Ambitious 25-year-old amateur developer Robert Pelloni has had his frustration with Nintendo widely publicized over the last few days.
The man, who claims to have spent over 15,000 hours making a 16-bit-style top-down role-playing game, has locked himself in his room in a 100-day protest. He hopes to publicize Nintendo’s apparent disinterest in selling him an official DS development kit. He needs the kit to finish the game and sell it officially.
As a result, development on his creation, “Bob’s Game” is stalled. A webcam now chronicles his voluntary confinement. His website begs for action from Nintendo, calling out Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime, by name.
Compounding Pelloni’s problem may be his timing. He’s unhappy that Nintendo has gone 17 weeks without responding to a request for a development kit that should have been fulfilled within eight weeks. But he’s making these allegations and conducting his strike right before the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, a time when he can expect to find any major company particularly unresponsive.
I’m usually able to get a response from Nintendo about any pressing news, be it unexpected language in games or video game supply. But since Monday I’ve gotten nothing more about Pelloni’s allegations and Nintendo’s stance regarding the matter than a we’re-looking-into-this response from Nintendo’s external public relations agency and not a peep from Nintendo internal.
Robert, I hope you can hold up in that room okay, because the way things are looking, I don’t think you or I will be hearing from Nintendo until 2009. Maybe they don’t care. Or maybe they’re on vacation. It’s hard to say.
Source : http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/
