pouët.net

This is just my curiosity, I am not much in picture about history of other scenes and search here found nothing related so I am trying. How or what was the main reason groups like Anarchy or Polka Bros vanished? At least Anarchy had lot of members, quite active ones, but never heard what happened that they disappeared so suddenly. The same can go for Phenomena and few others. Anyone have a good batteries to put some light on this? :)

Thanks.

Offhand, I would like to think that a lot of those people found careers in computer fields such as programming and graphics thanks to their work in the scene. Gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, really, doesn't it?

Sure, and there are threads about this on pouet already. I am more interested in the groups, having over 10 people in members list and just vanish is making me curious. I heard about a France in 90's where people just gave up after police seriously started to catch the crackers, but well, that is "just" one country.

People got bored and inactive, happened a lot in the mid-late 90s.

One of the other factors was that - amongst those former crackers and demo coders who got jobs within the game industry - they were worked (quite literally) to death, so they had no time left to share with the scene as they were so tired (particularly in the UK). Although hopefully their interest is still there, so they may well make a return. I guess other reasons are that quite a few sceners from the early days have now had families - if their kids are very young then they are, quite rightly, going to take time out to live life with them and maybe attending demo parties and becoming involved with the scene again when they are a bit older and also when their kids are a bit older (and may also attend the same parties) :)

Happens a lot now too. When you grow up, priorities change.

It's the early 90s and the amiga blossoms. Then PC happened. :P

there was a group called anarchy
they made their demos in 3d
everyone thought that it will last
now they are but shadows of the past

they're all quitters!

What Defiance said, the PC happened.

Core of anarchy left to found Lemon.
And Lemon. Is still active even today ;)

Translation: The demoscene died.
It's been dead for ages now.

Felice: You told my story (demo - video games - family - back to demo - my kid going to parties with me).

For those people it did i guess

For some it only went into hibernation.

For demo groups I've been in the past, most people just found their careers moving in different directions (like theoretical physics) that didn't have any connection with the demoscene, and eventually I was the only one still doing "scene stuff".

So yeah, life.

I also don't think you can ever really "quit" the scene, just as you never really "join" it either. It just.. is. For the scene to be dead you'd first have to define what it would mean for a scene to be alive in the first place.

As long as there are people doing these things for fun and watching them for fun, the scene aint dead, from my perspective.

:)

Yea, the scene is now a midlife-crisis thing :)
If you look at the DESiRE-releases for example...
There is a big gaping hole between 1998 and 2010 :)

I think we all know why people leave the scene. The intriguing question here was, why have some old groups died while others have stayed or been resurrected?

Some ideas why they're still around:
1. The group was so big and widespread it was impossible to kill it all off (TRSI, Razor 1911).
2. They died, but a member or two restarted it after rediscovering the scene (Andromeda, Cydonia).

Some ideas why they're not:
1. The group became/joined another group. (Anarchy, Kefrens)
2. Its leader officially disbanded it. (?)
3. The group morphed into a commercial business and stopped scene activity to avoid confusion (Melon)

For the most part, there's nothing stopping an ex-member of a dead group to restart it. But that will likely remain a small percentage of them.

you mean like Red Sector INC?
*runs off laughing*

Brainstorm 13 year hole!

Funny you only mentioned "Anarchy" and "Lemon." ;)
Basically what Optimus said...The leftover-members of "Anarchy" reformed into "Lemon."
And that´s basically what this Thread is about...Leftovers! ;)
People quitted the scene without "Bye" or reasons, once Commodore went down...since the term "Scene is dead" is around...still invalid, but who could have known...them atleast not, they just quitted and threw away all of their contacts. (internet was pretty new back then, noone had it, except people that were studying!)

oops, you mentioned "Anrchy" but not "Lemon.", "Polka Bros" instead...
..."Polka Bros" were the leftovers of "Kefrens" ! ;)

Btw: the few people that had access to Internet back then already formed into "The Black Lotus"/"TBL"... they cranked out best demos ever until today! ;) (Communication, you know!)

I wouldn't say that the reason for the survival of TRSI is it being big and widespread. As far as I know there was always a "properly appointed" organizer to pass the torch to. Such as Warhead during the time when a lot of other old groups just withered away. The group itself had some terrible periods (sorry Coax) but I'd attribute much of its current activity to Warhead's persistence.


This is often, of course, terribly questionable. I wasn't that excited about e.g. Barock & co restarting The Silents in the early 2000's, mainly because (as far as I remember) they weren't even actual members but a subgroup :)


Just a side note: this also applies to country-specific sections of groups. At least in the Amiga scene there was numerous examples of all members of a given nationality jumping ship to another group. The French section of The Silents becoming the French section of Anarchy is just one example.