked himself in his office in a sit-down protest in hopes of getting Nintendo’s attention. However, what started as a passive and polite protest is turning ugly. Recently, Pelloni started to update his website with paranoid theories: conspiracy, sabotage, nefarious plots designed by Nintendo to silence Bob’s Game. Earlier this week Pelloni made vague threats that he would release Bob’s Game into the homebrew community if Nintendo didn’t issue him the SDK he needed to finish the game for licensed publication.
When the protest started, Pelloni seemed set on creating a licensed DS game, even praising Nintendo as a great gaming company, but as of Tueday 1/6/09, Robert Pelloni declared war. Now he aims to destroy Nintendo!
If it sounds crazy, its because it is – 25 days in solitary confinement would put anyone on edge, but it’s hard to imagine how Pelloni’s new attitude could do anything but hurt his case. In his most recent update, he writes:
I am the GREATEST GAME DEVELOPER THAT EVER LIVED.
I am a GENIUS, and I will be around for the next 40 years- eating away at your company until it exists no longer.
I will find way after way to slowly destroy your bottom line, and your business will fail.
The name NINTENDO will be forgotten, a discarded husk like so many others.
“bob’s game” will live on FOREVER.
It’s only a snippet of a harshly worded rant directly insulting the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Koijima, and even Doom creator John Carmack. Pelloni paints himself as a god among game developers and accuses Nintendo of cowering in fear and humiliation. These strong words harshly contrast an update he made only a week earlier:
I like Nintendo.
The last thing I want to do is release my game in a way that might damage them.
Why do you think I spent five years making a “Nintendo game?”
It’s hard to read, not only because of it’s harsh and delusional tone, but because it ultimately spells doom for what appeared to be an interesting and unique game. Unless Pelloni changes his tune, it’s hard to imagine any respectable publisher willing to deal with this kind of unruly behavior. Check out the Bob’s Game website for the full rant.
Great, he’s insane now.
Oh, and Pixel made Cave Story at 26, spend about 5 years and actually released it.
For someone who has already received offers to have the game published, the fact that he wants “Nintendo” to publish it makes it seem like he is already insane.
LMAO
The crappy game would obviously end up getting no attention at all if released with normal procedures.
But now….acting like this? Pure genious if I might say
This guy seems like he has a few TOO MANY screws loose connecting his brain to the rest of his body. What sicko claims himself “To be the greatest developer that ever lived!” while sitting in a ALONE in a room, doors locked and all and not coming out for anything for 25 days to say something like that. Even if he has gone insane?
WOW……..I think he finally snapped. It’s a real shame too. I was looking forward to this game. But this? This is outrageous.
Some quotes from the blog:
“I am far better than Miyamoto, Itoi, Kojima, Carmack, and Wright COMBINED.
NONE of these “designers” could create the entire thing if their lives depended on it!
They rely on the assistance of others- and take all the credit. They don’t even deserve their titles! I have bested them all by far.”
“”bob’s game” is…one of the GREATEST GAMES EVER MADE- if not THE BEST.”
“If “bob’s game” is released worldwide as a KILLER APP homebrew title, this could potentially lead to the DSi becoming completely useless”
Great job! THIS should impress Nintendo. (Massive sarcasm intended) Honestly, this guy is more arrogant than Sony at ’06. The lesson here? Never, NEVER lock yourself in a room for 3 months without human contact. It does things to you.
Wow, this guy’s crazier than the Joker. DO YOU KNOW HOW NEAR IMPOSSIBLE THAT IS?!
Wow this has become pretty sad…
His game is never going to get released as an official DS game now. The protest alone pushed him into ‘not going to happen’ category. If Nintendo caves in and okays him then they are just opening the flood gates for others just like him.
I don’t know how he orignally went about trying to get a DS dev kit, (also just to note its a lot more then just a simple DVD.)
Nintendo is a very difficult company for new 3rd party companies to get into, one of the requirements is that you have made a few games already. Since this is his first and only game, he is pretty much out of luck.
