Thread by @Xrayez

Behavior of Juan, aka @reduzio, lead developer of @godotengine, can be summarized as undue influence, which manifests as hypocrisy, lack of empathy, inattentiveness, irresponsibility.

Below is my critical analysis.

#GodotEngine #TruthAboutGodot #GodotCult #CancelGodotEngine

Juan posses a belief that he's destined to help people to make great games. He attempts to create a game engine which could allow users to create both casual and AAA games with little to no effort. But if you run after two hares, you will catch neither.

Juan focuses his efforts of making the engine accessible to everyone. He will always prioritize features that make the image of Godot look nice in the eyes of beholder, like editor features or movie maker mode, at the expense of neglecting core parts of the engine.

Juan attempts to create an image of being inclusive for all people around the world, trying to be all things to all people, but also trying to hit advanced features. He moves the goalposts a lot, both in terms of arguments and development goals.

Juan deliberately downplays himself, plays a victim to induce guilt in others, as if users are forcing him to work hard in Godot to make advanced game engine comparable to Unity or Unreal, and allegedly experiences "pressure" because of this.

Juan may say that he tried his best, but in reality he says this to cover up his irresponsibility. He does not finish features that he himself created or integrated in Godot, he says something like "I don't have time for this, interested contributors will fix bugs themselves".

Juan is mostly detached from real game development. Due to this, he doesn't really understand how a particular feature should work in practice. Due to this, he tends to fixate on ideas. Simultaneously, he says that Godot's development is extremely pragmatic to contributors.

When confronted with criticism, Juan fights it off by saying that he has more experience, or that others don't understand his architecture. He says that for contributors to gain his trust, they must have "irreproachable attitude", which means unquestionable attitude in practice.

Juan publicly says that he encourages public discussions to users. But privately, he will tell you that expressing disagreement in private is far more productive and useful. Therefore, Juan creates an environment where consensus cannot be possibly reached.

Juan plays a democrat. To users, he says that Godot's governance has horizontal structure. But to contributors, he says that Godot's development is based solely on trust, and not meritocracy nor democracy.

Juan creates perceived threat, like "commercial engines feel threatened by open-source". Us vs them mentality. He comes up with a bogus solution to a bogus problem, which is the only core development "philosophy" in Godot, by saying that Godot has none.

Juan writes a lot of propaganda articles, such as: "As an Open Source project, Godot is more than a game engine". He substitutes concepts like "community-driven", or says that number of contributors keeps growing "exponentially".

Juan presents common knowledge as unique and innovative and demonizes approaches that doesn't work for him. He creates surrogate solutions in attempt to match up to expectations of commercial engines, but such solutions end up being incomplete and overly simplified.

Juan may reject features to achieve a preconceived notion of purity, hidden under assumption that bloat accumulates quickly in Godot, despite the fact that engine's binary size keeps growing in leap and bounds year by year in spite of this expressed purism.

Juan temporarily rejects proposals by saying that a feature is not needed, but then implements that feature himself years later. This kind of tactic is more likely to be used if a proposal is complemented with a finished solution. He rarely if ever reads elaborate proposals.

Juan severely lacks tact when rejecting proposals. This is because he's unable to understand and experience feelings of other people, completely lacks empathy. He may occasionally express feelings of sadness and grief, but it's not genuine, more like "crocodile tears".

Juan misinterprets facts. He's extremely inattentive and lacks focus. When Juan is exposed in inappropriate behavior, he starts blame shifting by saying that others misunderstood what he said or done.

Juan is a master of gaslighting, a manipulation technique that allows to undermine the perception of reality. He misinterprets someone else's messages or make up imaginary situations. People who don't pay attention to this tend to agree to his contrived conclusions.

For instance, Juan says something like: "it's not nice to put words into someone's mouth". This statement is true, but statements like these oftentimes don't apply to the situation that arise at hand, and this is mostly used to deflect criticism in Godot community.

Juan uses love bombarding techniques. He will say that what they do is done entirely out of love, convince people that they don't have to be professional or serious as other engines. Alternates love with coercion, especially when contributors start to question Godot's decisions.

At the same time, Juan expresses ambivalent attitude towards commercial game engines. Juan wants to achieve the success of Unity and Unreal, but he will never tell this explicitly, because he experiences jealously.

Sometimes, you may see Juan covertly referring to Unity and Unreal as "two major technologies". Yet he discourages users to compare Godot to any other technology, and say that Godot doesn't compete with Unity, Unreal etc, to the point that "they are free to use Godot's code".

When users express concerns, you may see Juan writing messages to "clarify" things. For example, when Godot started to receive funds from gambling sponsors, he tried to shield Godot with "no warranty" clause of MIT license. People think that it's dirty money regardless.

Juan constantly says that he's not tired to "clarify" things again and again. Propaganda is fed via so-called "clarification" process. Therefore, instead of addressing underlying issues, he attempts to convince people that an issue doesn't exist or turn it into a benefit.

Juan describes Godot's unusual governance as an "uncharted territory" for all people who'd like to take part in game development. Depicting it this way allows to create ambiguous environment where deception may be hidden and presented as mistakes or misunderstandings.

Juan says that Godot is the only thing which interests him in life. Yet he says that he only tweets about Godot updates, which is false. However, he becomes a real-life role model for a lot of susceptible followers, which is alarming considering all above.

Rhetoric: when Juan says to you "it that helps" when he justifies his actions, he's likely lying.

Rhetoric: when Juan says to you "Again, ...", he expects you to back down. This is how he shows his supremacy.