Is Godot a new cult phenomenon in the IT industry?

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Is Godot a new cult phenomenon in the IT industry?

Xrayez

Let me list some links that directly or indirectly relate to the question. These are by no means facts of course, but it would be nice to jump start the discussion this way:

Since most cults are based on a single charismatic leader (in Godot context, lets assume this is Juan), here are some links that describe the vision of Godot's lead developer:

From what I can tell, saying that an open-source project is a cult is a strong word. Godot is certainly not Moonies, right? But nowadays, when people spend more time online rather than in real-life (especially software developers), do you think it may be possible that cults like Moonies could exist in the digital era of IT?

Do we get brainwashed or something? Am I insane noticing this? What do you think? I'm looking forward to your reply!

Bimbam

Given #3 is referring to yourself, it's hard to take this post as anything but a veiled rant with little constructive merit.

Xrayez

Bimbam Do you suggest me to post this information from a fake account? How does it change the contents of my post? Isn't it worth to discuss this topic regardless?

Please, lets make a fruitful discussion, lets not go ad hominem here.

DaveTheCoder

This idea could be a concept for a game. You're getting attacked by cult members who want to enlist you, and you have to fight them off to win.

Xrayez

DaveTheCoder This is a great idea, it would be nice to make such a game with Godot. 😁

cybereality

Sounds to me like you're in a cult (or wish to start one). I've seen your posts on Twitter, as well as LillyByte, and I have the top post on that YouTube video. Godot definitely is a cult, but it's not a bad thing. It just means the users and developers are passionate about the project. Just like many other things can have a base of fans: Burning Man, CrossFit, game console brands, anime, sports, etc. I don't see how it's different from anything else.

But I find your gripes to be misleading. Being community-driven means developing features that benefit users, working with developers across the world to enhance the engine, and listening to suggestions and feedback. That doesn't mean that people on Twitter get to vote on the direction of the engine, open source is not a democracy. Users, many times, may have odd or specific feature requests that don't benefit the wider community. Or they want to take the engine in a certain direction that the maintainers do not intend. Or that the feedback is simply invalid, maybe due to a lack of experience or misunderstanding. So there are many reasons why a feature request or proposal would not be accepted.

All that said, I am not sure what your intention is with this thread. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you do, in earnest, believe Godot is a cult, then posting this to the cult members on the forum certainly will not be taken well. I think Juan and the other maintainers have told you how they felt (I spend a lot of time reading Github, and I've seen those threads already). And people in the larger game dev community, like Unity or Unreal users, probably just want to hate on Godot anyway, so they will probably believe you (even if you're wrong), but they don't and weren't going to use Godot in any case, so it changes nothing. So what's the point?

spacecloud

This is a screenshot showing the conversation where @Xrayez got banned (biased rant removed):

source
Where @Xrayez clearly violated the code of conduct (discriminating based on nationality).

Xrayez

spacecloud Again, this is not the topic of our discussion. See ad hominem.

But since you decided to censor the Tweet, here's the original one, with more context.

spacecloud

Xrayez
I didn't censor anything, I turned it into an unbiased screenshot, and I linked the original.

Pixophir

This makes "cult" 100 times a minute:

Happy worshipping Godot if you feel like.

And remember: You are all individuals !

Chorus: We are all individuals ...

Back to studying the documentation.

spacecloud

Also, define "cult".

Xrayez

spacecloud there are many definitions of a cult. This is an open-ended discussion. You are free to discuss this topic in whatever context around cults in general, since the aim of this discussion is to find whether or not Godot could be seen as a cult, and to what extent.

But if you ask me, I'm mostly interested in the psychological definition of the cult. You can look up things like cult characteristics. You can also see the BITE model of mind control.

Cults are not necessarily religious, they can be completely ideologically-based, for example, cult of Putin in Russia, which is a political cult. It can also be a combination of things.

But please, lets not make this off-topic.

Tomcat

Xrayez cult of Putin in Russia

I would suggest that you don't talk about things you don't know shit about. What do you know about the "cult of Putin" that you can cite as an example? It is a state cult imposed on the population, but only a small fraction of that population is exposed to it. Where does this intersect with Godot? What government uses the resources of the country to promote the cult of Godot? If Godot had as many adepts as Putin, there would be one and a half real users and the rest would be bots.

cybereality

Okay, I can clearly see why you were banned. I am not going to comment on the whole Russia thing, because political discussion is not allowed here. But please don't make this about anything other than your own actions. Take some responsibility. Beyond that, you can stay here on the forum if you're not going to spread propaganda or be abusive (for example, by making racist comments). But if this is how you're starting, it's probably not going to be good. That's all I have to say on that topic.

Xrayez

cybereality

Please, be attentive. That's what I said:

But please, lets not make this off-topic.

Xrayez

Tomcat If you're interested, I can answer your question, but not here. Lets not bring up politics here. It is forbidden to talk about politics here, please read previous posts.

Megalomaniak

I do not see how this can be a productive discussion and since there are already signs that this could become a flame war I'm going to close it. The topic will remain, I'll not delete it but I can't think of any real reason to leave it open.

Tomcat I would suggest that you don't talk about things you don't know shit about.

I'll just leave you with a warning this time, but do note that we also have a rule against cursing.

Tomcat

Xrayez I'm not the one who brought up politics (which is surprising), but you gave a very bad example by mentioning Putin, which I told you about. But my response has the most direct and immediate relevance to the topic.

cybereality

Okay. Let's let the past be the past. I don't agree with the OP's comments in those images, but those weren't posted on this forum and let's not make it about that. If you want to discuss the cult thing in relation to Godot, that's 100% fine. Let's not even get into Russia, because that is going to be too much.

Xrayez

So yeah, back to the topic. I'd like to hear your constructive opinion, and not any kind of propaganda. Again, without politics.

cybereality

I mean, you're not wrong, but "cult" is a negative term. I would say people are "fans" or "enthusiastic" about Godot. It's a similar crowd to the people that use Linux. Also, because the big engines like Unreal and Unity don't have great Linux support (or HTML5, for that matter), Godot ends up attracting free software enthusiasts, and most of the developers are Linux users. So it is a different mindset, that may seem strange.

Xrayez

cybereality What makes you think that "cult" is a negative term?

most of the developers are Linux users

According to the community poll in Godot made in 2021, it's actually Windows which is the most used platform for developers that use Godot, and not Linux. There are 62.2% of Windows users, and 30.6% of Linux users: