pouët.net

I was just browsing Pouet while waiting for stuff to build at work and I started wondering just what keeps you guys motivated to stay in the demoscene. What is it that draws you in? How do you keep the flame burning?

As for myself, I used to be really productive and watch all the new demos that came out, no matter what the platform. I used to love writing code for its own sake, even if I did programming as a job too. Granted, I wasn't evolving all that much with the times, but I still learned new stuff, made a lot of friends and going to a $GERMAN_PARTY_WITH_ALL_MY_FRIENDS was a non-issue. That's what I did and I loved every minute of it. I wrote a shitload of demos.

Lately, though, I've found myself struggling with real-life responsibilities and hobbies like the demoscene. I write code at work and sit on front of the screen for the best part of the day and it's _really_ hard to turn on the screen at home as well. After doing relatively complex stuff at work, writing shaders at home is not in any way refreshing nor do I feel much motivation for it. I got more ideas than I've ever had for demos, but the path from the concept to conception seems longer than ever. On my own time (ie. non-relationship/family time) I'd rather just grab a book or the guitar.

Muoto, my entry for Evoke 2013 took three years to make because of the lack of motivation. Fields of Glass, my latest release, was done in about a week because I felt like I _had_ to do something, although I'm really happy how it turned out even if it's not gotten much love. The same thing goes for Väre, I Was Once Here, The Tabernacle and basically all other recent demos of mine. I have three unfinished demos on my hard drive, two for PC and one for the C64. I don't know if they will ever be finished. I started rewriting all my engine stuff with modern tech. It's now at the point where I should actually start doing the content and... I feel blank.

I know these things come and go, but I'd still like to hear what motivates you.

No motivation here at the moment too :D Who cares! I'm motivated by trying to make something that has not been done 128 times. And also a bit of fun because of competition + staying (somehow) in the game. And 2 unfinished demos make a finished one. Am I right? :D

For me, it's a strong group motivation thing. Some weeks I feel completely unmotivated, but then I see the other mercury people do stuff, and that just pulls me right back into it. I think this goes the other way around, as well.

Also, revision's 64k competition is the best thing that ever happened in terms of motivation. (Hint, hint, Approximate, it's your turn again!)

I have several things that motivate me. In no particular order:

(*) The technical/design challange. How do I show something that was not seen on my platform or even does not look like it is coming from my platform? (Cleraly, I am a little bit focussed on old platforms.) Finding new technical/design tricks to achieve that and/or coming with new ways to (ab)use old tricks. I do not have to program for my day job, so maybe this makes it a bit more thrilling for me. I've got to admit, I do not like the implementation stage all that much, it is inventing the trick and ensuring that it would work that I enjoy. Filling in the details is usually boring.

(*) The artistic challenge. This one is harder to explain. I do not like "demoish" demos all that much. Demos are very abstract and for me they lack the human dimension. Hence, I seek ways to inject some humanity into the demoscene context. Maybe this is an abuse of the format, I do not know. It is also a challenge in that one normally finds it hard to relate to something like a plasma, so finding ways of creating relatable effects is challanging and feels worthwhile.

(*) The thrill of having something done (and working well). Usually takes a lot of time and effort to get there, but it definitely feels great. The thrill of working with really talanted people who can bring so much more to the project when they join their forces. The messiness of a group creative process makes it even more amazing when things come together.

However, after listing these things I think I can safely say that none of them is critical. These are just bonuses. I am guessing the real reason I still want make demos is because I feel like I have something to say via them and it is this communication/self-expression bit is probably the most important driving factor for me. It is actually not quite as generic as it sounds; maybe I can be even more specific, there are several pretty specific "demo ideas" that I hope to make one day. I do not know if I will make even some of them and I do not know if they will turn out as great as they feel to me in my imagination. These "visions" motivate me the most, even when I am not actually working on one of them.

haven't been very motivated to do new stuff lately either.

inspiration and motivation comes in cycles i guess.
if you don't have the time to feed it when it comes it just goes away again.

i can do some new stuff if i force myself to do it, but then if it feels like work what's the point? so i stopped drawing or making music couz it just felt like i was doing more of the same, not really discovering anything interesting anymore in it. have a bunch of unfinished stuff lying around, that it just doesn't feel worth "packaging".

i been doing some new tech for new interactivity models which feels more interesting. at the same time i feel like i'm completely behind on 3d rendering stuff and would take weeks of fulltime effort to catch up and start doing something visually decent again.

i'll try to do something for demobit atleast, starting work on it already to have room to fool around and experiment ideas. having achievable deadlines sometimes help in getting some motivation back :)

My motivation has never been dependent on demoscene as it's mainly technical and has seldom any artistic merits that interest me(apart some size coding stuff and similar one man creations).

It´s just phases of your life...sometimes there is just no time to have fun with your hobby, especially considering how much work coding a Demo means.
Also went through lots of dry time concerning coding Demos, same as you, coding in the job all day already, no motivation left in the rare spare-time.

I only ever code on Demostuff when it really hits me...often i just watch Demos until one effect gives me an idea and next is me 2 days later with half a Demo done, still having fun and power to go on for 2 more weeks. All that after many months of doing nothing at all.
By now i just write down my Ideas if i don´t find the time to implement them straight away...and once i am in the mood (and time lets me) i open the textfile and start hacking. Slowly, over months, many different parts start to gather...and so the only thing to do 2-3 weeks in front of a party i want to visit is putting them together and tweak them a bit for speed/look maybe.
I think i have collected about 30 unused parts by now...some took several days on/off-working on them (even stretched over months) and some are done from idea to completely usable in 1-2 hours. So when i want to make a Demo, i can even look over my collection and pick the best(-fitting to my concept, if there´s one at all) out of it...helps with coherency aswell i guess.

Never try to make yourself work on something when you are not in the mood...the result will not be satisfying in >90% of all attempts anyway!
Also maybe don´t start too late when finally building a Demo from your collection...i ran into strangest bugs the last few times and so my prods didn´t get done in time, eventho i got them to some releasable state and even released them...but you´ll always regret not having counted in 1 week extra for "weird bug annoyances".

About self-motivating: just keep (re-)watching Demos, try to emerge some concept while at it, start imagining it by planning it in your head...and hopefully you´ll be hacking away happily again shortly after! At least for me this always worked!
Just don´t overcomplicate things by planning it for weeks or coming up with the best concept ever...in most cases the Demo evolves by itself while you are working on it, you know that yourself! ;) Ideas come by itself...often i find goodlooking stuff by accidentally putting a bug, altho i normally don´t use that stuff in the end it may give you a new idea for an effect or open your eyes about how some effect was done that always puzzled you until this point of time (not that there would be much left to discover nowadays, but well...!)

Also a good advice would be to keep your BaseCode in a good state at all times, so you don´t need to code/fix this boring stuff last minute.
And what i keep doing is coding the "hard" or "unknown" or "never done before" stuff first, so it is out of the way! You normally can´t plan your time with these things, as you can´t tell how long it´ll take you. Once only stuff you did before is left you can easily plan time and all will be fine in the end!

urs: group motivation is great, when you actually have an active group. i never managed to be in a properly active group. had to start my own and see everyone go innactive around me with delayed projects. the closest i got to an active group was calodox and i ended up getting booted instead of fitting in. TPOLM is as idle as it gets. and Enough Records is mostly me doing everything with some folks occasionally helping out when i ask them. i'm used to doing everything on my own by now, but there are always limitations to the 1 man show that it just doesn't feel worth investing so much of your time to break through when it's not your core interest. random collaborations are refreshing but not always work out, and you can't really insist on others to deliver what they promised since it's all a hobby anyways. most collaborative demo projects end up delayed like hell and eventually cancelled. you can also get the occasional request for a track, which you deliver and rarely get any feedback or previews or any sort of input on the final outcome, so it's not really much of a collaborative process even though it can be quite interesting.

