WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.480 Imagine barricading yourself inside your bedroom, 00:00:02.980 --> 00:00:04.599 right? Like locking the door from the outside 00:00:04.599 --> 00:00:06.980 and then broadcasting your own descent into madness 00:00:06.980 --> 00:00:09.119 live to the internet. All just because a corporate 00:00:09.119 --> 00:00:11.640 giant wouldn't answer your emails. It's wild. 00:00:11.740 --> 00:00:13.960 It is completely wild. And that's exactly what 00:00:13.960 --> 00:00:17.480 happened in December 2008. So today, we're taking 00:00:17.480 --> 00:00:20.820 your stack of notes, old forum archives, and 00:00:20.820 --> 00:00:23.480 the massive Wikipedia footprint of this unreleased 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:26.179 video game called Bob's Game. And we are diving 00:00:26.179 --> 00:00:29.410 headfirst into the madness. Oh, yeah. I am so 00:00:29.410 --> 00:00:31.690 ready for this. The mission for this deep dive 00:00:31.690 --> 00:00:34.990 is to explore the incredibly chaotic intersection 00:00:34.990 --> 00:00:38.710 of indie creativity, corporate gatekeeping, and 00:00:38.710 --> 00:00:40.939 well... internet spectacle. What's fascinating 00:00:40.939 --> 00:00:43.039 here is that this isn't just a story about coding 00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:45.119 a video game. I mean, it's really a psychological 00:00:45.119 --> 00:00:47.560 case study. Yeah, exactly. We're looking at what 00:00:47.560 --> 00:00:51.539 happens when sheer unfiltered creative willpower 00:00:51.539 --> 00:00:55.240 hits the immovable, entirely indifferent brick 00:00:55.240 --> 00:00:57.460 wall of corporate bureaucracy. It's basically 00:00:57.460 --> 00:00:59.719 the ultimate cautionary tale about the dangers 00:00:59.719 --> 00:01:02.380 of working in a vacuum. Okay, let's unpack this 00:01:02.380 --> 00:01:05.599 because to understand the barricaded door, you 00:01:05.599 --> 00:01:07.260 know, we really have to understand the man who 00:01:07.260 --> 00:01:10.310 locked it. Right. Robert Polony. Yeah, a developer 00:01:10.310 --> 00:01:12.189 named Robert Polony. We're talking about someone 00:01:12.189 --> 00:01:16.049 who spent over 15 ,000 hours, over five years, 00:01:16.730 --> 00:01:19.290 building a game entirely by himself. Which is 00:01:19.290 --> 00:01:21.909 just... staggering amount of time. It really 00:01:21.909 --> 00:01:24.430 is. And he ends up locked in his room for a 30 00:01:24.430 --> 00:01:27.909 -day protest, vandalizing a store, and publicly 00:01:27.909 --> 00:01:30.269 claiming to be a better developer than the greatest 00:01:30.269 --> 00:01:32.790 game designers in history combined. To really 00:01:32.790 --> 00:01:35.170 grasp the scale of that obsession, we kind of 00:01:35.170 --> 00:01:38.450 have to rewind to 2003 and 2004. Okay, set the 00:01:38.450 --> 00:01:41.290 scene for us. So the Nintendo DS is just hitting 00:01:41.290 --> 00:01:44.400 the market. and it's revolutionizing portable 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:47.319 gaming with its dual screens. And Pelloni is 00:01:47.319 --> 00:01:49.599 talking with his friends, sketching out this 00:01:49.599 --> 00:01:52.299 massive vision for a 2D role -playing game. But 00:01:52.299 --> 00:01:54.159 he didn't want the standard fantasy stuff, right? 00:01:54.340 --> 00:01:56.900 Like no elves, no dragons. Exactly. He wants 00:01:56.900 --> 00:01:59.680 to set it in the modern suburbs, but approach 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:02.329 it with this really hardcore... Dungeons and 00:02:02.329 --> 00:02:04.969 Dragons mindset. He's looking at classic games 00:02:04.969 --> 00:02:07.590 like Earthbound and Super Metroid. No, absolute 00:02:07.590 --> 00:02:10.229 classics. Right, but more importantly, he's looking 00:02:10.229 --> 00:02:14.259 at a game called Cave Story. Cave Story. That 00:02:14.259 --> 00:02:17.259 is basically the holy grail for solo developers. 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:19.580 It really is. I mean, it's famously created by 00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:22.159 just one guy over five years, and it became a 00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:25.560 massive hit. It proved that a single dedicated 00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:28.560 visionary could theoretically rival a whole studio. 00:02:28.879 --> 00:02:31.460 It did, and that proof really fueled Pelloni. 00:02:31.740 --> 00:02:34.180 Like, we have to look at why he took this massive 00:02:34.180 --> 00:02:37.379 burden on entirely alone. Right, because making 00:02:37.379 --> 00:02:39.719 a game by yourself is a nightmare. Total nightmare. 