pouët.net

There it is: Thank you ALDI for developing the german scene!

Any nation claiming historical precedence over another in the scene often results of clueless chauvinism mixed with a lack of historical knowledge depth.

...and/or fun :)

Hmmmmm. I remember nobody here in CZ had Amiga before 1990. Even having any kind of computer was rare. Then, after the iron curtain fell down, computers began to appear in some specialized shops, but as a minor goods that nobody wanted, they were too expensive for normal people. People were saving money long time for a C64 with datasette, which cost about full 4 average salaries. In the early 90's, when those people in the west could buy Amiga in a local shop for appropriate amount of money, here were people getting their first C64s, Ataris and mainly Spectrums (because there were Czech/Slovak clones produced) for big money. Maybe this could be kind of answer.

I'd postulate that the scene still exists where it has always been, and that migration of the subculture from one country to another after it has reached maturity simply doesn't happen.

In other words: the scene exists in the countries it has always existed. It's not something that's widely adopted, but exists because of historic reasons. It's something that's passed down, not necessarily through generation (we're not THAT old yet :) but through local culture, events and the national heritage.

In even plainer words: going to some country that has little or no scene presence - especially in 2014 - and expecting to be able to kickstart demoscene activity is most likely a pointless venture.

That's not to say that the scene spreads, but it does in a different way: cross medium, not cross borders.

i was going to say pretty much what gloom did.

countries with historically major parties, particularly those which reach outside the insular inner sphere of the scene - like finland (asm), germany (ms/bp), norway (tg), denmark (tp) were able to maintain a stronger local scene built around it.

maybe at some point somehwere the scene turned to be more about the people and frienship than about the releases?

wysiwtf: that was when it died :)

we can revive the scene by moving to webgl demos! clearly that community is drooling over dreadfully looking visuals that could use a shot of demoscene hot sauce! nobody cares about dx/opengl on desktops anymore apart from 3 or 4 stubborn laggard-gamers.

ERHMAHGERD

pure crap, nobody (or very few people) ever owned a Thomson computer at home because it was the crappiest machine AND the most expensive (a very famous french weekly computer newspaper wrote as headline "Thomson TO5: one computer for the price of six!").

Thomson was a bit famous because it was (force)bought by school during the 80ies, but ALL my friends owned C64, Amstrad CPC (most of them), Atari ST and Amiga.

But, sticking on the subject, I don't know why there's so few demosceners in France actually while the french demoscene was very strong during the 90ies...

ho and I forgot this fabulous false info!



LE LULZ

My father was downloading WAREZ on his Commodore C64 CONNECTED to the Minitel circa 1985...

ha LE FUU, sorry pulkomandy, I missread yours "not usually" and "not used much", forgot my last message :D

btw, you have to know that the very famous RTEL Minitel service helped a lot the french demoscene, it was IRC's #demofr channel before IRC existed :)

Yes, don't read me too seriously with that Thomson stuff.

Anyway, yes, those were overpriced computers, but not as crappy as most people think. Look at the other french-made stuff (Alice, VG-5000, ...), you'll see that the Thomson is not the worst one.

There is an Amstrad CPC-specific demoscene subculture in France (and maybe a bit in Germany), with its own demoparties, a bit different rules (like the release of all prods for a party as a combined demopack with a nice menu, instead of separate prods). Maybe because of the different communication channels (Minitel vs. BBS), lack of foreign language speaking, or some other factors? I guess being able to read the german/russian/swedish scrolltexts helps a bit?

I'm not really familiar with the other parts of the French demoscene, so I won't try to comment more on that part.

Well, probably our desastrous bad skills with foreign languages can explain a lot of things :)

I have a theory. A receipe for the attractiveness of the demoscene. First of all, you need to learn to know computers somehow, and you get a concept of what they are like, what kind of stuff they do and don't do. Then you see demos, which produce cooler visuals and sound than you thought would fit in the concept. Shock and awe. Then you're into demos. If demos cannot show you awesome things, things beyond your previous experiences and expectations, you do not get interested.

In the eighties and nineties, it was not difficult to produce awesome visuals that impressed even "ordinary" people, because most people had only seen computers produce dull visuals. Then everything changed, the internet came around and video games became a massive industry, bigger than Hollywood. Normal average people got used to computers and computer-like things producing mind blowing visual effects and their everyday life was filled with computer-generated moving, sparkling, flashing things. It became too difficult for the demoscene to produce anything that an average person would identify as computer-generated but better than they were used to seeing.

Probably safe to assume there was a bit of drama though. ;)

One crucial thing is, you need to see a demo in order to become interested. I would think very few people got interested before seeing a demo for the first time. Anyone else?

I was active in the internet tracker scene (ctgmusic, modplug central, etc.) and saw in the comments of some files that they were "contributions to a party". The term "scene" was commonly used, but i didn't know anything about the demoscene, until I googled for such parties, and consequentially visited breakpoint 2006. There I realized that I was being completely unaware of that huge world, and would have loved to have known it much earlier.

So no, no need to see a demo in order to become interested. Interest might already be there. In my case the missing factor was outreach.

I think it's now good time to tell you that in Helsinki there is now a meeting held ~twice a month called "demokerho" (do not confuse with demoklubi/skeneklubi). Everyone who is LESS THAN 30-years old can come to demokerho(the meeting place owned by a municipality and it is regulated for youth usage only, so NO booze allowed). In demokerho we teach each other how to code and design demos, we also give feedback and such stuff. We started a month ago, we have had already three meetings, current record is eleven people at one meeting but more is absolutely welcome. At demokerho JoonasD6 works as a instructor, but sure for example me and atomim are quite ready to help you too if we can. Even if you have never coded before we try to help you the best we can, our unoffical goal is to get you familiar with shader coding which is quite commonly used today in demos. Maybe you are a pro coder and you just want to do demos at demoklubi alone or with someone i'm quite sure that is ok too. This is of course completely free.

It also might be possible to teach interested people 3D modelling or demomusic producing, but such thing should be arranged beforehand. Also if you are pro at coding, music, design or graphics and would like to help us perhaps not as tallended it would be great!

If you are interested come to #demokerho @ IRCNet.

I think sceners around the globe should be more interested in saving the scene by helping out younger sceners. Assembly, altparty, instanssi and hopefully demokerho are doing that atleast by making demoscene more known, easier to join the fun of making demos and be more talkative to newcomers.

Whoops not demoklubi but demoKERHO. My fucking bad, major apologies.

I've been awake for 28 hours now so there might be some major typos.

In Poland demoscene was present in computer and computer gaming papermags. About from early 90' to first half of 2000'. Stuff was available on its bundled disks, CDs, etc. Meetings/parties probably started from copy-parties, hardware/software exchange via newspaper announcements and local computer marketplaces.
Nowadays it's very hard to attract younger people to demoscene. Hard!? Almost impossible :(

branch: sceners ARE positive to newcomers -- the problem is that there are very few newcomers.

Here by "actually" rez means "right now". A typical french->english mistake.