Some new developers can be VERY lucky and actually get the okay to become a Nintendo developer, but it requires proving your self, being very patient and very lucky.
Just because you have a finished game that doesn’t mean you can get a dev kit, there are 100′s of wannabe game developers out there who have games they made, just look a newsground or to any college that has a game developer program, he is not special and he is not the only one out there.
The only thing he can do (outside being hired by a actual game dev studio) if he wishes to someday become a game developer for Nintendo hardware, is to release his game to PC, create another one or two games and then reapply to Nintendo. But after this stunt he may have made their black list.
@Damien
He doesn’t want Nintendo to publish it, he needs the SDK that allows him to make his game work with the DS/DSi. Once he gets that SDK he can find another company to publish it, or do it himself.
@Quizzly
The game seems far from crappy. It is only 2d, but the game play seems good. Obviously we don’t know the full details of the game because he isn’t releasing them (which is good, that gives him the element of surprise) but I’m sure once he gets him game out everyone will want a copy.
It is also possible his site got hacked . . .
Or else someone is leaking crazy gas into his hideout.
@Attilio
Uh, not everyone will want this game. After watching the video, I agree with Quizzly – pretty crappy. About the only way I would even consider trying this game is if it were free, and even then, only if I had absolutely no other game to play at the time. Sure there are some who will want, and probably even like this game, but not that many, and definitely not me.
@Attilio
I have to agree with Joshdad – after watching gameplay videos and checking the website, Bob’s Game left me completely unimpressed. That doesn’t mean it’s crappy, and it wouldn’t be fair to judge without actually playing the game… but I have strong doubts how much attention it would receive in the crowded DS market.
Unfortunately for the developer, I don’t think the general public will ever find out. This attention whoring scheme seemed like a bad idea from the beginning, and has only gotten worse since Robert crossed that fine line between eccentric and nut-job. Hope he enjoys his 30 seconds of internet fame, because it’s all downhill from here…
the truth is that his game looks great for anyone who wants an RPG on their DS. that’s me. i’d rather play his game than i would the majority of rpgs that have come out on the DS. this doesn’t mean that all ds rpgs are garbage, far from it, it means bob’s game would fit well on the system.
it’s also become clear that he’s crazy. whether or not he started that way is debatable but the whole ugly procedure has obviously pushed him over the edge. it is largely due to his craziness that i don’t think nintendo will ever sell him what he needs.
all this said, releasing his game to the homebrew community would be the greatest contribution bob could make to gaming. i hope he does, because i actually really want to play his game.
There’s one requirement that does not fulfill:
“Having the ability to ensure the security of Nintendo proprietary information and an effective environment for working with Nintendo and/or its licensees. ”
By acting crazy he pretty clearly does not fulfill this requirement. He should just go ahead and release the game to the homebrew community. Heck, he could probably even sell downloads of it, if he wanted, now that he’s built up the hype for it.
game is great but his head is messed up!!!
Bob,
Instead of complaining about Nintendo and having this 100 day sit down why don’t you finish the game. If it’s as great as you say then other companies besides Nintendo might be interested.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/health/06mind.html
“As a short-term strategy, self-handicapping is often no more than an exercise in self-delusion. Studies of college students have found that habitual handicappers — who skip a lot of classes; who miss deadlines; who don’t buy the textbook — tend to rate themselves in the top 10 percent of the class, though their grades slouch between C and D.”
You guys have hit all the unspoken nails on the head – Bob has had other opportunities to publish the game (or so we hear,) but is too proud to allow others to work on it, dedicated on keeping it a “one man game.”
Something else I didn’t write that I can’t stop thinking: If 2Dboy can get a game out – so can Bob – or at least he could have until he went crazy and offended the company he was pleading to.
