"Hi, I'm Bob, the developer of 'bob's game.'"
It's December of 2008 and 25 year old independent video game developer Robert Pelloni has locked
himself inside a dimly lit viridian colored room, where he intends to stay for 100 days. On his
website he's calling it a Japanese-style protest tailored to a specific Japanese company. A live
stream documents Pelloni as he sits in front of an old desktop PC, working thanklessly on the game
which has claimed the last five years of his life, and will claim many more--an autobiographical
RPG he's eponymously titled "bob's game." An LED strip above him switches from
marking the duration of his protest to calling out to the one person Pelloni
believes can prevent his work from being in vain. "My name is Reggie, I'm about
kicking ass, I'm about taking names, and we're about making games." Public humiliation,
ridicule, self-sabotage--Pelloni is willing to endure it all if it will only get his game
noticed by the company he's idolized since childhood. Appeals to come to his senses
are ignored, and his supporters can only watch in astonishment as even the game itself
becomes a vehicle for Pelloni's frustrations. This is "bob's game," the Nintendo title that
wasn't. "I am Bob, creator of 'bob's game.'" Bob's game seemed to appear from nowhere
in the summer of 2008, when a video showing footage from an unreleased game was uploaded
to Youtube. A dark-haired sprite emerges from his home, walks down the sidewalk, crosses an
intersection while a car waits for him to pass, and explores a densely populated town.
Buildings open up to detailed interiors, queues of NPCs line up at cash registers,
each appearing to go about their own business. Beyond the city square the sprite follows
a tree-lined path toward a school, all to the tune of an overworld theme reminiscent
of the midi-based soundtracks of the 90s. The trailer ends with Robert Pelloni, the
game's soul creator, silently introducing himself in the reflection of a Nintendo DS. The
consensus was that the game seemed charming and lovingly crafted. And, only a little more than
a week after uploading, the trailer had been viewed over a hundred thousand times - enough to
rank in the Youtube gaming charts. For Pelloni, this was confirmation that people actually
wanted to play his game. The 15 000 hours of solitary work he'd spent to create the assets,
environments, and 65 tracks of music that made up the soundtrack had been justified. "When I started
I didn't have any programming experience with game development or anything like that at all. No pixel
art experience, no music tracking experience. The only thing that I did have was I took a class
in high school, which was introductory to C++, like texting white output kind of stuff. I kind of
always had this idea for in my mind, you know, the perfect game, which was kind of something set in
modern times. Suburban life, not dragons, fantasy, magic, any of that kind of thing." Pelloni could
be found on various message boards answering questions and participating in discussions
surrounding his game. People were eager to see more. While his trailer was evocative, core
gameplay mechanics were difficult to determine and requests for more comprehensive footage were among
the most common reactions. So, Pelloni released another, longer trailer, which featured dozens of
environments and over 200 unique characters that populated what Pelloni described as "the largest
video game ever created by a single person." The lone craftsmanship was a point Pelloni
repeatedly emphasized. "A 20-hour long, retail-sized, retail quality adventure title made
by a single human being," his description read. News outlets and video game journalists took
notice, and Bob's Game became one of the more talked about titles in the indie game scene.
In an interview with the Orlando sentinel Pelloni was adamant that the game was "90 percent
finished" but he was apprehensive about letting anyone see or play it in its entirety for fear of
intellectual property theft. He felt it would only be safe in the hands of a corporate publisher.
Posters on the select button forms urged Pelloni to be more practical. He'd made a potentially
good game, but he was in danger of getting in his own way. Comparisons were drawn to other
independent titles created by a single person such as Yume Nikki and Cave Story -- both
eventual critical and commercial successes. But whereas those games were initially
self-published, only to be later released by larger publishers after gaining a cult following
a -- precedent that many suggested Pelloni follow -- from early in its development, Pelloni made it
clear that his game was intended to be played on a Nintendo console. He'd even loaded the game onto
a homebrew Nintendo DS cartridge for his videos. "Check it out. World premiere, right here." I want
to get it published on the DS mainly because of the satisfaction of having it manufactured,"
Pelloni wrote. "I know it's not the most profitable medium. I'll make one or two dollars a
copy instead of the 5 or ten I could make online. There's just something about seeing something I
worked on for so long in a shrink-wrapped box, even if it's buried in a bargain bin at
Wal-Mart." But there was an obstacle, one which Pelloni would go to mystifying lengths
in an attempt to overcome. He needed Nintendo's official software development kit. "I have to get
the Nintendo development kit, which is called the Nitro SDK. And that's something that you can't
buy unless you're a licensed developer from Nintendo or if you're working with a publisher.
So right now I'm still working with the free, you know, open source development tools. And
before it can go retail, before it actually, you know, works on a retail cartridge and they can
manufacture it and kind of do, you know, do bug testing on it with the development hardware -- it
has to be converted over to use all the official software. That's pretty much all I have left
to do. He'd submitted an application for the development kit, but Nintendo never responded.
"I am supposed to receive a decision in six to eight weeks," he wrote. "It has been 16 weeks!"
And in an attempt to get Nintendo's attention, Pelloni began a campaign that would ultimately
overshadow the game itself, alienate him from his supporters, and potentially sabotage his
efforts at becoming a licensed developer. In December of 2008, Robert Pelloni began what
he called a "100-day Tensai sit-down protest." He lit his room with green lighting and taped
a webcam to a ceiling to record himself as he worked, which was live streamed to his website.
"I cannot leave this viridian room," he wrote. "The door is locked and barricaded from the
outside. I am sleeping behind the camera and, yes, I've got a shower. Food is delivered once a
week by a friend. When Nintendo decides to approve my developer license application, I will leave
the room. This is my 100-day protest to Nintendo." Robert supplied his viewers with a mailing
address to Nintendo's senior director of project development, as well as a link to Nintendo's
support form, urging them to get the software development kit into his hands so Bob's Game could
finally become the DS title it was meant to be. But, predictably, all attempts were met with
silence. Some video game journalists attempted to use their connections to reach out to Nintendo
on Pelloni's behalf but even they couldn't evoke a response. Pelloni didn't know the reason for
Nintendo's inaction, but he suspected conspiracy, maybe someone deleting his emails before
they could reach the appropriate executive, or even jealousy that he'd made Bob's Game and
they hadn't. "Can I fly there and negotiate?" Pelloni wrote. "I asked that already. They don't
know. The only real tools I have on my side are dedication and determination, so I'm using those.
This is a sort of personal challenge to myself and I'm quite serious about it." His live stream
was largely uneventful and typically only showed Robert at his desk, working on Bob's Game, often
in costume. But where things got truly strange were his blog posts. A couple times a week,
he'd write an update, counting down to day 100, which would also be tracked in the LED strip
above his workstation. His posts were angry and full of bravado about his game. Some were
oddly threatening, as Pelloni seemed to think the more publicity his protest received, the
more it would damage Nintendo's reputation. To many watching, the red flags of a hoax or
bizarre viral marketing campaign were going up, but Pelloni explicitly stated that this wasn't
the case, even complaining that people weren't taking him seriously. As the protest continued,
Robert's grasp on reality seemed to weaken. He'd write a post calling himself a genius and the
greatest developer to ever live, claiming his game must have humiliated Nintendo's team of engineers.
"I have swam across the ocean only cruise ships could cross. I have walked through the desert of
no return. I have made history and history cannot be undone." He would later apologize to Nintendo
and his fans for his outbursts, only to then write an even more outlandish post, demanding the
development kid or else he would take his revenge. Posts like "I will crush you into dust and
flush away the ashes like any other filth" began to resemble a professional wrestling promo.