00:02:39.819 --> 00:02:41.710 Yeah. but he was looking at the games industry 00:02:41.710 --> 00:02:44.129 at the time and feeling just incredibly disillusioned. 00:02:44.270 --> 00:02:46.650 The standard practice for big publishers in the 00:02:46.650 --> 00:02:49.469 mid -2000s was just churning out shovelware. 00:02:49.750 --> 00:02:52.990 Oh yeah, the endless movie tie -in games. Exactly. 00:02:53.229 --> 00:02:55.750 They'd take a generic clunky game engine, slap 00:02:55.750 --> 00:02:57.870 some licensed movie assets on it to coincide 00:02:57.870 --> 00:02:59.949 with the summer blockbuster, and just ship it 00:02:59.949 --> 00:03:02.210 out. Just a total cash grab. Yeah, and to Polonyi, 00:03:02.210 --> 00:03:04.509 that felt utterly soulless. He wanted to make 00:03:04.509 --> 00:03:06.969 actual art. He wanted total creative control, 00:03:07.110 --> 00:03:09.909 and he believed the only way to protect that 00:03:09.909 --> 00:03:12.849 control was isolation. Total isolation. The sources 00:03:12.849 --> 00:03:16.050 show he spent most of 2006 and 2007 completely 00:03:16.050 --> 00:03:19.189 cut off from the world, just developing. Let's 00:03:19.189 --> 00:03:21.270 just pause and think about that 15 ,000 -hour 00:03:21.270 --> 00:03:23.789 number for a second. It's hard to even conceptualize. 00:03:23.849 --> 00:03:26.669 It really is. Like, a standard 40 -hour -a -week 00:03:26.669 --> 00:03:30.729 job adds up to about 2 ,000 hours a year. So, 00:03:30.789 --> 00:03:32.889 Polonyi was effectively working a full -time 00:03:32.889 --> 00:03:36.750 job, plus endless grueling overtime, for over 00:03:36.750 --> 00:03:41.330 five years, entirely alone. No days off. No colleagues 00:03:41.330 --> 00:03:44.169 to bounce ideas off of. Nothing. And the scope 00:03:44.169 --> 00:03:46.810 of what he was doing manually is just staggering. 00:03:46.990 --> 00:03:49.430 I mean, he created over 200 unique characters. 00:03:49.810 --> 00:03:52.539 Wow. 200. Yeah. And he painted all the background 00:03:52.539 --> 00:03:55.240 graphics himself, pixel by pixel. He even admitted 00:03:55.240 --> 00:03:56.960 later that the art was the hardest part because 00:03:56.960 --> 00:03:59.500 he had absolutely zero prior artistic experience. 00:03:59.699 --> 00:04:01.860 That's insane. He was essentially learning how 00:04:01.860 --> 00:04:03.400 to build the airplane while he was already in 00:04:03.400 --> 00:04:05.580 a nosedive, you know, teaching himself coding, 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:07.759 animation, and game design all simultaneously. 00:04:07.860 --> 00:04:09.800 It makes me think of an analogy. Imagine you 00:04:09.800 --> 00:04:12.080 decide to build a sprawling, metropolis -sized 00:04:12.080 --> 00:04:14.819 Lego city. OK, I'm with you. You spend years 00:04:14.819 --> 00:04:17.800 in your basement, meticulously building skyscrapers, 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:20.500 subways, and parks entirely from scratch down 00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:23.220 to the little plastic street lamps. Yeah, that's 00:04:23.220 --> 00:04:25.540 exhausting. Right. But then you realize that 00:04:25.540 --> 00:04:27.879 to actually display it to the public, you need 00:04:27.879 --> 00:04:31.439 a very specific, highly proprietary brand of 00:04:31.439 --> 00:04:34.540 glue to hold the foundation together. Ah, I see 00:04:34.540 --> 00:04:36.860 where this is going. A glue that only one company 00:04:36.860 --> 00:04:39.000 makes, and they just refuse to sell it to you. 00:04:39.259 --> 00:04:41.319 It really makes you wonder, and I have to ask 00:04:41.319 --> 00:04:44.420 you, at what point does admirable dedication 00:04:44.420 --> 00:04:47.939 cross over into dangerous isolation? That pension 00:04:47.939 --> 00:04:51.139 right there. is the central pillar of this entire 00:04:51.139 --> 00:04:54.819 saga. Because all of that isolation, those 15 00:04:54.819 --> 00:04:57.720 ,000 hours of relentless coding, they meant absolutely 00:04:57.720 --> 00:04:59.980 nothing without that proprietary glue. And in 00:04:59.980 --> 00:05:02.439 Polony's case, the glue was the official Nintendo 00:05:02.439 --> 00:05:04.819 software development kit. Right. Commonly referred 00:05:04.819 --> 00:05:07.439 to as an SDK. For those unfamiliar, you know, 00:05:07.560 --> 00:05:10.259 an SDK isn't just a suggestion box or a helpful 00:05:10.259 --> 00:05:13.180 guide. It's the mandatory set of tools you need 00:05:13.180 --> 00:05:15.680 to compile your work. You literally cannot bypass 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:19.379 it. Exactly. To put Bob's game onto a physical 00:05:19.379 --> 00:05:22.600 Nintendo DS cartridge, Polony needed Nintendo 00:05:22.600 --> 00:05:25.939 -specific software