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Since being on the demoscene, there's a thing drilling in my head. Why the scene itslef is more or less popular in a specific countries around Europe? I mean, does it depend on country's size? I don't think so. Look and compare France and Germany. Similar size, but more sceners in Germany. I'm from CZ and there are not many demogroups or sceners active. People here don't seem to be interested. In Germany, there are a lot of sceners, also in Poland or Finland. What do you think is the key that people of some countries are less interested in demoscene than others? I can understand there could have been differences in the past before the internet, because BBSes weren't so attractive for eastern people because of high phone tariffs. And language barrier and no contacts on the west and so on. Cracking groups at games source (shops with games, which were not available on the east). But internet opened gates with demos. Does the scene interest depend on local mentality or culture? This really interests me.

it's simple: the colder the winters, the more sceners from that nation.

We all know that the scene is thriving in scandinavia because there is literally nothing else to do in winter except sitting behind a screen making demos (except maybe drinking and not getting eaten by polar bears)

I don't know why the scene is big in germany though, it might be because they love order and structure? ^^

germans still crave for world domination, regardless what scale or subculture!

If I were in Scandinavia, I would go sledging or skiing or building snowmen :) Can't be so much difference with middle Europe.

Sledging, skiing, snowmen? Where? Maybe in Lapland :)

finally a good time for some American scene domination, they're freezing their balls off over there!!!

Gargaj, actually since there's no snow outside(I live in Helsinki) and it's dark most of the time it's even more boring to be outside than if there were snow, so atleast I've spent my holidays coding. Think about it, there is no snow so you can't go skiing, play ice hockey or other snowy stuff, also it's dark outside most of the time so you can't do much of the summer activities outside since you can't see that much(no volley ball, outside basketball and so on). The only thing you could do outside is to jog and hope that you won't get hit by a car. Other than that you'll have to do sports and other activities inside.

hurray for kaamos

i think the technical affinity (which i believe also has a lot to do with the climate, hence so many sceners in the cold north) and the availability of (cheap) homecomputers in the 80s/90s are the two most important factors when it comes to the size of tech oriented communities (and as a subset of that, sceners) per country.

sure nowadays theres internet in almost every corner of the world but if there was no strong scene in the 90s why should there be now? of course theres exceptions to this rule (someone said TDF?) but in large i think it stands.

That explains why demos and mod-tracking were so popular in the central New York state (Syracuse) area where I grew up.. it's on record as being the snowiest city in the US. If you didn't ski, well, you were indoors half the year. There wasn't much to do during the summer, either. Most my scene friends from the area have long since moved away. :) It could also explain why the scene is more popular in Boston and Montreal than, say, Miami or Los Angeles. Well, there was the Spring Break party in San Diego in the '90s, maybe that was a fluke.

another factor that came to mind may be the availability of modems/bbs and the sheer size of the country. if it was cheaper/more convenient to transfer the data over the telephone lines it probably has a negative impact on the amount of parties which in turn has a negative impact on the scene-community-self-awareness (best example: USA).

Police being too active busting french people during late 80's and early 90's for France to grow it's scene as large as in Germany :)

The dutch just smoked a bunch of pot and forgot about the scene.

I like how this very same question pops up every now and then, finding the usual set of half-answers which all in all don't really fulfill the curiosity.
you can also look at the question from a different perspective: the scene developed in many countries which were fertile enough in the mid 80s for various reasons (eg computer clubs, bbs network, piracy) then it died in some places and kept running in others. Now, what is the recipe which keeps it running?
I say active groups and good events.

hypothesis: # of sceners correlates with national alcoholism rates

I've always wondered why there was virtually no scene activity in ireland and quite a bit in the uk. Same computers were available, which ok were slightly more expensive in ireland, and pretty much the same culture and climate. However, there was almost no computers in schools in the 80s and 90s in ireland, and loads in the uk (bbc micro esp), and IT was always talked about as a way to make money in ireland. Any ideas brits?

(for the record i got into the scene when i was living in finland, and ppl just thought i was weird when i brought it up in ireland after i moved back in 98)

maali: ireland v finland, we both drink heavily.

The French people spent the 80s ranting that they only had Thomson and Alice computer to work with, and those were crap. Of course, no one even tried to do some demomaking on those until much later.

The first Thomson MO5 prod was released on Forver 2008.

The first Alice prod... well as far as I know everyone is still saying this is a crap computer instead of trying to do something.

Also, yes, France had Minitel when everyone else did BBS. Since the Minitel does not usually connect to a computer, it was not used much to download software.

What happens if you try to build a crappy French computer out of Minitel spare parts?

Easy availability and popularity of Commodore computers.

I am from Finland, and the reasons I got into making demos were: (1) things moving at full-framerate on a CRT monitor looked AWESOME, almost hypnotic, (2) I saw full-framerate moving stuff combined with disco music on the Amiga. That was it. Although I dumped my whole Amiga gear already in 1989 in favor of a PC system (for other reasons), I desperately wanted to do similar things on the PC. Moving things, full framerate, CRT monitor, combined with punchy melodic music.

I don't know what role Finland plays in this.

Australia should be winning then...

And, a bit later, the massive mainstream popularity of Assembly that introduced people to the scene if they weren't there for that reason.

I know one person who attended Assembly 1993 and 1994 because it was an easy way to get a lot of copied Amiga games. He didn't become interested in the scene really.