Sean, you read my mind. Maybe he try releasing it as freeware on the computer, see public reaction, if he gets a big enough fanbase, he can use that as leverage to get the SDK. That is, assuming his mental condition does not get any worse. Also, he is NOT the only person who has invested time into making a retail quality game with a staff of one person. La-Mulana and Cave Story anyone? This guy clearly has delusions of grandeur.
@HyperPhazon
I think what Bob believes to be special about his game is that the other one-man game examples were not “console games,” and he is the first to single-handedly make a “console game” of “retail quality.” Still, if he was in fact getting offers from developers to publish his game or hire him on as regular staff, it’s my opinion that he was foolish not to take one of these offers or otherwise enter negotiations with one of these companies.
TO Everyone who says this game is crappy:
This is how I see it. We don’t know if this game is crappy or not. Before you even decide how about we define crappy. In my opinion a crappy game is a game in which the game play sucks (there is no challenge, no reason to play, and is simply not fun).
If your definition of the game being crappy is because the graphics are 2D then please be quiet and let the true gamers talk. Graphics do not make up a good game. Some of the old 2D platform games are still played today because they have great game play and that’s why they are and always will be great.
So to decide if this game is crappy or not can only be decided once the game is actually played. You also can’t go by the videos because this guy obviously doesn’t have any advertising experience (although this stunt seems to be good advertising lol).
________________
TO Everyone who keeps saying that he has publishers.
You people do not understand how the gaming industry works. You have developers who develop the game. You have publishers who publish the game. Bob is a developer. He developed a game; HOWEVER he cannot play his game on a NDS, or any other system. The fact that publishers have contacted him doesn’t mean a thing unless he has some form of legally selling this game for a system. The only publishers that could actually help him are the ones that would publish this game for PC gamers, but that’s about it. No publisher can give bob the SDK he needs to make his game legally work on the NDS, only Nintendo can do that. Once he has that then he can work with the publishers to sell his game.
And one more thing, I definitely agree that Bob things he is bigger and better then everyone else. Frankly I don’t blame him because he has been working on this game for 5 years so he really hasn’t be in touch with the gaming world so I guess he didn’t realize that other people have made games by themselves as well. I think he needs to calm down a bit and at least apologize for his latest statements.
@Attilio
It’s funny, you say you can’t base a decision on whether or not this game is crappy solely on the video, but isn’t that what you are doing by saying it’s a good game. Have you played it? What is your basis for calling it a good game? Are you going by the word of a confirmed nut case (Bob), or are you basing your decision on what you’ve seen of the game?
I’m basing my decision (it’s crap) based on the video (which is quite long and extensive). I’ve been gaming since the days of Pong, so believe me, I have all the respect in the world for good 2D games. Some of my all-time favorite games are 2D RPG’s. So having said that, and having more than just a little experience with the whole genre, I’ll repeat what I said earlier, this game looks pretty crappy to me, and I for one would never spend a dime on such a game.
@Attillo: Some publishers are also developers, and all publishers have better contacts at Nintendo than Pelloni does, and would have more pull in negotiations. Additionally, a good publisher has established contacts with developers who, through partnership with Pelloni and the publishing company, could deliver the tools Bob needs to complete his project. Closing himself off to these possible options severely limits his options. His motives for turning down possible outside help are a mystery, but one can only assume it’s because he wants to keep “Bob’s Game” a “game by one person.”
@Joshdad
I never said that it “is” good, i said it “seems” good, there is a huge difference there. Obviously if the game comes out that’s when we’ll know for certain how the game is, but right now I feel that we don’t know enough about the game to give it a final judgment.
@Sean
Of course publishers have better pull with Nintendo then an individual person. If you look at the bottom of Bob’s web site he is looking for publishers that want to offer him a contract, and I believe I saw somewhere that he was approached by some publishers. I don’t remember seeing that he rejected any publishers from helping, but I might have over looked that. Actually if you can find that I’d like to read it because then I can join in the Bob bashing lol.