to translate his raw human 00:05:25.939 --> 00:05:28.899 -readable code into the ones and zeros that the 00:05:28.899 --> 00:05:30.980 Nintendo hardware can actually run. He needed 00:05:30.980 --> 00:05:33.120 their blessing. He literally could not finish 00:05:33.120 --> 00:05:35.439 the game without it. Which... drops him into 00:05:35.439 --> 00:05:38.779 this devastating Catch -22. Nintendo's strict 00:05:38.779 --> 00:05:41.339 corporate policy at the time was that they wouldn't 00:05:41.339 --> 00:05:43.899 grant access to their SDK unless you had already 00:05:43.899 --> 00:05:46.660 published a game. Oh, wow! But Polony couldn't 00:05:46.660 --> 00:05:48.939 publish Bob's game, which was his very first 00:05:48.939 --> 00:05:52.360 game, without the SDK. So he's just totally stuck. 00:05:52.540 --> 00:05:55.339 And he also flat out refuses to go to a third 00:05:55.339 --> 00:05:57.259 party publisher to bypass this rule, right? Yeah, 00:05:57.259 --> 00:05:58.899 he wouldn't even consider it. Again, it comes 00:05:58.899 --> 00:06:01.459 back to that obsessive need for creative control. 00:06:01.819 --> 00:06:03.959 He didn't want a publisher owning the rights 00:06:03.959 --> 00:06:06.600 to his life's work. He was so fiercely protective 00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:08.939 of it. He even planned to replace the standard 00:06:08.939 --> 00:06:12.079 end credits role of the game with a massive manifesto 00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:14.800 summarizing how he made Bob's game all by himself. 00:06:14.879 --> 00:06:16.860 Yeah. So bypassing the publishers, he tries to 00:06:16.860 --> 00:06:19.519 go directly to Nintendo. And what follows is 00:06:19.519 --> 00:06:21.920 just a master class in bureaucratic purgatory. 00:06:22.110 --> 00:06:25.389 Oh, the corporate runaround. Exactly. In 2008, 00:06:25.670 --> 00:06:27.769 Nintendo directs him to their Wario World developer 00:06:27.769 --> 00:06:30.610 division. And Wario World tells him his project 00:06:30.610 --> 00:06:32.550 is too ambitious for them, so they send him to 00:06:32.550 --> 00:06:34.350 the marketing department. Of course they do. 00:06:34.509 --> 00:06:37.269 Right. And marketing takes one look, says they 00:06:37.269 --> 00:06:39.709 don't handle developer kits, and sends him right 00:06:39.709 --> 00:06:42.709 back to Wario World. Just a perfect loop. Finally, 00:06:42.889 --> 00:06:45.050 after endless emails, they tell him they'll give 00:06:45.050 --> 00:06:47.730 him a definitive answer in six to eight weeks. 00:06:47.889 --> 00:06:50.389 But six to eight weeks turns into 17 weeks? Yep. 00:06:50.519 --> 00:06:54.459 nearly four months of absolute crushing silence. 00:06:54.920 --> 00:06:57.879 Just sitting in that room, staring at his 15 00:06:57.879 --> 00:07:00.480 ,000 hours of work, waiting for an email that 00:07:00.480 --> 00:07:03.420 simply isn't coming. Just agonizing. Now the 00:07:03.420 --> 00:07:05.420 narrative that quickly formed online was that 00:07:05.420 --> 00:07:08.980 Nintendo was this massive, evil, corporate bully 00:07:08.980 --> 00:07:12.100 crushing the brilliant little guy. But I kind 00:07:12.100 --> 00:07:13.800 of want to push back on that a bit. OK, let's 00:07:13.800 --> 00:07:16.379 hear it. Is Nintendo really the villain here? 00:07:16.759 --> 00:07:19.399 Think about it like trying to get a massive commercial 00:07:19.399 --> 00:07:22.279 bank loan for a skyscraper. You walk in with 00:07:22.279 --> 00:07:25.680 zero credit history, no collateral, you refuse 00:07:25.680 --> 00:07:28.180 to co -sign with any established partners, and 00:07:28.180 --> 00:07:31.079 you demand millions of dollars based purely on 00:07:31.079 --> 00:07:34.459 your passion. That is a really fair point. It's 00:07:34.459 --> 00:07:36.759 easy to look at it from Nintendo's side now, 00:07:37.060 --> 00:07:39.300 but you have to remember the context of 2008. 00:07:39.540 --> 00:07:41.939 Right, that early days of viral Internet outrage. 00:07:42.259 --> 00:07:45.259 Exactly. The Internet loved David versus Goliath's 00:07:45.259 --> 00:07:47.649 story. And Pelloni played that angle perfectly. 00:07:48.209 --> 00:07:50.670 He made Nintendo look like this cold, faceless 00:07:50.670 --> 00:07:53.490 machine trying to crush a starving artist. But 00:07:53.490 --> 00:07:55.910 they actually had valid reasons. They did. If 00:07:55.910 --> 00:07:57.829 you read the actual rejection letter Nintendo 00:07:57.829 --> 00:08:00.310 eventually sent him, their logic is completely 00:08:00.310 --> 00:08:03.069 sound. They explicitly stated they require secure 00:08:03.069 --> 00:08:05.470 business facilities, sufficient equipment and 00:08:05.470 --> 00:08:07.750 staffing, and financial stability. Which he obviously 00:08:07.750 --> 00:08:10.009 didn't have. Not at all. They're dealing with 00:08:10.009 --> 00:08:12.610 highly confidential proprietary hardware architecture. 