pouët.net

I just can't help reminiscing that moment at BP2009 where Smash is out in the beer garden with a cocktail and sunglasses and goes "WE GAVE UP! \o/"

I'm really leaning towards what Gargaj said.

plek: I could probably write a whole separate piece on the correlation between heavy rain and the quality of the Solskogen compos :)

I suspect the perception that you have to beat fr flt + asd doesn't help too much - it's not good for motivation if you think you need to spend a few years getting a demo to that level, and then those groups will have had a few more years to improve and will beat you anyway :)

Anyway, i was going to write more but i'll go make a demo about it instead.

hmm, maybe then some of the party management is creating an environment in which people won't be bored, but will also be motivated to try and finish their releases? I know at the first @party we had people staying up all night coding, and probably the second as well.

And yeah, when its sunny outside and one is falling asleep on top of one's machine in the hall . . .

And there are external factors . . . I know Dr Claw was working on a release for a while before Solskogen, but he was so tired by then from traveling that he couldn't finish his prod.

Hopefully people will stop thinking like that, because it only leads to stagnation. "Oh, it's not good enough, I'm not releasing it..." is killing the demoscene.

gloom: but then, if you think about e.g. the "sweeps" at the scene.org awards, perhaps we as audience are also responsible for that chasm.

yeah, when I discuss my hobby with people I don't show them some passable demo that came 4th at a smaller party, I show them the really cool stuff. If you show them a bad demo it looks like a shit hobby, if you show them high end stuff it looks too elite, you're fucked either way.

There ARE lots of good demos to show people though - single-effects put to good use like some of MFX's stuff. Maybe we should stick to showing those :D

"a shit hobby" haha...


"Dude you have a shit hobby"

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't that just saying "I plotted two different quantities on the same graph at arbitrarily-chosen scales, and 2011 is where the lines cross"?

Navis: next time you're telling somebody about the scene, show them BITS demos and tell them that's what you're into, see what happens :)

the conversation usually starts like that:

"What are these ugly statues on top of the bookself ?"

sounds to me like i dont want to win one of those.

I was about to say that... make it "parties x 9" and you just won some more years before making it the... "tipping-point" :-)

There is something to be said though - if the (arbitrary) multiplier is 10, then you can say that the graph represents an average 10 demos at each party. The point when they meet is the point where the average drops below 10.

Some other stats about the "non-demo" part of the releasing crowd (wild, animation, graphics, music) would be nice as well, but I guess there's not much data - at least not in a centralized manner.

Parsing the results.txt could be possible though :)

Gloom: did you account the wild-entries on strange hardware (e.g. the demos from lft)?

I doubt the wild hardware demos are enough to move the figures much - only a few of them are released each year. I bet this category is growing though somehow.

What I do think might be distorting the figures though is those cracktros. I'm finding it really hard to believe they didn't have a sizeable effect on the numbers back in the early 90s. A quick look at the figures on pouet for c64 though says demos:cracktros is roughly 10:1.

Is that actually right? Or are there lots of cracktros in the wrong category, listed as demos?

re "'Oh, it's not good enough, I'm not releasing it...' is killing the demoscene."

Yes. And that is why my focus here has been on encouraging people to make something, anything. And trying to convince myself of the same fact. And trying to show local less-impressive prods as well at shows and talks. And in kb's talks here how he emphasized 4ks and going for a specific style as a way for an individual or a small team to make something they can be proud of in a few months, versus say, years of agony for a larger team.

and I also can't help but think of how the International Costumer's Guild (ICG) divides competitions into Master, Journeyman, Novice, and Junior/Youth divisions. And I'll note, I've seen Novices come in with a full-on movie-quality Batman suit or stilts and robo claws and win Best In Show at major regional masquerades. So you can still get the surprise newcomer factor.

Perhaps an idea worth considering for larger parties? Or would people have too much machoness and just insist on being classed Master even though they didn't belong there?

I'll note the Master division for ICG competitions also includes people who work in an applicable field.

For more details, read:
http://www.costume.org/documents/fairness.html

I don't think it would be a good idea, it sounds really patronizing and the worst part is: who's there to decide? On an additional downside, we already established we don't have enough demos in compos, so fragmenting it even more sounds like a bad idea to me.

Well there were the Music Contests held by Hornet. Those were divided into rookie/intermediate/veteran divisions, and most participants chose their category honestly. But then again there were lots of entries. Except at the biggest parties I don't think splitting eg. the demo compo into such categories would work. Remember, you need at least four entries in a compo so that someone can lose :D

Other than that, Plek and Smash are quite right, and I'd second a push towards the "cute one trick pony" style of demos (or that's just my MLP:FIM addiction shining through, dunno :). In the talks Metoikos mentioned I often showed Sunr4y and especially emphasized that it took me only two days from scratch, and how gratifying that was, and that there are readymade tools to help you, and that even as a beginner it's quite easy to pull something off - if you've got the right idea.

Anyone remembers the beginners compo at altparty? There was a lot of discussion and ranting about it up front how nobody would like to be "discriminated" and enter the beginner compo willingly and such.
of course it can have something to do with altparties "artsy" audience but there were a lot of entries in the beginners compo and most of those groups/people were completely unknown (at least to me, must not mean shit but likely does) yet a lot of the entries were fun and creative.
i see that there lie dangers in categorizing sceners but, lets face it, the skill-spectrum is very broad.
as long as they are not categorized by force and people can freely choose where to enter their prods i think it is a good thing and compos such as the one at altparty showed that it is also working. there are newcomers who like to play with the "big boys" (overestimating their own or not) and there are the ones who like to compete against their own only and wouldnt release anything at all otherwise.

unless, of course, you say you dont want that "crap" at your party and intentionally put the bar higher to keep the people playing in their sandboxes until they are skilled enough. happy extinction.

DOS is not dead! its alive.

What Gasman asked! I think this line should be removed...

who defines what's a good and bad demo anyway? attitude matters more than content.