@Attilio: I don’t have any quoted text to support my opinion, it’s only my best guess that he is limiting his interactions with other companies until the game is “done” to a undetermined extent. From my experience talking to publishers and developers, it seems to me that through proper negotiation, “Bob’s game” could have already been on the way to store shelves. His recent actions show an overwhelming abundance of pride, and unwillingness to make sacrifices – I think this is why he has not yet made a deal with any of the companies who have supposedly contacted him. I could very well be wrong, and that’s why these ideas are only being presented in the comments rather then in the article.
@Sean
I wouldn’t be surprised if you are right about that. I guess working for 5 years straight on the same thing then locking yourself in a room is enough to drive anyone crazy. The game has consumed him, what is he going to do if he gets it on the market but doesn’t sell as many as he thinks he would? Is he going to go crazy and try to destroy the public like he wants to destroy Nintendo? I don’t think so. He is certainly strange, but I guess only time will tell if this stunt of his will actually work.
If it’s really the greatest game ever made, I’d also expect his website to look a little, um.. “better” than it does.
I remember seeing a trailer for this game a while back, it was pretty neat I guess but this guy is coming off as a total ego driven douche.
Maybe Knob should move out of his parents house and try to get a job in the industry he loves so much, even though it seems like he lacks the teamwork skills needed to work in the industry.
@ Attilio
OK, the game “seems” pretty crappy to me.
I watched the videos and I thought the game was pretty cool looking. It kind of reminds me of Earthbound. It looks like it’d be a fun adventure game, too bad we’ll probably never see it.
I still don’t own a DS and I’m wondering if I should buy one. There are a lot of games I’m dying to play.
…Wow
That’s really sad.
I feel sorry for the guy.
He’s gone mad because he spent all this time making his own game with no one else to help and he’s getting the cold shoulder from a company that he ultimately looks up to.
I hate to put Nintendo in such an awful position, but you’ve got see both sides here.
Maybe this guy has multiple personality disorder, but I think it’s just that he is an idiot. I see that a day later he “doesn’t remember writing that” but I’m going with he just knows that he blew his chances. BTW I never expected this to last 100 days and I still don’t.
I’m starting to feel that this whole thing is some fake PR marketing viral stunt. I doubt he’s really going *that* insane, at least I hope not.
Now he’s writing he can’t remember it and has headaches.
I hope his friend is looking after him.
And now he has absolutely gone down the drain.
*sigh* He should just remove the posts and move on. The first one on Jan 6th was a mistake, he should acknowledge that and stop digging himself into a deeper hole with the other ones.
His game is an amateurish piece of garbage, and the notes he puts in his videos are so sad I can’t even bring myself to laugh at them.
I’m a cynical guy, but I gotta believe that this is just a skit put on for the attention and internet fame.. The game is low-grade pap, and the fact that he thinks so much of himself (just read thru the pop-up notes on one of the demo vids, if you can force yourself to watch the whole thing) shows that he’s nothing more than an ignorant child, yapping about shit he doesn’t understand.
Yeah, the cars actually stop for Yuu, and he can walk diagonally!! *groans* good LORD…
I never really read his posts when I commented here, but he’s kind of out there. It’s one thing to say your game is great, but to say I don’t want to release my game as homebrew because it’d have a huge negative financial impact against Nintendo is a little over the top.
I’m convinced he’s either going crazy or this stunt is a viral marketing campaign by a company.
@farlander
what exactly makes the game “amateurish”?
And as a side note, it’s official, bob is mentally unstable. If you haven’t seen his post on 2009-01-08 then go look at it now. Seriously he has major issues. I wouldn’t mind seeing his game released, but with the way he is acting Nintendo won’t give him the SDK and he’ll prolly release it as homebrew on the DS.
Sorry bob you’re own ego is your undoing.