00:08:12.889 --> 00:08:14.949 They simply cannot hand out the keys to their 00:08:14.949 --> 00:08:17.509 ecosystem to a guy working out of his childhood 00:08:17.509 --> 00:08:19.610 bedroom, no matter how passionate or talented 00:08:19.610 --> 00:08:22.310 he claims to be. So is it corporate bullying 00:08:22.310 --> 00:08:24.850 or just standard industry security? I mean, if 00:08:24.850 --> 00:08:26.389 you're Nintendo, you have to protect your platform. 00:08:26.810 --> 00:08:29.529 Absolutely. You can't have unvetted, potentially 00:08:29.529 --> 00:08:32.590 unstable code running on your systems and crashing 00:08:32.590 --> 00:08:34.870 your hardware. But logic and corporate security 00:08:34.870 --> 00:08:37.210 protocols didn't really matter to Polony anymore. 00:08:37.419 --> 00:08:40.059 The silence from Nintendo was the spark that 00:08:40.059 --> 00:08:42.720 just ignited his isolation. I weaponized it. 00:08:42.820 --> 00:08:45.519 He really did. He turned it into a massive public 00:08:45.519 --> 00:08:49.139 spectacle. On December 11th, 2008, he decided 00:08:49.139 --> 00:08:51.679 he'd had enough of the waiting game. He barricaded 00:08:51.679 --> 00:08:55.259 himself in his room for a planned 100 -day protest. 00:08:55.460 --> 00:08:57.860 The details of this protest are just wild. I 00:08:57.860 --> 00:08:59.539 actually want to read you his direct quote when 00:08:59.539 --> 00:09:01.899 he launched this stunt. Oh, please do. He said, 00:09:01.919 --> 00:09:04.500 I cannot leave this Viridian room. The door is 00:09:04.500 --> 00:09:07.230 locked and barricaded from the outside. I'm sleeping 00:09:07.230 --> 00:09:09.470 behind the camera, and yes, I've got a shower. 00:09:09.929 --> 00:09:12.330 Food is delivered once a week by a friend. This 00:09:12.330 --> 00:09:15.870 is my 100 -day protest to Nintendo. He deliberately 00:09:15.870 --> 00:09:18.509 stripped away every single external distraction. 00:09:18.990 --> 00:09:21.370 He removed his television, he cut off his own 00:09:21.370 --> 00:09:24.450 internet access, leaving only a live webcam feed 00:09:24.450 --> 00:09:27.809 broadcasting his room to the world. And a mobile 00:09:27.809 --> 00:09:29.750 phone, right? Yeah, just for essential calls 00:09:29.750 --> 00:09:33.830 and emails. But other than that, he trapped himself. 00:09:34.110 --> 00:09:36.970 with nothing but his own thoughts and the code 00:09:36.970 --> 00:09:39.789 for Bob's game. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:09:40.190 --> 00:09:42.389 Because if you look at modern internet culture 00:09:42.389 --> 00:09:45.009 today, this sounds exactly like a Twitch sub 00:09:45.009 --> 00:09:46.929 -a -thon. Oh my gosh, you're totally right. You 00:09:46.929 --> 00:09:49.129 know, where a streamer locks themselves in a 00:09:49.129 --> 00:09:51.470 room for 30 days and the audience pays money 00:09:51.470 --> 00:09:53.789 to keep a timer going. It's usually celebratory. 00:09:53.889 --> 00:09:56.840 Yeah, like a big community event. Right. But 00:09:56.840 --> 00:09:59.340 Poloni wasn't doing this for subscriptions or 00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:02.120 community building. This was fueled entirely 00:10:02.120 --> 00:10:05.279 by pure grievance. It was like a hostage negotiation 00:10:05.279 --> 00:10:08.279 broadcast live where he was both the hostage 00:10:08.279 --> 00:10:10.580 taker and the hostage. The psychology of that 00:10:10.580 --> 00:10:13.379 is just terrifying. You combine severe sensory 00:10:13.379 --> 00:10:16.120 deprivation with an invisible silent audience 00:10:16.120 --> 00:10:18.299 of thousands watching you through a webcam. It's 00:10:18.299 --> 00:10:20.879 a recipe for a breakdown. It really is. And without 00:10:20.879 --> 00:10:23.559 any external input to ground him. The situation 00:10:23.559 --> 00:10:26.960 escalated incredibly fast. By day 21, which was 00:10:26.960 --> 00:10:29.159 New Year's Eve, things took a very dark turn. 00:10:29.559 --> 00:10:32.399 What did he do? He started threatening to release 00:10:32.399 --> 00:10:34.659 the home addresses of Nintendo executives to 00:10:34.659 --> 00:10:38.220 the public. He even sent a deeply sarcastic, 00:10:38.539 --> 00:10:41.179 hostile holiday greeting to the president of 00:10:41.179 --> 00:10:44.000 Nintendo of America. He starts actively threatening 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:46.559 their bottom line, too. He goes on forums and 00:10:46.559 --> 00:10:48.639 claims he's translating the game into several 00:10:48.639 --> 00:10:51.500 languages to release it worldwide on illegal 00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:54.259 flash cartridges. Just to steal Nintendo's profits. 