pouët.net

Gloom I'm just saying being ambitious and absurdly-so is good for a creative movement. Be my guest in being satisfied with what you do.

Ambitions are indeed a good thing, and sort of the essence of the demoscene, at least it used to be.

and "ambition" might very well be the sole reason why some people do demos and others dont.

From my experience, demos are a thing that you either "get" or "don't get". People either think "wow that's great" or "yeah it looks nice, but where's the point". At least that's my experience with showing demos to other people.
Leaves the case for people who would be intersted but just never heard about demos. At least in germany the big IT-newssources (heise, golem) sometimes have articles about demopartys in the newstickers, that probably gets some people interested.

the barrier for collaboration is probably too high too. most of us share the same story that we got introduced to demos by a highschool buddy and decided to do a bloody ugly demo with that guy for fun and kinda rolled into the scene that way. obviously when you sit in a seminar and hear about the demoscene and you feel like YEAH I WANNA DO THIS, there is no highschool buddy to start a demoproject with, in fact, you have to look quite hard to find someone with equal enthousiasm, equal (same level at least) skillset and above all with a potential of friendship (demomaking has to be fun too). Some kind of 'dating service' for new sceners might fix that, but i have my doubt about the success of that.

Let's not forget most of us (yeay the older sceners among us)
also got introduced to the demoscene becoz some1 in their hometown got the latest demos and what part of a group. Groups were mostly country based. (becoz of no internet) Computers had the possibility to be creative on (c64, amiga, atari, pc) Instead of only playing games on (xbox, playstation) And it was all rather new and exciting.

The computers around made sure people started to be creative before even being a member of a group of part of the scene. Sometimes I have the thought the older sceners among us were part of some unique generations who grew up in a time who made the demoscene possible. The scene today is heavily depending on them. Afterall most of the best releases, for years now, are made not by teens or even sceners in there 20's ..

Perhaps it's not possible , in the end, to keep up the quality and quantity of releases on the demoscene as we are used to simply becoz there is not enough fresh blood. (though I don't hope so!)

magic: you are not a scener.

that's a bit harsh

the truth hurts

well, i think he has been an annoying scener for a very long time. :)

cue circus music

Making demos has never been more accessible, the tools are great, the internet is fast and awesome, the focus is less on hardcore impossible effects for math geniuses and more on great art and great design.

Oh yeah and don't forget the sudden explosion of indie developers in the gaming community - these guys are making their own XBLA games, iphone apps, even people are making stupid demos for LittleBigPlanet on their PS3. The will is there.

What is such a turn off to me is existing sceners fucking jaded attitude. I'm trying my best to work on my first actual demo project, and if the response to my enthusiasm is going to be "scene is dead, noob!" then fuck it, why bother?

I've been watching from the sidelines since I saw Second Reality back in 1994 on a PC Gamer coverdisk. I had no idea what it was - I thought it was some sort of game demo. It certainly wasn't pretentiously described as "art". I'd never seen my PC do anything like that before, so I checked out Crystal Dream II as well and I was hooked. For me it wasn't the demo as such, it was the fact that my PC could do this amazing shit, and my friend's SNES or whatever could not. The appreciation of the effects and the art and the design and direction came later.

Demos have to be where people can see them in real time on their own hardware: on coverdisks, on video card vendors websites, on Steam, wherever.

I bet there are thousands like me hanging out on Pouet, drunkenly oggling crappy internet livestreams of demoparties wishing they were properly part of it. Personally I've made the commitment to do something about that, and if all goes well I'll be pulling some awful BITS-like release out of my ass one day next year, but to everyone else just make a fucking demo.

that's the spirit!

about the attitude: true that. the biggest problem the "demoscene" has is its form of communication. but hey, just ignore that, it's "do or die", as they say ;)

Insectecutor: GO GO GO!!!! :D

Insectecutor has leading

Insectecutor owns. Period.

@Insectutor:
Well spoken. Looking forward to your first release.

Insectecutor: the beginning you describe is probably shared by a lot of sceners (active and not). You do touch on something important though - the "art" aspect. Is it good or bad that sceners describe their works (or more often, other scener's works) as art? And also: you say you saw amazing shit, which is the problem today: the works produced by the scene simply fade into the background when compared to the barrage of other, and more visually pleasing, works from, say, the games industry or movies.

... are you serious? I can understand Pixar beating the shit out of us, but seriously, what game offers more "visually aspiring" content compared to a good demo?

Decipher: are you serious? :) Put yourself in the place of someone who doesn't know what the demoscene is. This person plays Halo 3 on his Xbox360, and Crysis on his PC. He stumbles over, say, "Debris" on YouTube. Most likely, he'll never see the whole thing because his attentionspan is like that of a goldfish, and, if he does, he won't think it looks very good, compared to the games he's used to playing.

gloom: that person couldn't be interested in anything considered more or less abstract art, be it demoscene or not. so why bother? this is so not the audience the demoscene is looking for.

Personally I agree with the sentiment that we need more explaining of algorithms in order to interest new people. Or just more 'behind the scene'-looks in general.

Why not upload a vimeo showing your new demo-tool? Or just tinkering with an effect? Shouldn't take too much time, and it's fun to watch.

This is precisely why I love watching the ASM seminars, btw.

Monroe: I didn't know the demoscene was looking for any specific audience, just _a_ audience. :) Also, pleas re-read what I wrote, because I only mentioned games as one of the many things that look more visually pleasing than things coming out of the demoscene - seeing as that was the example Insectecutor used, and that it is also pretty relevant for the introduction to the demoscene for many, many people, back in the day.

That was my whole point: that what was enough to bring people to the scene back then, isn't enough now. We need something new to shout about, and perhaps the art aspect is just what the doctor ordered. Or it isn't, because I'm not really keen on a demoscene that just produces noise demos either. :) Call me an old fart, but I _like_ effects for effects sake.

A lot of them do, and for longer than let's say five minutes. And then there's often *much* more going on on the target hardware too. Requires some real programming skill.

Look I like demos as much as the next guy, but lets not make them more than they are. And aren't there enough people involved? I mean what's this obsession some have with "converting gamers". What the hell is that about..