Strange how different coders can be!
To me it´s all about the implementation, making the idea work via code and from there just optimizing the shit out of it, be it for size, speed, effectiveness or even how elegant/tidied_up/readable the final code looks in my Editor! (although noone else than me will ever see it in most cases, haha.)
To me it´s all about the code; while i don´t care about the language used, just making sure i used the available syntax to it´s best and having used all my knowledge of trickery on given machine. (Says the one who did only one effect the last 5 years -> SphereMarching! Atleast i rewrote the marcher several times from scratch, adding new techniques while at it!)

just for fun out of demoscene.

Motivation? You guys. All of you. Also, parties – watching your release with hundreds of people on a screen bigger than my flat (I checked!), socializing (beer)… And prices, then and again :)

I do miss the times when we gathered in some cellar somewhere and made demos together in a group-effort aswell !
Same problem again, people don´t have the spare-time of a jobless teenager anymore, so all you (ps) wrote is sadly how the scene is rolling for the most of us!
I guess i went into 4k/8k for the coding challenge it provides the most, but also a bit so i can do my stuff in my own pace maybe, knowing my motivation-problems and lazyness.
Good thing is there´s atleast the Internet, so if one really wants there should always be people to be found to collaborate with on something. I for my part jumped into a bigger project with my Group, all internet-based, as we are scattered around the globe a lot, but atleast a group-effort again, finally! Really what i needed after 20+ 4k/8k-prods (with just maybe a musician, if i didn´t put my own "music" in there.) the last years! :)

So, maybe fighting the own lazyness, "can´t motivate myself" - thing can be countered by doing sth different to what one normally does. Make a MusicDisk for a change, start coding on a new platform, just find a new interesting thingamabob that interests you to explore.

i used to be a higher believer of the power of internet in bringing people together to collaborate, but after many years of sending mail and getting no replies (or futile promises that it's coming soon) i stopped believing in it. people need to be in constant contact for you to get a feel of how the other person is doing, if they are motivated, or struggling, or in over their head with, or getting burned by real life. i've done plenty of successful remote collaborations before (with elfh/cpu, with dominator/kosmoplovci, etc) i mean real collaborations where both sides are doing stuff at same time and communicating regularly, not just throw a track at someone and wait for the end result. but the most successful demo ventures have always been when we are working close to each other (most of the demos i did with crmx/nothing, demos i did with dominator while holidaying in serbia, etc), sometimes those demos dont work out as good as you hoped, but the process is much better. and like hardy mentions, we just dont have time for that anymore.

Funny, I was asking that myself a lot of times in the last year or so.
For me as a lazy outsider who doesnt really make demos himself it may be even a bit harder to stay interested and I noticed the days where I eagerly watched every new release and commented on it are slowly fading away, but I still have the feeling to be one of a realtively small group of people who understand at least a fraction of the fascination that is the demoscene.
I never got a lot of hype from the pure technical side of things, I guess mostly because Im not a good coder at all and as thus dont get many of the things - especially on oldschool platforms, but I sure do like a well designed prod that keeps me entertained or touches me emotionally and some of you are really, really good at that (hi Preacher! ;).

Other than that theres mostly three things that keep me going and spending my money on parties and (oldschool) hardware:

- First of all, all the incredibly nice and talented people I got to know over the years and had a lot of fun with at various locatiions. The sozialicing factor is probably what gets me the most, together with a good reason to leave my hometown once in a while and go to places and parties I haven't been to or wouldnt have gone to before. Also, contrary to popular believe, while I do have friends in real life most of them are far away from being nerds. I just cannot talk about technical things to them without receiving "that look" (TM).

- Oldschool Nostalgia. I had and loved my home computers back in the late 80s and 90s and its just great to see other people still love them as well and are even still trying to push the boundaries of obsolete hardware. I can't even imagine how much hours of work and learning that have close to now effect outside of the scene they must have spend.

- My love for free and accessible arts. All the music, all the graphics, all the design that you people do in your free time makes me think and I have nothing but the deepest respect for your skills and dedication. Ignorance just isnt an option for me and it pains me to see so much of it in other computer affiliated and/or creative people who really should know better.