00:10:54.580 --> 00:10:57.279 Exactly. He claims he's in secret negotiations 00:10:57.279 --> 00:10:59.909 with Walmart. He threatens to po— the game to 00:10:59.909 --> 00:11:03.809 every rival platform imaginable. Xbox Live, Arcade, 00:11:04.169 --> 00:11:07.769 Steam, PlayStation Network, the iPhone. The grandiosity 00:11:07.769 --> 00:11:10.669 just peaked on January 6th. He made a public 00:11:10.669 --> 00:11:12.750 declaration that he was an objectively better 00:11:12.750 --> 00:11:15.870 developer than Shigeru Miyamoto. The creator 00:11:15.870 --> 00:11:19.090 of Mario and Zelda? Yes, along with Hideo Kojima, 00:11:19.309 --> 00:11:21.509 John Carmack, and Will Wright combined. That 00:11:21.509 --> 00:11:23.789 is quite the claim. He actually apologized for 00:11:23.789 --> 00:11:26.110 that specific comment a couple days later, realizing 00:11:26.110 --> 00:11:28.149 he'd crossed a major line with the gaming community. 00:11:28.629 --> 00:11:30.769 But the erratic behavior just kept escalating. 00:11:31.129 --> 00:11:33.110 Yeah, I read that on camera he was constantly 00:11:33.110 --> 00:11:35.629 complaining about persistent paranoia and blinding 00:11:35.629 --> 00:11:37.929 headaches. But you can't trick the human body 00:11:37.929 --> 00:11:41.149 forever. The adrenaline of the protest eventually 00:11:41.149 --> 00:11:44.230 wore off, and the reality of that sensory deprivation 00:11:44.230 --> 00:11:47.169 set in. And then comes day 30. Right. January 00:11:47.169 --> 00:11:50.679 10, 2009. The protest abruptly ends. He posts 00:11:50.679 --> 00:11:53.379 this frantic message saying he has a wicked headache, 00:11:53.559 --> 00:11:55.980 and then he physically ransacks his own room 00:11:55.980 --> 00:11:58.220 on camera in frustration, just throwing things 00:11:58.220 --> 00:12:01.360 around, and he declares total defeat. And because 00:12:01.360 --> 00:12:04.620 he had been broadcasting this 247, he had an 00:12:04.620 --> 00:12:07.000 audience watching this breakdown happen in real 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.279 time. Yeah, the internet was watching. Specifically, 00:12:09.899 --> 00:12:12.259 the users on the 4chan message boards, their 00:12:12.259 --> 00:12:14.879 video game board, saw the destruction. They saw 00:12:14.879 --> 00:12:16.799 the sudden lack of movement on the webcam in 00:12:16.799 --> 00:12:19.039 the hours that followed. And they got genuinely 00:12:19.039 --> 00:12:21.299 concerned. Which is saying something. Think about 00:12:21.299 --> 00:12:24.100 how extreme a situation has to be for 4chan to 00:12:24.100 --> 00:12:26.460 intervene out of empathy. Right. I mean, 4chan 00:12:26.460 --> 00:12:29.240 isn't exactly known for its warm, fuzzy, supportive 00:12:29.240 --> 00:12:32.759 community. But a user there actually used a WHOIS 00:12:32.759 --> 00:12:35.279 domain registry search to track down the personal 00:12:35.279 --> 00:12:37.779 phone number attached to Polonyi's website. That's 00:12:37.779 --> 00:12:40.330 some serious internet sleuthing. Yeah, and they 00:12:40.330 --> 00:12:42.730 called his sister, alerted her to the broadcast, 00:12:42.830 --> 00:12:45.389 and eventually the police were called to break 00:12:45.389 --> 00:12:47.590 down the door of the Viridian room on January 00:12:47.590 --> 00:12:51.309 11th for a wellness check. The police found him 00:12:51.309 --> 00:12:54.490 physically fine, thankfully, but the psychological 00:12:54.490 --> 00:12:56.970 aftermath of that room was incredibly bizarre. 00:12:57.070 --> 00:12:59.190 He didn't just walk away, did he? No, he didn't 00:12:59.190 --> 00:13:01.649 just stop developing the game to recover. He 00:13:01.649 --> 00:13:04.210 took the trauma of the protest and injected it 00:13:04.210 --> 00:13:06.549 directly into the source code. He actually made 00:13:06.549 --> 00:13:10.370 himself the final boss of the game. Wow. And 00:13:10.370 --> 00:13:13.210 he renamed the main villain, Gantendo, which 00:13:13.210 --> 00:13:16.090 is a very unsubtle mashup of the classic Nintendo 00:13:16.090 --> 00:13:18.889 villain Ganon and Nintendo itself. Yeah, not 00:13:18.889 --> 00:13:21.529 subtle at all. And he named the protagonist Yu, 00:13:21.830 --> 00:13:24.669 as in Y -O -U. It stopped being a quirky RPG 00:13:24.669 --> 00:13:26.970 about the suburbs and Dungeons and Dragons. It 00:13:26.970 --> 00:13:29.049 basically morphed into an interactive, playable 00:13:29.049 --> 00:13:31.370 diary of his own personal vendetta against a 00:13:31.370 --> 00:13:34.269 corporation. And that vendetta spilled back out 00:13:34.269 --> 00:13:37.580 into the real world shortly after. A few weeks 00:13:37.580 --> 00:13:39.539 later, Polony traveled to the Nintendo World 00:13:39.539 --> 00:13:42.960 Store in New York City. Yeah. He actively vandalized 00:13:42.960 --> 00:13:45.259 the store, leaving stickers and promotional material 00:13:45.259 --> 00:13:48.120 for his game everywhere, and then posted a video 00:13:48.120 --> 00:13:51.139 claiming that this vandalism was level 50 of 00:13:51.139 --> 00:13:54.379 his ongoing protest. It's just nonstop. But just 00:13:54.379 --> 00:13:56.720 when you think the story can't get any stranger, 00:13:57.340 --> 00:14:01.220 we hit March 2009, and we get this massive twist. 00:14:01.240 --> 00:14:04.519 A huge pivot. Polony sends a mass email to the 00:14:04.519 --> 00:14:07.740 gaming press. He claims the entire thing, the 00:14:07.740 --> 00:14:10.120 breakdown, the 100 -day protest, the Viridian 00:14:10.120 --> 00:14:12.659 Room, the police wellness check, he claims it 00:14:12.659 --> 00:14:15.360 was all a meticulously planned viral marketing 00:14:15.360 --> 00:14:18.139 ploy. He called it an old -school marketing style 00:14:18.139 --> 00:14:20.580 for an old -school style game. Do people actually 00:14:20.580 --> 00:14:22.399 believe that? Well, he essentially told the press 00:14:22.399 --> 00:14:24.279 that he had fooled the entire internet gaming 00:14:24.279 --> 00:14:26.779 community. He even expressed disappointment that 00:14:26.779 --> 00:14:28.960 the media preferred writing a story about an 00:14:28.960 --> 00:14:31.779 angry developer littering at a Nintendo store 00:14:31.779 --> 00:14:33.720 rather than just writing about an angry developer 00:14:33.720 --> 00:14:36.070 sticking it to the man. I have to pose this question 00:14:36.070 --> 00:14:38.610 directly to you, the listener. Do you actually 00:14:38.610 --> 00:14:41.549 buy that? Was this an incredibly ahead of its 00:14:41.549 --> 00:14:46.149 time, 40 chess viral stunt or was this a desperate 00:14:46.149 --> 00:14:49.549 face saving retcon after a very genuine, very 00:14:49.549 --> 00:14:52.389 public mental breakdown? Looking at the timeline, 00:14:52.830 --> 00:14:54.789 the physical destruction of his room and the 00:14:54.789 --> 00:14:57.970 actual police involvement, it is incredibly hard 00:14:57.970 --> 00:15:00.129 to view it purely as calculated marketing. It 00:15:00.129 --> 00:15:03.240 just doesn't add up as a prank. No. But regardless 00:15:03.240 --> 00:15:05.659 of his intentions, the result was the same. He 00:15:05.659 --> 00:15:07.559 had successfully alienated the gaming press, 00:15:07.799 --> 00:15:10.240 who felt totally manipulated, and he had permanently 00:15:10.240 --> 00:15:12.559 burned his bridges with Nintendo. Right, because 00:15:12.559 --> 00:15:14.620 a few weeks after the protest ended, he finally 00:15:14.620 --> 00:15:17.159 received that official final rejection letter 00:15:17.159 --> 00:15:19.860 from Nintendo that we discussed earlier. So picture 00:15:19.860 --> 00:15:23.120 his reality now. He has this massive game, 15 00:15:23.120 --> 00:15:25.980 ,000 hours of his life poured into it, and absolutely 00:15:25.980 --> 00:15:28.740 no way to put it on Nintendo DS. He has to pivot. 00:15:28.919 --> 00:15:31.679 And this pivot launches a decade of endless aftermath, 00:15:32.059 --> 00:15:34.139 technical nightmares, and honestly, some of the 00:15:34.139 --> 00:15:35.759 worst scope creep in the history of software 00:15:35.759 --> 00:15:37.700 development. Oh, the scope kick is legendary. 00:15:38.259 --> 00:15:41.259 Oh. In 2011, having been rejected by the hardware 00:15:41.259 --> 00:15:43.500 giant, he announces he's just going to build 00:15:43.500 --> 00:15:45.919 his own portable console. Think about the hubris 00:15:45.919 --> 00:15:48.419 of that. You can't get your software published, 00:15:48.639 --> 00:15:50.899 so you decide to manufacture hardware. It makes 00:15:50.899 --> 00:15:54.049 zero sense. He called it the ND. He claimed he 00:15:54.049 --> 00:15:56.210 was going to manufacture and sell this new handheld 00:15:56.210 --> 00:16:00.250 console for just $20, and Bob's game would finally 00:16:00.250 --> 00:16:03.909 be the launch title. $20? Yeah. He even uploaded 00:16:03.909 --> 00:16:06.009 a flashy commercial for it during the Electronic 00:16:06.009 --> 00:16:08.789 Entertainment Expo, the biggest gaming convention 00:16:08.789 --> 00:16:12.309 of the year in 2011. A $20 console is an economic 00:16:12.309 --> 00:16:14.590 impossibility. You can't even buy the raw materials 00:16:14.590 --> 00:16:17.590 for that, and unsurprisingly, it never released. 