He would write something unexpectedly sincere and vulnerable, such as this post about how much
Nintendo as a brand has meant to him his entire life, how Bob's Game was made only for them, and
he couldn't bear to release it any other way... only to negate it by writing that he was going
to destroy them simply for his own enjoyment. "He keeps writing all this stuff saying, like,
'This will work, Reggie will hear me,' and it's, you know, it sounds, you know, the writing
sounds like it is coming from a crazy person. Like, there's nothing rational about anything
that's being typed and it sounds like the sort of guy that is eventually going to hurt himself
or kill someone else to get Reggie's attention, you know, like that kind of crazed stalker John
Lennon scenario." People weren't sure how to interpret what was happening to Robert Pelloni,
but whatever it was, it was hard to imagine it would result in being granted Nintendo developer
status. So what exactly was Pelloni thinking? As desperate as Pelloni's 100-day protest may
have seemed, the conditions weren't drastically different from how he'd been developing Bob's Game
since its 2003 inception. In order to remove any distractions, Robert would often break his cell
phone and seal himself inside his apartment, plastering the walls around his workspace with
notes and words of affirmation. "To keep myself inside and focused," Pelloni wrote, "I screwed
some boards across the door to make it annoying to open, covered it in black plastic, and piled
up everything I wasn't using against it. I stayed inside for sometimes over a month or two." The
main themes in Bob's Game took a while to evolve, with its earliest iteration being tentatively
titled "Zeldrug" which was meant to be, quote, "Like Zelda but with guns and drugs like
Grand Theft Auto." Slowly, the idea morphed into something more recognizable to its current
form, with the graphics being built in a tile editor his childhood friend had programmed for
him. Under its second title, "Button Mash," it would be similar to a role playing game with
a large open world to explore, but with their traditional battle sequences replaced with
mini games--homages to classics like Tetris, Super Mario Brothers, and Pong. "I kind of wanted
to make something more based around exploring, more based around talking to people. You kind of
have to have some action element to it, and some kind of skill building element to it. Instead of
the battles, I tried to do mini game challenges, along with quests and along with the talking to
people and problem solving." By the time the idea was fully realized, it had become Bob's Game. His
history with Nintendo began in early 2008. Pelloni showed a company representative Bob's Game running
on a DS and they'd agreed to me at the upcoming Game Developers Conference, an event which would
become an annual pilgrimage for Robert. But the meeting didn't go as he'd hoped. His game was
buggy and the representative appeared unimpressed. "He asked me if I would be willing to work with
my own team within Nintendo," Pelloni wrote. "Without even considering it, I immediately said
no." Despite still inviting Robert to apply for developer status, the Nintendo representative told
him, "Sadly, I don't think your game will ever be released." Months later, as Pelloni was weeks deep
into his protest, press outlets and fans assumed that Robert had either gone crazy with frustration
or was attempting to drum up publicity for his game. But the game no longer seemed to be the
focus. Pelloni himself, and his grievances with Nintendo, had replaced it. Attempts to link the
protest to the game, such as Pelloni referring to Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo
of America, as "Yuu," the name of the game's protagonist, only invited further confusion. And
Nintendo's continued silence was confirmation that whatever Pelloni was attempting simply wasn't
working. After only a month, the Bob's Game live stream ended with his workspace completely
trashed. "It was foolish of me to think Nintendo would hear my pleas," the accompanying text read.
"They're just another heartless corporation only interested in the biggest profits." Though
the resolution was poor, you could just make out Pelloni motionless in the debris. Posters
from the Select Button forums were concerned, one even called the police, who soon showed up to
Pelloni's house. After rousing Pelloni from the floor, the police insisted he put a disclaimer
on his website stating the suicide was a hoax, to which he complied, even releasing a video of
himself staging it all. And the following day's headlines would read: Bob's Game Creator Raided by
the Police While Faking His Own Death on Webcam. "Hi I'm Bob, the developer of Bob's Game. We're
in New York City, where we're going to the one and only Nintendo world store." "Coming soon for the
Nintendo DS. This is the developer of Bob's Game. Sole developer." Although Pelloni had abandoned
his quote "tensei style protest," he continued tracking the days since it began, foreshadowing
something on day 100. For day 50 Pelloni, his friends, and a few hired models that he'd
found on craigslist, showed up at the Nintendo world store with handfuls of posters advertising
his game, which they taped along the store's exterior and interior, cards which they seemed
to dump on the floor or attach to other games, and homemade boxed copies of his title
that they lined along the shelves. "Yeah, yeah. Do it, do it." "Bob's Game."
