This is going to get lost in the noise but...
There are two kinds of developers:
- Developers that making games as a hobby, perhaps accepting patronage to help defer costs but not letting that patronage affect what they do and how they do it. 'Naughty Road', the developer of Light of My Life, is an example of this type of developer.
- Developers that make games expressly to generate a revenue stream. I think we can all agree that 'Braindrop' falls into this category.
The 'games as a business' developers fall into (at least) two categories:
- 'Best effort' developers that state that they will try to deliver a certain kind of, and amount of, content within a given time. Keyword: try.
- 'Contract' developers that state that they will deliver specific content by a specific date. Again, I think we'll agree 'Braindrop' is (or was) this kind of developer.
Long-time players will remember that Braindrop started off as a seemingly naive first-time developer that created something that was surprisingly popular, and then decided to try to make a business out of it. He delivered content, to order and on a schedule and this became more-or-less his 'brand' - a lot of good looking models, doing sexy shit and on a regular release schedule.
And then...it went to hell. More girls, more plot elements, more locations - more complexity. It was obvious to most people that he was struggling to cope with the increased complexity - and then the excuses started.
- Physical health
- Mental health
- Housing
- Relatives
- Equipment issues
Now, unlike most people, I think he actually did struggle at the beginning of the 'excuse era' and had legitimate, excusable challenges. But I think that he learned, early on, something very important: he could make a certain amount of income while not putting any actual effort into the game. And what he did with that information defines him as a person: he's just largely sat around and absorbed patronage without making the deliveries that he committed to. He is, as such, a fraud.
I don't say that lightly - a lot of developers accept a lot of patronage, don't have written-in-stone schedules and I don't think that they're frauds. I think that Braindrop is a fraud because he's made multiple 'performance claims' and has not met the majority of them, in a serial chain of under (or non) delivery. 'Patronage' is just that - you are more or less 'tipping' a creative content creator for something that you like - until a developer makes it transactional...and that's exactly what Braindrop did. I think that many posters in many F95zone game threads have unrealistic expectations of developers, but 'Braindrop' clearly stated in multiple venues that he would deliver X amount of content by Y date if he received Z amount of funding - so he signed up for making this transactional and didn't have it forced on him.
So who's to blame for this? Mostly Braindrop for not being able to manage his business and, as we have established, it's a (piss-poor) business. But a lot of that blame can also go to:
Game-simps. I think people will always give a developer of a project that they like a couple of bucks as a way of saying 'thanks' but, similar to supporters of stippers and OnlyFans models, there are a lot of gullible people that think that being nice and throwing money at developers will, somehow, entice them to come back and play nice. This is extremely sad and frustrating for those of us that aren't 'game simps' because we would like to cut off the developer's passive revenue stream if for no other reason than to get them to stop defrauding people.
Brothers and sisters: we are the reason that Braindrop gets away with an ongoing fraud. Let's be honest with ourselves and each other, and quit living on the 'hopium' that makes us think he's ever going to honest - he's not, so let's quit funding him and get on with our lives.
Thanks for reading.
