The following was originally going to be a response in This article by Jim Sterling, but I deemed it too much of a wall of text to merit a single response, and decided to refine it into a pseudo-article with my take on the matter.


Hey Bob. My name's Bob too. Pretty cool huh?

Anyway, I've noticed that your protest has come to an end, and now that you're out, I'd like to let you know how I, a potential fan of Bob's Game, have to say on what you've done to kill your chance with Nintendo. I don't mean this as a personal attack on you, and these are merely my words on an issue, with hopefully some form of insight that you can take with you on your future endeavors. There are 3 plain as day reasons as to why your protest didn't get the results you wanted, so let's break it down.


1. Business is business is business.

As much as we'd all like to say "hey, I'd like to make video games, it would be the funnest job in the world" you still have to remember that it's a job. Not to say you don't know the value of hard work, as that would be a bold faced lie- You spent five years dedicating yourself to making a game, and that in itself is an achievement. However, in order to be taken seriously in the business, you have to be business minded, and pulling a stunt like this will draw attention, but not the attention you want. Sure people saw you as someone fighting the good fight for indie developers and such, but for every one person writing about how courageous you were, there are about a hundred people not bothering to write about you, thinking you were some nutcase. Doing what you did, is the equivalent of standing outside of your ex girlfriend's apartment in the middle of a rainy night, carving her name in your chest with glass from a broken bottle, all while screaming the lyrics to the song you two considered yours. Oh yeah, and Naked. In your height of being emotionally distraught, your clouded judgment might think it was a sweet way of saying "I'm sorry baby, I miss you", she'll look at it as "I'm totally going to ignore my restraining orders against you and kill your pets". Sometimes desperate calls do call for desperate measures, but what's important and critical to one person, really isn't to another, and that has to be realized.


2. Legally questionable threats don't make for a good line of communication.

When I read this, I did This:


This is more than the final nail in the coffin when trying to do business with a company, this is the 6 feet of dirt that buries whatever chance you had. It's a big glowing neon sign that says "take legal action against me for condoning piracy if I don't get my way." You may as well have just made Bob's game a PS2 title and shipped it with a free modchip. Let's not joke with ourselves here and talk about the halfhearted attempts of homebrew potential with these things. You used the threat of shipping Bob's game on flashcarts because you were trying to get under Nintendo's skin. Very childish, and very unprofessional.



3. Speaking of childish and unprofessional...

WTF? You want to be taken seriously as a developer, and then go on to rant about how you're the best developer ever, how you're soo freaking amazing, without having a product released and letting fans make their own decisions? It's bad enough that I have big-name publishers trying to cram "the best ____ EVER" down my throat in order to get my money, and now it's being flaunted by independent developers as well?



That, in my book, is a heinous crime of extreme ass, as well as being a big turn-off.



So you have this mix of 3 horrible no-nos in any business, and you're wondering why you failed? I really don't want to sound like this is a personal attack on you, but c'mon, being overtly cocky, not knowing the ins and outs of the business you'd like to get into, as well as making threats that are legally questionable are all things that will cause more harm than help. In all honesty, you've crushed your own dreams, and the main reasoning behind that is it's clearly showing you're not qualified to be a member of a development team. You can have all the developing talent in the world, but if you don't know how to be a team player (and claims at being better than Miyamoto are certainly not going to help you get the team player award), you're not going to go anywhere in a business that's requiring bigger teams to get anything done.

In closing, I do hope you find a suitable home for Bob's Game, and I hope this whole fiasco leaves you with more than just a bitter feeling, but with some lessons learned.

Sincerely,
-Me (Bob)