Naturally he was kicked out. "All right guys... you gotta
go now. You gotta leave now." "Yeah, we're customers." "Okay, you gotta leave
now." "We're buying a DS." It's clear Pelloni intended this performance to be seen as part
of a self-described protest, but it came off as more of a tantrum. "He's exchanged his game
development ambitions for fleeting e-celebrity status," wrote video game journalist Griffin
McElroy. His website, meanwhile, showed no signs of slowing down: abducted by aliens, kidnapped by
the Yakuza--Bob seemed determined to escalate the absurdity until he either tuckered himself out
or Nintendo answered his call. And sure enough after 25 weeks since he'd first submitted Bob's
Game to their director of project development, Pelloni finally managed to elicit a response
from Nintendo. Although they had been, in Pelloni's opinion, mysteriously stalling his
application. Perhaps because they were quote, "insanely jealous that they didn't think of
it first," on February 5th Pelloni received Nintendo's official decision. "We have completed
our evaluation of your application and are unable to offer your company authorized developer status
at the present time," the rejection letter read. Insult was added to injury when the letter was
compared to the letters of other developers who'd been rejected by Nintendo, revealing
it to be an identical template rejection. Pelloni didn't take the news well. "Nintendo.
Why? There's no way this was the real Nintendo! It couldn't be! At that moment it hit me.
I finally understood the real truth... Suddenly it was clear. That wasn't the real
Nintendo. They were imposters!" Uploads to his Youtube channel showcased new footage of Bob's
Game, which began developing a fictional universe that portrayed Nintendo as an evil corporation,
hellbent on stifling lone indie developers. With the game's protagonists as the heroic
martyr who was here to expose them. "I had no choice. This was fate. For I held the only
weapon with the power to defeat this evil -- the greatest game ever made! Even armed with this
legendary super game I knew it wouldn't be easy. I was facing an army of millions of brainwashed
children held captive under the spell of tyranny cast by the diabolical sorcerer Miyamoto." Because
no one besides Pelloni has ever played Bob's Game, it was impossible to know if these scenes were
a recent addition inspired by his rejection or something separate altogether. And it seemed
Pelloni didn't wish for people to discuss it. Although it wasn't hard to empathize
with Pelloni's disappointment, his behavior made it much easier to understand Nintendo's decision. "If he is as much of
a nut job as this thing makes him sound, yeah, I would go dark on that guy too." And while
it was obvious that much of what Pelloni posted during this time was little more than histrionics,
the vitriol he had for Reggie and Nintendo seemed genuine. And it was determined that what Pelloni would
be calling stage 100, or the 100th day of his protest, would fall on the opening day
of the 2009 Game Developers Conference, where many high-level Nintendo executives would
be present. "The system exists to play games games created by Nintendo and games created by
you." "I assure Yuu I am very serious," Pelloni wrote on his website. "I'll see Yuu there on day
100 Reggie." A poster on the select button forums contacted the security at the Game Developers
Conference, warning them that Robert Pelloni might, quote, "Go all Columbine or something,
or at the very least try and make a big scene." And when Pelloni arrived at the convention he
was apprehended by security and taken into a conference room for questioning. He explained
that what he was doing was a, quote, "real-time internet soap opera protest." they searched
Pelloni's bags for weapons and found nothing, but would only allow him to attend the Nintendo
keynote presentation with a security escort. "And all of you here in this room have also
kindly supported Nintendo, as software developers and as game players. Thank you, from the bottom
of my heart. We appreciate all you have done." Pelloni kept emailing Nintendo, alternating
between angry and apologetic letters, all to no response, until he found that they'd eventually
blocked his email address. At this point Robert seemed to realize that whatever he was attempting
had failed. "At a point I am going to expect this to just turn out to be, like, a gorilla
viral ad campaign for Doritos or something. Because that would be the best possible outcome.
I think really because it's seeming like more and more sort of weirdly staged and absurd and
the things that the guy is saying have become kind of nonsense." He began dropping the pretense
although he'd previously denied it, Pelloni admitted that his website was in fact a viral
campaign. But it wasn't targeted toward potential players. The 100-day protest was, in Pelloni's
words, a second pitch to Nintendo. Bob was hoping to make up for the unsuccessful presentation he'd
given at the developers conference a year prior by doing something more memorable, more exciting.