So yes, Im still motivated even if the fanboyism of the early years is gone by now and Im happy that I at least contribute a bit here and there, be it in helping with organizing, spending money to support your events and projects, relaying information on IRC or just to be a nice guy to have around (well, at least to some of you - you know I <3 you ), so please: keep on doing what you're doing!

There are good services available to keep tabs on each other, to group up, like Slack or Trello.
I guess IRC is too much of idling around nowadays, but even that could still work! :/
But the main problem stays the missing time with all the "real life"-stuff going on in our lives nowadays, really sad!

So... what motivates me:
I always thought demoscene is some kind of underground movement with political agenda.
The agenda being sort of aligned with free software movement, except we don't release source code, but rather highly impractical artistic creations to make a specific point about the reality we happen to live in.
And yeah, sorry if this sounds like pseudo-profound bullshit, but it's actually honest.
It could also summarized like "wysiwtf" puts it: free and accessible computer arts.

Another goal might be to challange the satus quo of "the average life of an average person", which usually follows this kind of pattern: study->work->raise family->work some more->die. Or "eat, drink, work, facebook, twitter, youtube, repeat" in practice ;)

Now, many of you (including myself) seem to be stuck with this pattern. And that's exactly the reason why it makes sense to do something! To break this pattern and be happy again. Or if lucky, make a mark for generations to come, i.e. develop something so ridiculously good that it will be remembered and will inspire people for years.

The other question is: should it be necessarily a demo or an intro?
Maybe there are other form of creations that will serve the purpose better and maybe even get into the bigger audience. I don't know, the answer is very individual here.
I don't think there is anything wrong, if the seasoned demoscener is suddenly "switching sides" and doing something cool completely outside of the demoscene. Then he posts the link on pouet and everybody is still happy ;) Or even better - extending the scope of the demoscene i.e. inventing a new compo (like 4k procedural gfx back in the days).

(@preacher) I can't tell much about the demoscene really, but for me it's : getting to the essence of things, procedurally, may it be graphics, algorithms or sound, and then, combine them, in the most "natural" way. It's a very abstract motivation, which only touches the demoscene when it comes to sizecoding. When i do these things without sizecoding (composing, remixing, writing, digital drawings) the "scene" doesn't even notice. I can acknowledge the feel of need to keep up with the tech, especially when i see these astonishing, jawdropgenerating scene productions, but that wouldn't be me, at least not for now. I can also acknowledge the feeling of duty to "produce something", even after just 3 years coding tiny remotes for demo parties. Of course it's much simpler to send a tiny intro, yet after a while, it becomes hard not to repeat stuff. But also, if ideas and concepts don't flow, i'd suggest to not try to force it (even if i can't resist sometimes myself). What you CAN do, however, is connect with people that have ideas and do collaborations. I did that quite some times recently, and it keeps up the flow. And after all, there is still reverting to other kinds of art, not related so much to the scene, as stated above. That's not a bad thing. Keeping up the demoscene is a result of emergence, not necessarily the duty of every scener - imho, if my 3 years as almost complete remote scener do account for anything ;)

personally the motivation is that (sadly enough) i just love graphics coding. there's always another challenge / problem over the hill that needs to be solved, often super deep/technical, and an idea to try to solve it. that the results look nice at the end - sometimes to regular people as well - helps. there's a buzz from making something to which people say, "wow, i havent seen that before", especially when that thing was really difficult to do.

I adhere to the Devin Townsend principle.

this is the coding challenge to me. although i do like music a lot, and respect modelling skills, coding innovations is what keeps me coming here.

i understand that for non programmers, this is somewhat of an unexplained reason, but it all came from tight coding and no one can deny that.

it is all about coding, imho. unreal, unity or what else demos don't impress me, honestly.

if this was about music and modelling, then it would not made a difference if you simply recorded a video from 3dsmax or maya. just my opinion.

pĺease don't try to steal this from us, it is about CODING.

make* .... damn...

aaaand even then, from where did 3dsmax and maya come, from a musician? come on guys, respect and all, but please respect us as well, it is more than time for that.

those who don't want to recognize programmer: FUCK YOU!

programmers*, damn!

oh, that offends you?