500 Bananas!

By: Derek Yu

On: March 15th, 2008

cactus and VilleK have set up a new blog for Lo-Fi Minds. Their inaugural post has screenshots and descriptions for their two current projects, Brain-Dead Toon Underworld (made for our VGNG Compo), and Secret Agent Hotel. Both games look/sound absolutely fantastic, natch.

I also thought this would be a good time to make a request for donations to our friend cactus. I’ve gotten more value and excitement from all his games than your average triple-A mainstream title. His work inspires me every day as a game designer and an artist.

cactus is incredibly creative and talented, but could definitely do more to market himself. But I really wonder if he should have to? Shouldn’t being good at making games be enough to make games for a living? I think so. And I’m dreaming about alternative business models to let people like cactus make great freeware and keep at it.

But until then, let’s give a little back to this supercool dude and support him on his quest to entertain and amaze us! Everyone who met him at GDC fell in love with him (for some *cough*Brandon*cough*, it was romantic love). He’s a really nice, genuine guy, who just wants to make games and be happy. It would be awesome for cactus to be able to put all his energy into being himself and not have to get a ho-hum job to make ends meet.

I’m putting in $20 to start, and suggesting $5-$20 donations from those who want to. We can’t easily keep track of how we’re doing, but feel free to post a comment letting us know why and/or how much you donated. I hope you do!

Donate here! (PayPal link at the bottom of the page.)

Posted in Community, Developers, Nerd Love | Tags: cactus, LoFiMinds, VilleK

bateleur

What the indie scene really needs is not so much to be paying small sums of money to each other (which is a nice gesture, but ultimately not very effective) but instead to be working together to find effective business models that do pay the bills.

Cactus releases his games for free. This is something I have a lot of respect for. But ultimately making a living from writing games is hard enough even if you charge for them. Rumours about donations to Dwarf Fortress aside, I don’t think donations are the right way to fund indie development.
cactus

@konjak: They don’t seem to have a word for “klase” in English…
konjak

cluster/bunch of bananas
Jolli

if i had internet money, i’d give -_-
shall i mail you instead ;d
haowan

I’ve never seen a straight banana.
cactus

@konjak: That’s what they told me, but I was too drunk to accept those words as correct. Isn’t bunch and cluster both more universal words not necessarily related to being connected to the same twig/branch? Klase is only applicable to fruits, berries and similar things, right?

Anyway, I shouldn’t be discussing this in a sober state :(
bateleur

Bunch and cluster are both generic, but in English there’s a tendency to use collective nouns in these sorts of contexts and as well as being a generic word, “bunch” is also the collective noun for bananas.

A native English speaker would never say “cluster of bananas”. Or rather, nobody would have done prior to this discussion. Now I plan to say it at every opportunity. ;-)
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Ooh, I was going to make this very post myself today… bizarre. (By the way, you should link to his arcade pack.)

@cactus: Bunch! A bunch of bananas! Hahaha, you really wouldn’t have it.

I think you should know my friends and I all say “500 bananas” all the time now.

@whoever was like “why cactus and not me?”: Because cactus is really, really good. He doesn’t deserve donations because he’s starving, he deserves them because he’s doing great things.

And he gives great nose.
the banana scholar

500 bananas isn’t a bunch of banana though, bunches have more like 30 bananas, banana trees can’t produce bunch of 500.
I know that.
http://www.modernpunches.org JJ

For a good cause from the gaming community for a fellow. This should help out a lot.
Zaphos

I would say cluster of bananas if I was using the bananas to perform computations.
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Oh yeah, cactus, I donated, but my name may show up as “The TS Creative Network.”

<3
Tim

BMcC: Didn’t you say you were going to donate to me as well? Whatever happened to that?
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Dang, did I? I dunno what happened. I really don’t have the money to be donating to everyone I’d like to right now, but a promise is a promise, yeah?

LINK ME
noname

Since when did this site cater to panhandlers? I’m not going to donate anything unless its for charity. I won’t donate just because some guy wants free money. So what, he makes freeware games. I do too. Welcome to the club. But then again I assume this is some sort of joke. A really bad one at that.
Tim

BMcC: Haha thanks. I’m cool. But if you insist, you could pass on a few bucks to the guys at Retro Remakes. They really need a little help at the moment..
Tim

BMcC: http://www.retroremakes.com/forum2/announcement.php?f=13
MrBig

@noname,

And that’s why you have no name…
JW

din banan
ChevyRay

@noname

It is a joke. It’s all a joke, now get in on it, man! :D Moaning doesn’t get anybody anywhere.

Maybe I don’t have the means to donate, but were cactus here, I’d take him down to the bar and buy ‘im a round. That’s the same thing,; a slap on the back.
the banana scholar

Cactus seems to be a nice guy, but I never donate anyway.
@noname : no , there seems to be an even more private ‘club’ around here.
Lim-Dul

By the way – I though cactus didn’t exactly ask for money – Derek was nice enough to do it for him for reasons he described…

I don’t know why some people are bashing cactus as if he was an smug indie dev asking for money because he thinks he deserves it. 0_o

However, the fact that OTHER people encourage donations is a sign that he probably DOES deserve the money. =)
Stwelin

What’s all this talk about money? games? money?
ChevyRay

GAMES!
Alec

I think the reason to donate to cactus is because he’s awesome. Unlike a lot of other freeware devs, he has mad style.
ChevyRay

And he’s never whining about what indie should be and what it shouldn’t be

:)
Alec

People do that?
Alec

What we need is more all-caps ranting.
Lim-Dul

Better yet, |24n75 w|21773n 1n L3375p34K!* :-D

*rants written in leetspeak
NOT Mr. Big

I’ll donate once I get Akuchizoku. Which I already donated for.
NOT Mr. Big

My name has a period and a space, see?
MrBig

Yes it does you dirty rotten impersonator! Get your own name! ;-) Not that I care… but get your own name!
PHeMoX

“500 bananas isnâ€™t a bunch of banana though, bunches have more like 30 bananas, banana trees canâ€™t produce bunch of 500. I know that.”

Sure it can :D ,genetic manipulation rulez… ;)
Mr. Small

How’s this? =
http://www.distractionware.com Terry

Much more appropriate.
Del_Duio

So.. is there any reason why a deserving developer canâ€™t be singled out on a monthly (I realise weekly might be a bit too much) basis in an article such as this?

Yeah, especially when the first couple of posts gets you $80 or so ;)
the banana scholar

$80 can buy you a banana in europe.
Lim-Dul

Or it could get you a blow-job from Celine Dion!
Mr. Small

I wonder if we’ll be sending cactus more donations in a few months.

Will this be the new trendy thing? Send cactus money randomly?
Mr. Medium

I only have $20.

Anyone else want to chip in on this $80 blow-job from Celine Dion deal? Sounds good… is this monthly, too?
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

if we all starts helping each others doing donations….

…we’ll end up having the same money we started, maybe only with different serial numbers
MrBig

@Mr. Medium,

Of course you’ll need approval from her 80 year old husband/father first, but he seems to be down with that.