In an email to his Nintendo contact he told them to be on the lookout for, quote, "Something big,
something important and original." Pelloni had been attempting to lure Nintendo's executives into
a real world extension of the Bob's Game fictional universe -- one which combined product and process
into a single experience -- with himself not only is the creator but a character inside the game.
"But to you Bob had become completely insane. A villainous madman that delusionally believed he
was on a crusade for justice. Bringing down the evil Nintendo. Is he serious?" It was a ploy so
convoluted it was doomed to fail from the start. But the crux was that the core identity of Bob's
Game was that it was made by Bob, and Bob alone. And he couldn't pitch the game to Nintendo
without also pitching himself as the creative mind behind it. But nothing was coming across as
he'd intended, and hadn't since the beginning. Despite this, Robert seemed upset that no one
wanted to give him credit for what he'd done. In an email to video game press outlets Pelloni
wrote: "It saddens me that angry developer litters is considered more newsworthy than angry developer
was actually a really cool elaborate viral campaign that fooled everyone." "BobsCame.com is
a viral advertisement! It always was!" Amidst it all, questions persisted: What about the game?
Was Pelloni still intending to release it? Was there even a game to begin with? This very
question was posed by friend and fellow game developer Tim Rogers, who asked Pelloni where the
trolling stopped and reality began. "It stops in that there is actually a game," Pelloni said, "and
it's actually pretty good!" And true to his word, in March of 2009, a playable demo for Bob's
Game was released on Pelloni's website. The demo was only playable on a Nintendo
DS emulator and featured about an hour and a half of gameplay. It opens with the game's
protagonist having just moved into a new house with his parents and two siblings, navigating
through mazes of moving boxes to collect items and trigger events before branching out into the
world. The mini game challenges were difficult, perhaps too difficult. "You suck
[ __ ] dick, I'm not doing that again. One more try. [ __ ] [Bob, man. Okay?
Okay?" Many who streamed themselves playing the demo had to run the emulator at half speed in
order to progress. "...And especially, you know, we're playing like half speed here. Again, this
would probably be a million times more difficult if it wasn't. I remember-I remember this just
being quite tough." But the bones of the game were good. It was heavily autobiographical,
and the metafictional elements, such as the cut scenes of Pelloni in his room developing the
game worked much better as a part of the game's storyline than as a viral advertisement. With
something tangible to offer, Pelloni began to earn back some of the goodwill he'd lost with his
protest. The demo proved that his game was real, even potentially good, and that Pelloni was
perhaps just a misguided individual who didn't understand how to present himself. "I'm really not
the best salesman. I am not a marketer, you know. I'm not... I don't do a pitch." A reporter for
MTV news even confronted Reggie of Nintendo about their decision to deny Pelloni developer status.
"He did submit to be a licensed developer," Reggie said. "We evaluated the opportunity. We
decided at this point in time he did not meet the requirements to be a licensed developer." When the
interviewer pushed for specifics, Reggie replied: "We, unfortunately, cannot get into the details
of Bob." Pelloni finally decided to submit Bob's Game to other publishers, such as Sony and Steam,
but he was rejected there as well, which Pelloni attributed to his notoriety. At this point,
Pelloni could have released the game himself, like many had been suggesting for years. He had
done the hard work of creating the game, and the near impossible task of marketing it himself,
albeit at the expense of his own reputation. People were waiting for his game and he needed
only to give it to them. But Pelloni's grievances with Nintendo were clearly unresolved. He'd long
been calling Bob's Game a "killer app," a term used to describe software so good that it compels
consumers to buy the hardware it's exclusive to. And if released on something other than the DS,
Pelloni was sure Nintendo sales would suffer as a result. "If Bob's Game is released worldwide
as a killer app homebrew title," Pelloni wrote, "this could potentially lead to the DSi becoming
completely useless as a countermeasure." So he decided to release Bob's Game via his own
handheld video game console. "This is the ND. It's about the size of a micro, with a larger
screen, more buttons, and a faster CPU." According to Pelloni, the ND would be made
cheaply by a Chinese company called Dingoo, and would be sold cheaply as well: twenty dollars,
which included a copy of Bob's Game, with an open invitation for all indie developers to port
their games and keep 90 percent of the revenue. For Pelloni, this would both be a way of getting
back in Nintendo for rejecting him, and satisfy his desire to release Bob's Game on a physical
medium. But, as usual, things didn't go the way Pelloni envisioned. "As soon as I opened the site,
the wiki got vandalized by trolls," he wrote, "replacing the download page for the SDK with
insults." Pelloni couldn't secure the funding needed to scale the console, and despite even
beginning to build a library of games submitted by other independent developers, the ND
ultimately had a predictable conclusion: it fizzled out before ever seeing the
light of day. And Pelloni's last ditch attempt to either join Nintendo or beat
them at their own game came to an end. In the following years, indie gaming saw something
of a boom, with several games developed by a single person or very small teams releasing to
critical and commercial success. "Well, games are a lot more accessible now, creating games is
a lot easier now. It's easier to make them and to sell them and to survive off them, so it's good
to see indie games, which is kind of that that corner of the market where you've got small teams
making weird games, uh, that can still survive next to the AAA games. I think it's a good thing."
