pouët.net

Just out of curiosity...

i know one Saudi Arabian here on pouet at least.

A very long time ago I read about some people in Saudi Arabia who were interested in demos. This was in an article in an Amiga diskmag. I do not remember which diskmag this was.

I think it was ZINE.

as with many places, there are I bet many potential sceners, or people doing sceneish things who do not know of this scene.

demos are not allowed by islam

some guys from iraq and kuwait are listed on csdb.

i heard that pouet is blocked in pakistan.

I really don't understand why the demoscene concentrates in a very few European countries... I don't understand why it's is so slow in China, US, Israel and other places (like arab countries)...

not enough beer and bacon in arab contries?

and not enough currywurst!

When it comes to Middle East, I know guy from Iran who's into demoscene. I'm guessing some of his friends are into it as well.

TLM: it's hard to tell what the reasons may be, but there are a couple of things that certainly factor in.
- language barrier
- technological / economic level
- curation of arts / acceptance of artistic attitude

Why is there almost no demoscene in Austria? Language skills are good, technological level is excellent, economic level is very good, and I don't think artistic attitude is discouraged...

TLM: and, of course, history.

Also, the idea of technology being open to arts is different in different places.

As I said above, scenes often look different different places.

Same is true for US, same is true for different regions. The scene as you know it is big in Europe; there are other kindred scenes elsewhere.

First I think that Adok has a point.

2nd, when I tell people about the scene I usually get a "cool, but, what do you get out of this" kind of response. I believe this is somehow got to do with local concept of free time and what do you do with it... I think that in many countries you are somehow expect to be productive in your free time and as we all know demo making is very productive, just not money wise :(

Anyway, that's the feeling I get around me...

i swapped in the 90ties with someone from jordania...

10 hrs before Adok weighed in & his post wasn't even relevant. Hmm...

On Topic - I'd say culture, most of my Arabic/Muslim mates (some of whom are in ICT) all *just* see that as work.
Some of them are gamers, some dabble in music but none that I know of (who are even near the coal-face of coding) would spend time doing a demo. To most of them work is work and play doesn't usually involve a 'puter. I'm only talking about 5 guys here & they're all expats or children of people from Islamic States but, non-the-less - culture.

On a tangent I introduced a Sikh relative to pouet. His response - even tho he's a gamer and does the books for the family business.
"That's fucking weird, man."

I am from Saudi Arabia,

Again: history. People are more likely to attach themselves to something that resembles something they already knew existed. Since the scene was born in Europe, it's only natural that the people who birthed it, also helped sustain it.

To turn this into a "Arabs don't see the point" is both idiotic and prejudice, since you can make the same argument replacing "Arabs" with "Americans". There simply is no foundation for it.

Look at the countries where the scene was born -- those are the same countries that still have a (moderately) active scene today. This isn't exactly rocket science.

And how did it started in the European countries? From which influences before they got their scene history? Oh wait, cracking scene of course. I guess it's where the computer revolution started and crackers and other computer hobbyist scenes were born, some of it is USA and some of it is Europe with their home micros (most classics came from UK, but not much demoscene there?). Cracking even existed in USA groups in C64 for example but demoscene didn't evolved much as in Europe. Strange?

Adok's question semirelevant, it actually never occured to me, why no demoscene in Austria since it's borders is close to Germany, Czech and Hungary which has some demoparties. Different culture of how to use computers?

Forgot to add that history (countries who had scene in the past have still a scene) is kind of circular logic. But history of hobby computer revolution, cracking scene, etc that evolved into the demoscene makes more sense.

Hum... China here. They definitely have a cracking communauty, but they usually don't bother with pulsating cubes. Scene is completly unknown there.

I've shown a couple of things to my most motivated students (in a comp. sci. univ. dept.), they were "woooow, that's awesome, now that's what I call coding", they definitely see the point of it and got much respect for what they have seen. But the social environment here does not exactly favor recreational coding, or activities. Pressure to get money, time for non-work activities reduced compared to European lifestyle, etc. People who can afford that are usually not with the mindset of coding for fun.

Attempt to motivate my students for a demo was "hu, but why I would do that if a half-working unambitious project give me 90% of the points ?".

Optimus: you would make a terrible data analyst.