

Indie Game Developer does 100 day protest Nintendo - jflowers45
http://www.bobsgame.com/

======
nihilocrat
It's amusing to see this guy's story circulate from the indie gaming forums
(where it showed up a few weeks ago) onto Hacker News.

Everyone already agrees that he's doing the wrong thing if he wants to be
successful, and that he's got a degree of dedication that would allow him to
sell his title independently for other platforms (computer, Xbox Arcade, etc.)
or join an existing company. Everyone is also bothered by his extremely huge
ego, which rivals that of Lord British (Richard Garriott) himself.

He's trying to aspire to some sort of weird ideal of being one of the last
single-person developers who publishes a mainstream console title, something
which doesn't really exist anymore. It's noble, but foolhardy.

He's just hard to write off, because he's not just some loser who is being
unrealistic. He is an insanely devoted, multi-talented person who is being
unrealistic.

~~~
jonursenbach
Yeah his ego is really a big turn off.

"I did this pixel by pixel, beautiful isn't it?" "One time it took me 3 days
to draw this tree."

~~~
huhtenberg
You clearly have never spent a week polishing a 16x16 system tray icon.

:-)

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ROFISH
He picked the _worst_ company to go with. They are a million times worse than
Apple with their "closed-system" iPhone. As much as I want to feel sorry for
the guy, it should have been his business to research if he would be accepted.
I know if I were to sink a large amount of time into an iPhone app, I would
make should it would get approved before starting all the work.

~~~
silencio
The big problem with iPhone apps is that there is no way to get initial
preapproval before starting work, and where Apple defines what is acceptable
for the app store is fairly vague and not consistent. There've been plenty of
cases even mentioned here on HN of developers who spent x amount of money and
y amount of time on an app that was rejected or ignored by Apple.

I'm not sure why Apple doesn't do it. It's not like anyone's asking them to
approve apps for the store at the idea stage...I think most devs would be
satisfied with getting conditional approval for their ideas, subject to
additional reviews (i.e. implementation) before it is approved for the app
store. If Apple wants to charge more, so be it, at least it would remove the
uncertainty of clients not sure if their app would be approved and developers
wary of wasting their time.

I would definitely find that useful, as I'm sitting on one half baked iPhone
app and idea that, depending on how you interpret the iPhone dev agreements,
may or may not be offensive in nature. I don't want to continue spending the
dev time if Apple decides it's too offensive, but it would be pure agony if I
found out someone else had the same idea and was approved.

~~~
ROFISH
Last I checked, I got some support tickets for the iPhone whenever I paid my
$99. Why don't use use one of them to ask?

~~~
silencio
Because those are code level support tickets I don't really want to waste on
something Apple probably doesn't even have existing policy for.

Or, imagine what would happen if I used one of them to ask "Hey, so I have
this game I am working on and I wanted clarification on one of your rules for
acceptance to the app store. I'm not sure if this is offensive or not based on
the standards you are not making public that I will also not make public
because this correspondence is NDA'd. Please give me some sort of conditional
acceptance on the idea itself". I would probably get shoved to one of the
devrel people who then tell me to just upload my app after I'm ready to submit
to app store.

On the other hand, your comment made me realize asking devrel and submitting a
couple radars _first_ couldn't hurt, except someone's already done it:
<http://www.openradar.me/6218801>

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pistoriusp
I don't know why... But I feel very bad for this guy. I think I would go
insane if I was trapped inside a room for 100 days.

It's a great marketing ploy though.

~~~
silencio
> It's a great marketing ploy though.

Just like online petitions...right?

The sad news is Nintendo probably doesn't care even about the public backlash
stemming from this 100 day protest. Actually, what backlash? A lot of the
criticism I've read on neogaf, kotaku, joystiq and others is criticism of the
game and the developer, and not much of Nintendo's actions, especially from
people who seem to know something of the whole process.

I personally think he should invest a big chunk of time into Android and
iPhone ports of the game, as well as XBLM and maybe even a regular ol' PC
version. I can't speak for Nintendo, but I'd take impressive iPhone app store
sales over the dev locking himself in for 100 days any day. And he's spent so
much time on the game that it seems a waste not to port to other platforms
anyway with all that publicity and effort and with Nintendo ignoring him.
Imagine what kind of sales World of Goo would get if/when they release an
iPhone port.

Don't get me wrong, I think what he's done is impressive for a one-person job,
but he's not doing such a great job selling himself or looking into
alternatives earlier.

~~~
SingAlong
> Just like online petitions...right? This seems better than that. It will
> surely make it's mark.

Well, he's anyway found out a new kind of protest 'online protest'. Better
than online petitions. And it's close to live protest :)

Your point to invest in Anrdoid apps, I agree. He should just go abt
developing an Android port of the game. Google would anyway soon open up a
payment system for the android market place and now since the android market
place has very few apps, he surely has the advantage of getting noticed there.

I would like to know the result of this protest once it ends.

P.S: As a sign of good will, we all hackers should click that blue "let
Nintendo know" link and mail Nintendo about it. My mail contents included the
url to the website and "We want to play Bob's Game"

~~~
ScottWhigham
If you read down a ways, he says, "... I'm working on the Android and iPhone
ports for 100 days straight. These platforms are awesome! Yuu doesn't even
need a publisher! What a great idea!"

~~~
silencio
Sigh, that is a far way down on a site that is painful to read ;)

But it is nice to see he is looking into alternatives to publishing his game.
It's what he should have done instead of this 100 day nonsense.

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jonursenbach
Why not just sell it to the NDS homebrew community?