Independent creators who Pelloni had befriended at past developer conferences began releasing their
games. Tim Rogers went on to see success with Ziggurat. Phil Fish, who Pelloni had reportedly
offended by stating his game looked like Cave Story, eventually released Fez, also to widespread
acclaim. But over the next couple years, news of Bob's Game was sparse to non-existent. Pelloni
would occasionally upload to his YouTube channel, but with the videos only a few seconds long
and devoid of any content, they seemed to only serve as a reminder to the few who are still
paying attention that he was still around. Those still checking in on his website were met
with Pelloni's, quote, "ascension into the true prophet and savior of mankind," but whether he was
still making progress on Bob's Game was unclear. When Pelloni began making Bob's Game in 2003, he'd
intended it for the Game Boy Advance, but with the release of the 3DS in 2011, a third Nintendo
handheld console generation had passed him by, and Bob's Game was further than ever from being
released on it. It seemed Bob's Game had been indefinitely postponed. But in April of 2014, a
Kickstarter surfaced. The game had either returned or Pelloni was setting up another viral campaign.
Supporters approached with cautious optimism. The product description featured Pelloni's trademark
hyperbole: "Bob's Game is the most important thing to happen to mankind in hundreds, if not
thousands, of years. Bob's Game is the vehicle for a prophecy written by a self-taught genius
prophet. It carries within it a message that will revolutionize society and change the world.
It is the beginning of a new era for mankind." Despite the theater, the game itself was looking
good, and now boasted such features as character customization, cleaner looking graphics, and
improved mini games with alleged multiplayer capabilities. And best of all, there was no
mention of attempting to goad Nintendo into releasing it. Pelloni's struggles had been
incorporated into the game itself, with the plot centering around a young, aspiring developer
attempting to break past Nintendo's gatekeeping in order to release his game, but it seemed Robert no
longer felt the need to sabotage his own ambitions in order to make his life imitate his work. He
announced the game would be released on other platforms in December of that year. Pelloni wrote
he was inspired to make the Kickstarter by his friend, Alex Peake, who'd raised over 170 thousand
dollars for his game "Code Hero." But Robert's target was much smaller. At $10,000, he was asking
his backers for the means to buy what he called a "hack van" which would be a cargo van fitted
with solar panels from which to live and work. Anything less, and he promised to give up on
Bob's Game forever. In order to fully explain some of the weird choices behind his campaign,
Pelloni released an autobiography on his website. It's nearly book-length and oddly confessional,
with stories ranging from accidentally killing his pet kitten when he was younger, to angrily
quoting "Head Like a Hole" lyrics at his parents. He wrote that he'd been inspired by the Year
Zero alternate reality game from Nine Inch Nails, a multimedia dystopian experience aimed at the
Bush administration. Pelloni's live stream and 100-day protest were an attempt to create a
similar campaign targeting Nintendo. "I was going to become the Nine Inch Nails of video games,"
Pelloni wrote. "It was going to be the coolest thing anyone had ever done in video game history."