00:16:17.799 --> 00:16:20.899 By 2013, all references to the ND were silently 00:16:20.899 --> 00:16:23.279 scrubbed from his website, just as if it never 00:16:23.279 --> 00:16:25.679 existed. If we connect this to the bigger picture, 00:16:26.100 --> 00:16:28.460 you start to see the fatal flaw in Pelloni's 00:16:28.460 --> 00:16:31.299 methodology. Without a clear boundary, without 00:16:31.299 --> 00:16:33.600 a publisher's deadline forcing him to ship a 00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:36.000 finished product, the project just endlessly 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.059 fractured. He just kind of let it go? He couldn't 00:16:38.059 --> 00:16:40.860 stop tinkering. Over the next few years, he decided 00:16:40.860 --> 00:16:43.399 the game was too big, so he split Bob's game 00:16:43.399 --> 00:16:46.220 into two entirely separate games. A puzzle game 00:16:46.220 --> 00:16:49.129 and an action RPG. And to fund this new fractured 00:16:49.129 --> 00:16:52.409 vision, he turns to crowdfunding. Late 2013, 00:16:52.769 --> 00:16:54.789 he launches a Kickstarter for the puzzle game 00:16:54.789 --> 00:16:57.490 portion. How'd that go? While the funding goal 00:16:57.490 --> 00:17:03.210 was an oddly specific $6 ,667, he only raises 00:17:03.210 --> 00:17:08.509 $477. Ouch. The campaign is a complete public 00:17:08.509 --> 00:17:11.609 failure. Imagine pouring 10 years into a brand 00:17:11.609 --> 00:17:13.970 only to have the internet collectively pledge 00:17:13.970 --> 00:17:16.349 less than 500 bucks toward it. That has to be 00:17:16.349 --> 00:17:18.289 devastating. But he pushes through and releases 00:17:18.289 --> 00:17:20.690 the puzzle game anyway on the Ouya. For those 00:17:20.690 --> 00:17:22.849 who don't remember the Ouya, it was a very short 00:17:22.849 --> 00:17:25.430 -lived Android -based microconsole that also 00:17:25.430 --> 00:17:28.049 failed spectacularly. Despite that first failure, 00:17:28.490 --> 00:17:31.650 in 2014 he launches another Kickstarter, this 00:17:31.650 --> 00:17:33.910 time for the RPG portion of the game. And his 00:17:33.910 --> 00:17:35.869 pitch this time is just incredible. What was 00:17:35.869 --> 00:17:37.690 the pitch? He says that if he gets the money, 00:17:37.710 --> 00:17:40.490 he's going to buy what he calls a hack van. Literally 00:17:40.490 --> 00:17:43.009 a van he can live and code out of so he can travel 00:17:43.009 --> 00:17:45.589 around and finish the game on the road. And amazingly, 00:17:45.750 --> 00:17:47.470 that campaign actually gets funded at the very 00:17:47.470 --> 00:17:50.829 last minute. But a hack van doesn't magically 00:17:50.829 --> 00:17:53.329 create a clean release. Definitely not. Think 00:17:53.329 --> 00:17:55.809 about what living in a van actually entails for 00:17:55.809 --> 00:17:58.750 a coder. You're dealing with unreliable power, 00:17:58.970 --> 00:18:02.410 fluctuating internet access, and immense physical 00:18:02.410 --> 00:18:05.730 discomfort. Is that glamorous? No. Over the next 00:18:05.730 --> 00:18:07.750 seven years, the game just stumbles through various 00:18:07.750 --> 00:18:10.190 unfinished states of existence. It gets green 00:18:10.190 --> 00:18:12.809 -lighted on Steam, which is the biggest PC gaming 00:18:12.809 --> 00:18:16.289 storefront, but only in an incomplete alpha form. 00:18:16.309 --> 00:18:19.069 Right. The puzzle version drops on itch .io, 00:18:19.230 --> 00:18:21.670 which is a grassroots marketplace for indie developers. 00:18:22.309 --> 00:18:25.109 A full Steam release finally happens in 2017, 00:18:25.109 --> 00:18:28.210 but it's a complete mess. The technical side 00:18:28.210 --> 00:18:30.369 of this prolonged development is where the story 00:18:30.369 --> 00:18:34.500 truly reveals its tragedy. In 2016, Pelloni actually 00:18:34.500 --> 00:18:37.059 released the raw source code for the game on 00:18:37.059 --> 00:18:40.400 GitHub, the massive online library where developers 00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:42.440 share open source code. And what happened when 00:18:42.440 --> 00:18:44.619 people looked at it? When other programmers finally 00:18:44.619 --> 00:18:46.339 looked under the hood of Bob's game, they were 00:18:46.339 --> 00:18:49.180 absolutely horrified. So what does this all mean? 00:18:50.019 --> 00:18:51.980 Let's look at the technical footprint he left 00:18:51.980 --> 00:18:55.220 behind. In his own developer notes, Pelloni admitted 00:18:55.220 --> 00:18:57.579 that he originally wrote the game in the programming 00:18:57.579 --> 00:19:01.740 language C. OK. Years later, he switched to Java. 00:19:01.930 --> 00:19:04.930 And then he used an automated software converter 00:19:04.930 --> 00:19:08.730 to translate his entire Java code base into C++. 00:19:09.349 --> 00:19:11.849 Oh boy. Yeah. If you aren't a programmer, let 00:19:11.849 --> 00:19:14.170 me explain why that is a catastrophic nightmare. 