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Bob's Game

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Re: Bob's Game

#31

Post by umvi »

Wikipedia only touches on the true madness of the thing.

See: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobsgame/bobs-game

Highlights:

> Developed from scratch in C and completely rewritten in Java as an MMO, as far as I can tell, "bob's game" may still be one of the largest games (if not the largest) by one person!

> "bob's game" is a game about a puzzle game called 'bob's game,' developed within the game by the virtual "bob" character, the "final boss" of the game. It is a hybrid between Zelda, Pokemon, Harvest Moon, and Earthbound, with massively multiplayer elements.

> The 'bob's game' puzzle game inside the "bob's game" RPG is a puzzle game in which you can build your own puzzle games, including all existing types! It is the greatest puzzle game ever made, and the only puzzle game objectively better than Tetris."

> "bob's game" blends the line between reality and simulation, and reality and extra-dimensional reality. "bob's game" breaks both the so-called "4th wall" and further yet- the "5th wall," unlocking the secrets of "the Matrix," or "the Womb" as it is referred to in some editions of the Bible. "bob's game" reveals the nature of the universe for what it really is to a generation that needs it the most. "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.

> "bob's game" actually alters reality itself for those who play it. It is a key into another dimension. It teaches the secrets of the heart, the secrets of mind control and psychic power to a generation that has has the wool pulled over their eyes by criminal syndicates.

> "bob's game" is the ultimate cult game. It is a new religion for the modern world, inspired by and intended as a natural spiritual successor to previous disguised religion games such as Earthbound and Zelda and movie retellings of an ancient spellbook (The Old Testament) such as "The Matrix."

> In 2008, after demoing it to Nintendo and turning down a job offer (I'd rather work on my own game!), I showed it on the internet in hopes that I would attract some publishers. Several of them were interested! After deciding on one and moving near their headquarters in New Jersey, unfortunately, Nintendo was hesitant to license me- even though I had an office, funds, and met all the qualifications. knowing I would have to rewrite the whole thing to get it on other platforms, I threw a meta-protest viral ad thing. Trying to be like my favorite band Nine Inch Nails recent "Year Zero" viral campaign, I devised an intense and clever alternate reality website that tied into the game story to drum up some attention and try to get Nintendo to license me anyway.

> I slowly learned how we are tricked by desire and greed and kept weak and blinded by criminal syndicates. I realized that is what I had been fighting against the whole time, subconsciously! Even more incredible, I learned what humans are truly capable of- discovering that we are indeed magical creatures with psychic powers! It's the greatest trick in history- we are all great wizards, reduced to spending our lives so distracted, we never even realize our own power!

Also, apparently there was a $2 million stretch goal (since deleted) that said (according to reddit):

> The Bob's Game Corporation will purchase and renovate a large gothic church in Detroit and surround it with green and purple spotlights, razor wire, and RoboCop "ED-209" style drone sentries as the "bob's game" headquarters and final tournament location. "bob" will establish himself as a real-life video game villain, dominating the world's children through the use of dark ritual magic infused technology.

This guy is either one of the greatest trolls of our time or else he is very mentally unstable...

Re: Bob's Game

#32

Post by jart »

ddtaylor wrote: post #27
jart wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #bob's game is: ##THE GREATEST PUZZLE GAME EVER MADE [...] bob's game is "source available" [...] but not "Open Source" That means no forks except to create pull requests! Would you consider deleting your fork? It goes against the author's wishes and I don't feel comfortable gawking at someone who might be experiencing health issues. He's clearly trying to distance himself from the attention it's received.

I don't have any forks of his code, it's the first result for searching for the repo on GitHub. In either case, I do believe once the source code to something has been released it's fair to continue to archive it.

Did you bring the security vulnerabilities you discovered to his attention before disclosing them on hacker news? Regardless of what you think is fair it's pretty clear you aren't acting with his best interests in mind.

Re: Bob's Game

#33

Post by AlwaysRock »

GranPC wrote: post #29
AlwaysRock wrote: post #2

Very good video on the topic. It's odd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47maEySTdI

Take that video with a big grain of salt - some of the information there is incorrect and the timeline is somewhat wrong.

Do you have a better overview? The video did bounce around a bit but what was incorrect?

Re: Bob's Game

#35

Post by WoodenChair »

sva_ wrote: post #19
WoodenChair wrote: post #5

I had never heard about this, but my first reaction is that I feel bad for this guy, because if you consider that he was self taught he really was very talented. Checkout the gameplay videos. He wrote all of that himself in C++ and did the graphics with seemingly no training. I'm not saying it would've been a great game, because I don't know that, just that he as an individual could've been successful. I read the boo…

> He wrote all of that himself in C++ and did the graphics with seemingly no training. From the Wikipedia article: > The author says that he wrote the game originally in C, switched then to Java, and later converted it with an automatic code converter to C++.

Okay, whether C or C++ or Java, the point is writing the game without ever having an industry job or educational situation where you'd have mentorship is a huge accomplishment.

Re: Bob's Game

#36

Post by GranPC »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #33
GranPC wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take that video with a big grain of salt - some of the information there is incorrect and the timeline is somewhat wrong.

Do you have a better overview? The video did bounce around a bit but what was incorrect?

I'd have to watch it over again but here are some details I remember being wrong:

- The "live video feed" on the homepage was not actually a live video feed for a long time - it was the same images on a loop.

- The Nintendo World Store was partially faked, with some of the scenes being actually filmed at his home and then spliced in. It was not as egregious as it looked - in fact, one of the corny details was that a police siren sound effect was added in post.

- Bob adding himself and his struggles to "bob's game" was not a result of being rejected for the devkit, it was already designed to be like that.

My understanding is that nobody really gets Bob and "bob's game" - it truly is quite hard to explain. You sort of need to have been there.

Re: Bob's Game

#37

Post by GranPC »

Brendinooo wrote: post #34

Has anyone here played it? How's the actual gameplay?

The full game was never released, only two/three demos. The first demo was distributed as Nintendo DS homebrew and contained a fetch quest, some dialogue and the first minigame. The second demo was released for the PC and included demo 1, some more roaming around & dialogue, two additional minigames, and an unskippable cutscene at the end where "bob" laughs for over two minutes.

The third demo was also released for the PC, originally playable in an embedded Java applet in the browser, and doesn't contain much of the RPG - it's mostly just bob's game (the puzzle game inside "bob's game")

So it's a bit hard to tell how the actual gameplay of the whole thing could have been, you don't get to explore the world much in these demos.

Re: Bob's Game

#38

Post by duxup »

This kinda seems like just someone throwing a fit that Nintendo didn't give them an SDK / support their game?

There's more to making a game than just making the code and hoping someone supports your efforts. From the wikipedia page, I don't find the story all that sympathetic, at least as far as vs Nintendo.

Story seems more like one of a troll or mental illness, and kinda sad.

Re: Bob's Game

#39

Post by duxup »

jart wrote: post #32
ddtaylor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any forks of his code, it's the first result for searching for the repo on GitHub. In either case, I do believe once the source code to something has been released it's fair to continue to archive it.

Did you bring the security vulnerabilities you discovered to his attention before disclosing them on hacker news? Regardless of what you think is fair it's pretty clear you aren't acting with his best interests in mind.

Telling users here (some I'm sure will / would download the code) seems entirely acting with the user's best interests in mind.

Re: Bob's Game

#40

Post by overgard »

There's a lot of crazy in here, but I can relate in a way.

When I was young (a teenager), I really wanted to be a video game designer. Well, more than a designer, I wanted to be a full on creator, a rock star like Sid Meier or John Carmack.

So I started making a game engine. I didn't really know exactly what I was making, I just had various ideas that I was collecting and coming up with and attaching to this game engine. At first it was pretty impressive, I had written a 3d first person shooter game engine from scratch at like 13 years old. I had made all the art myself (badly). I made a few demos for competitions, even won some of them and got some prizes. At a certain point though, I was just too attached to all this work I had put into this game engine, but I had no idea what I really wanted to make with it, because I honestly kind of sucked at game design and writing and never really put in the time to learn those disciplines. So I became weirdly attached to my "game", even though it wasn't really much of anything concrete. And realistically my game engine was "impressive for a 14 year old" but not impressive overall.

Luckily, I didn't fall into crazy mental illness like this guy. At some point after tinkering with it for a few years I realized it was a lost cause because I didn't know what to do with it.

The trap a lot of creatives or potential-creatives fall into is falling in love with a project that isn't going anywhere. If you want to be a creative person, you need to know how to spin a lot of plates and let go of something if it has just run out of steam. I think in Bob's case, it's clear that this project was always attached to his identity rather than simply being a project. (I mean, it's in the name). That's really dangerous. You aren't your work. You should never let a project, an art piece, even a company, become your identity.

Bob locking himself in a room as a protest is obviously crazy; but I think in a way it becomes more understandable when you realize that this wasn't just a project to him, it was his entire identity. Nintendo was essentially denying him what he thought to be his existence. That's totally bananas on his part, but I think that covers why someone would do something like that.

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