Robert Pelloni, the developer of Bob’s Game who vowed to lock himself in a room for 100 days over Nintendo’s refusal to give him a software development kit, is ending his protest after experiencing increasingly negative side effects from the solitary confinement.
Pelloni has single-handedly developed Bob’s Game, a “retail-length RPG type console game” which he claims to have invested five years and 15,000 hours in creating. But after Nintendo allegedly jerked him around when he tried to get the SDK, leaving him unable to legitimately publish the game, Pelloni decided to draw attention to his plight by isolating himself in a room for 100 days with no contact with the outside world beyond updates on his blog and a webcam that allowed the curious to peek in on his torment.
But as things dragged on, Pelloni’s updates grew increasingly rage-filled and erratic. On January 6, he wrote, “There is nobody like me. I have created the entire game, start to finish. 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.” Two days later he simultaneously apologized to Nintendo for his words and vowed to exact a horrific vengeance if the company continued to deny him the SDK, and began complaining of a persistent headache and feelings of paranoia. Finally, only a few weeks after the protest began, he decided to bring it to a close January 10 with one final, intensely bitter blog update.
“It was foolish of me to think Nintendo would hear my pleas,” he wrote. “They’re just another heartless corporation, only interested in the biggest profits. The core gamers don’t matter anymore. It’s not about the games or the fans, it’s about spreading out and getting casual gamers to buy Wii Fit.”
“I’ve had enough. I’m ending the protest. I give up on getting the SDK,” he continued. “I really tried my best. Show’s over. It’s just not going to work. Sorry, everyone. I just can’t stay in here. My head won’t stop pounding. I feel like I’m losing my mind. It’s like I’m splitting in half. I keep seeing these posts that I apparently wrote, but I can’t remember writing them. I’m afraid I’m becoming someone else entirely.”
But is it really the end? Bob’s still not the most coherent guy on the planet but he seemed to imply on his site that his protest isn’t actually over just yet. “The mild-mannered programmer of Bob’s Game, hopelessly tormented into a state of apparent madness from solitary confinement, has been valiantly pulled from the tragic wreckage of his former office by the local authorities- but they were too late,” the blog says. “Once again barricading himself inside of what appears to the untrained eye to be the same office but is assuredly a secret dungeon lair, he will begin carrying out his ridiculous, meticulous, deluded, convoluted, senseless mess of vengeance… Or has he already begun?”
Stay tuned!
via: GameCyte
Published: Jan 12, 2009 10:26 pm