00:19:14.309 --> 00:19:16.210 It really comes down to how different languages 00:19:16.210 --> 00:19:19.670 manage a computer's memory. Like, Java has a 00:19:19.670 --> 00:19:21.450 built -in feature called a garbage collector 00:19:21.450 --> 00:19:23.769 that automatically cleans up memory you aren't 00:19:23.769 --> 00:19:25.630 using anymore. It does the heavy lifting for 00:19:25.630 --> 00:19:28.660 you. Exactly. But C++ does not have that. It 00:19:28.660 --> 00:19:30.819 requires the programmer to manage memory manually, 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:33.660 line by line. So when you force a machine to 00:19:33.660 --> 00:19:37.599 automatically translate Java into C++ I, it's 00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:40.160 like translating a beautiful rhyming poem through 00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:43.140 Google Translate five times. The basic syntax 00:19:43.140 --> 00:19:45.819 might survive, but the soul, the rhythm, and 00:19:45.819 --> 00:19:48.099 the underlying structure are completely destroyed. 00:19:48.349 --> 00:19:51.109 The game couldn't run properly because the foundational 00:19:51.109 --> 00:19:53.650 logic was essentially speaking a broken language. 00:19:54.029 --> 00:19:56.950 It creates bloated, unreadable, tangled code 00:19:56.950 --> 00:19:58.950 that takes longer to fix than it would to just 00:19:58.950 --> 00:20:01.430 write it from scratch. It's the ultimate manifestation 00:20:01.430 --> 00:20:04.470 of technical debt. Instead of building a clean, 00:20:04.710 --> 00:20:08.009 stable architecture, he spent over a decade constantly 00:20:08.009 --> 00:20:11.029 translating, rewriting, and porting the exact 00:20:11.029 --> 00:20:14.730 same dream over and over until the original structure 00:20:14.730 --> 00:20:17.970 was almost entirely lost beneath the patches. 00:20:18.279 --> 00:20:20.859 The scope creep just swallowed the game whole 00:20:20.859 --> 00:20:24.170 and the final whimper of this entire saga. In 00:20:24.170 --> 00:20:26.990 June, 2021, Bob's game was officially renamed 00:20:26.990 --> 00:20:29.289 on Steam. He changed the name. He stripped away 00:20:29.289 --> 00:20:31.950 the title he'd fought for over 15 years and changed 00:20:31.950 --> 00:20:35.670 it simply to OK, lowercase O, lowercase K. Wow, 00:20:35.829 --> 00:20:38.289 just OK. Yeah. And shortly after that, the store 00:20:38.289 --> 00:20:40.309 page was removed, completely vanishing into the 00:20:40.309 --> 00:20:42.430 digital EFL. This raises an important question 00:20:42.430 --> 00:20:44.369 about the nature of game development and really 00:20:44.369 --> 00:20:47.289 any massive creative endeavor. What's the big 00:20:47.289 --> 00:20:50.509 takeaway here? The story of Bob's game is a profound 00:20:50.509 --> 00:20:54.299 cautionary tale. It highlights this intense, 00:20:54.599 --> 00:20:57.400 often destructive, tension between having a massive, 00:20:57.839 --> 00:21:00.920 singular, uncompromising vision and the actual 00:21:00.920 --> 00:21:03.339 necessity of the practical, boring infrastructure 00:21:03.339 --> 00:21:05.740 required to bring it to the world. You need the 00:21:05.740 --> 00:21:08.460 boring stuff. You do. You need publisher approvals. 00:21:08.700 --> 00:21:11.339 You need clean code architecture. Most importantly, 00:21:11.359 --> 00:21:14.059 you need people to tell you no. Because without 00:21:14.059 --> 00:21:16.700 those boundaries, the vision doesn't just stall. 00:21:17.119 --> 00:21:19.859 It consumes the creator. It's the tragedy of 00:21:19.859 --> 00:21:22.339 the Viridian Room. And it leaves me with a final 00:21:22.339 --> 00:21:24.400 thought for you to mull over. We've spent this 00:21:24.400 --> 00:21:26.960 entire deep dive talking about Bob's game as 00:21:26.960 --> 00:21:29.660 a 2D RPG that Robert Polonyi was trying to code. 00:21:29.799 --> 00:21:31.880 Right. But in the end, maybe the game he was 00:21:31.880 --> 00:21:34.240 coding wasn't the actual product. Maybe the real 00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:37.160 game was the multi -year, internet -wide spectacle 00:21:37.160 --> 00:21:40.220 he created. That is a wild thought. The 100 -day 00:21:40.220 --> 00:21:42.640 protests, the fictionalized corporate villains, 00:21:43.200 --> 00:21:45.779 the absurd hardware announcements, the 4chan 00:21:45.779 --> 00:21:48.440 interventions. Think about your own big projects 00:21:48.440 --> 00:21:50.700 right now, the ones you've been putting off or 00:21:50.700 --> 00:21:53.400 endlessly tinkering with. Are you actually building 00:21:53.400 --> 00:21:55.839 the product? Or have you just become obsessed 00:21:55.839 --> 00:21:57.220 with the performance of building it?