His connection to Nintendo seemed to run deep. For every major event in his life, from dropping
out of high school to his first girlfriend, Pelloni recalls what video game he was playing at
the time, almost always a Nintendo title. He wrote of spending summers repeatedly playing through
Super Mario 64. "It always felt strange and lonely when I finally got to the castle roof," he wrote,
"so I would start over again." Perhaps that's why, in the end, Pelloni wasn't able to bring
himself to release Bob's Game without them. He reached his ten thousand dollar Kickstarter
goal, but the December release date came and went, with Bob's Game nowhere to be found. Backers grew
worried, and eventually upset. And in the rare moments Pelloni provided an update, he did little
to inspire confidence. As the months went by, news of Kickstarter refunds began to surface.
Bob's website featured a disclaimer stating that he intended to reimburse those who'd helped
finance his game and that he was currently looking for other work. Uploads to his website
and YouTube channel stopped for more than a year, until the summer of 2016, when Bob's
Game appeared to be available for free on Steam and Itchio. But those who downloaded
it didn't find the RPG they were expecting. "What is it just Tetris? You make Tetris out
of this? I though you had a whole DS game, dude. What the [ __ ] is this?" Instead, they
found the game-within-a-game that Yuu, the game's protagonist, was said to have been developing
throughout the Bob's Game storyline. "What? You turned it into Dr. Mario now? I'm confused, Bob,
you're scaring me. What is the game anymore?" Many who'd expected the game they'd been following for
the past eight years felt they'd been misled once again. And when Pelloni began to move on to other
projects, such as this, quote, "billion-dollar edu-game that would replace k-12 education,"
it seemed Bob's Game had truly come to an end. The saga of Bob's Game, while unique in
its own way, is not without its parallels. Stories of independent developers responding to
the sudden rush of attention they've received with self-sabotaging behavior appear more frequently
than one might expect. Phil Fish became enraged after the success of Fez, claiming youtubers
who played his game on their channel owed him advertising revenue, before quitting the industry
out of spite because he believed his fans didn't deserve anything else from him. Once Alex
Mahan became popular after well-known youtubers streamed the demo for his anime-inspired,
stealth action title, Yandere Simulator... "Oh! She woke up! Oh no!" His game fell into developmental purgatory,
while Mahan's personal reputation was marred by outburst, and accusing fans of slowing
progress by sending him too many emails. "When you send me a stupid email you are
actively sabotaging the game's development." Other independent video game developers, however,
seem to handle the pressure and expectations well. And they're often used for comparison against
the ones who don't. It's impossible to know how one will respond when something they've
put into the world is positively received, and they find themselves, usually for the first
time in their lives, in front of an audience. Pelloni has remained largely silent in recent
years. He's been banned from updating his own Wikipedia page for failing to follow editing
guidelines. He'll occasionally appear in forum discussions whenever the subject of his game
comes up, always quick to assure his fans that he's still working on Bob's Game, but vague to
the specifics. Reggie Filmes-Aime stepped down as the president of Nintendo of America in 2019.
His replacement is fittingly named Doug Bowser. Perhaps Pelloni would find him more receptive to
a renewed campaign to bring Bob's Game to Nintendo once and for all. But if something like that is
in the works, no one knows but Bob himself. "Bob's game at the Nintendo World Store. We're going to
purchase the DS and we're going to play it here." "You're going to love it. I know
you. You're going to really love it." "Oh yes. We've got a question from our
listeners. And he asks: why on earth do you call it Bob's Game?" "Um. It didn't originally
have a name. I kind of just worked on it for, you know, several years and certain people knew of
it. I didn't really show it to very many people, but, you know, a lot of my friends knew that I
was working on a game. So it almost just evolved into having that name. It was, it was Bob's Game.
That's, that's kind of how people had to refer to it, uh, and that kind of, you know, originally I
didn't didn't have the idea to put me in as the end boss, you know. I was kind of trying to come
up with who's, who's the end boss. You know, who's going to be the original. "Yeah right.
Who's going to be the end boss?" "You know, so eventually it occurred to me, you know,
everyone's calling it Bob's Game. I was wondering, you know, I should put myself in the game
somewhere, you know, that would be clever..."
Ooooh excited to see this one!
Really pumped to watch another video of yours :)
She's baaaaaaack!
It was a great watch!!
I just found this guy existed (Bob). He reminds me of the guy that made temple OS.
Loved it