Actually, the recent update makes a case for both more and less sanity. They way he “set up” the headache mechanism yesterday and the way he used it in a Jelyll/Hyde personality change makes me suspect that he is “acting out” some sort of plot point from the game, or acting crazy to bring in new traffic to his “old” protest. If you watch the video, it’s also starting to look like he is wearing spiked shoulder pads and a mohawk. Either way, something weird is going on.
just as a furter testament to his growing insanity: bob has been sitting in front of his monitor sporting a large mohawk and legion of doom style shoulder pads for quite some time now.
Wow, you know what I love about the game industry? It’s so very entertaining! Does anyone else feel like we are watching a comic-book super villain being incubated and born right before our eyes in Robert Pelloni? It’s the perfect back story, the brilliant wunderkid programming, his dreams crushed by an unfeeling corporation… now all he needs is some sort of radiation overdose from his computer monitor to become the Homebrew Hobgoblin, out to destroy the video game industry by developing new, unlicensed KILLER APPS for gray market flash cards…
He joins other unbelievably corny villains such as Jack Thompson, the evil attorney with amazing powers of appearing on television and in newspapers for no good reason, and the ability to instantly generate a dozen pages of legalese boilerplate throughout which he refers to himself in the third person. Oh, did I mention that he believes he is a tool of God in cleansing the earth of M rated games and the companies who publish them?
Seriously, we are lucky to have such engaging characters in our world. What other industry can claim such participants?
Hmm I wonder, where did he get those shoulder pads? I thought he wasn’t allowed to go out and his friend was only bringing food. He is definitely up to something, but to be honest the way he is acting can’t help him at all.
@Attilio:
What makes it amateurish? Are you kidding? Have you watched the demo videos? The guy thinks that making a character that can walk diagonally is something impressive that should be pointed out. He thinks that long screen transition times (which are done to be easier on the eyes and not break immersion) are stupid and the flickery jumps are something brilliant that “the big companies never thought of”. He thinks the basic concepts of collision detection (“Look, the cars stop for Yuu!”) is impressive.. need I go on?
It’s EMBARRASSING. He thinks that he has all these brilliant and borderline revolutionary ideas – so much so that he brags about them in his vids – but really he’s proving how ignorant and inexperienced he really is. Kudos go out to him for undertaking an effort to be a one-man game creator, but this is in no way a high quality result. It’s a game that would be out-of-date if compared to SNES games from the early 90′s, and his amateurism with regards to design would’ve sabotaged the effort even back THEN.
Stop encouraging this nimrod.
@farlander27
That doesn’t make the game amateurish. If you read what you are saying your actually talking bad about him not about the game. Everything you have said just points out the fact that he has a HUGE ego, which frankly annoys the crap out of me because I can’t stand people like that.
As he said in his description it is the game he wanted to play as a child, which pretty much describes why the game looks the way it does and why the game play is the way he made it.
As for it being out-of-date compared to SNES games, I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, besides you can’t expect one person to create a game like halo or gta, its impossible.
Now if bob was serious about having this dream to make a game for the DS and has truly gone insane (proven by a professional) then to be honest I would like to see his game released officially on the DS because there is nothing more rewarding then accomplishing your goals.
HOWEVER if his “insanity” is some kind of joke, which it probably is, and this all thing is just a hoax, then i hope he gets whats coming to him, which he probably will
Guess what, the protest wasn’t real.
The webcam is a fake. The webcam picture is changed on the server and the suffix with the questionmark has randomly generated. He probably recorded all images in a single day.
For this, I think there shouldn’t be anymore news about him until he actually gets his game released (except revealing his trick).
@Tadashi?
Whatcha mean? I looked at the source and it works for what could be a webcam – it just points to an image on the server and refreshes every few seconds – - if he has a camera program set up to upload a new image constantly (easily done with windows powertoys) than it can be a legitimate webcam.
The code is refreshing the picture every 3 seconds, loading the file http://www.bobsgame.com/bobsgamecam.jpg with a questionmark and a random number appended. This has no actual use as it is a plain image file.
Sometimes a frame is displayed for several cycles or reappears again. How should this happen with a real webcam?
It should be clear by now that it wasn’t real.