pouët.net

much easier to just start shits again from scratch.
THINK ABOUT IT (if you're think):

BLACKJACK

AND

HOOKERS

I don't know how mid-school managed to overlook these two amazing DOS demos:
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=104607
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=104603

But even as an Amiga guy I feel compelled to give them a little boost here.

It's great to see people feel strongly enough about these awards that they complain about the jury decisions on the Pouet BBS. Do those same people feel strongly enough to step up next year and either nominate the demos that they care about or even apply to be a juror?

I could show you the document where the jury tracked their shortlist of 26 prods and where six jurors added elaborate comments on each and every one of them. You would see that Demoded and Aleph Null are on that list. I could also show you the long discussions in the jury's internal Slack channel where they discussed their criteria and how to weigh a prod's merits in the context of its respective platform's capabilities and what else is being released on that platform. You would see how much work and time and diligence the jurors have poured into their decision.

However all of that is internal stuff and I will not share it with the public, so you'll just have to take my word for it: They did not "overlook" anything, we actually go to great lengths to make sure we don't overlook anything, and our nomination decisions are the result of weeks long deliberate effort.

You are welcome to disagree with the juror's decisions and engage with them by making counterpoints, but I strongly object to any claims that we were sloppy.

The Meteoriks Watchlist 2026

Speaking of our nominations being more work than throwing darts at a wall, all our juries have extensive shortlists of prods (picked from the 3000ish we sifted through) which they discussed in detail on their search for nominees. Many of those didn't end up being nominated but they are still great and interesting productions, some previously undiscovered gems - it would be a shame not to put a spotlight on them too!

So every year we collect our shortlists into a big watchlist on Pouet and a tag on Demozoo so you can find these prods - give them a watch, they're well worth it!

https://www.pouet.net/lists.php?which=335
https://demozoo.org/productions/tagged/meteoriks-watchlist-2025/

Clarence, Krill and others engaging with our nominations: Thank you, you are making valid points that we would be happy to incorporate into our jury decisions next time by having you on board as jurors.

I'm not being facetious here - especially OTA is a deeply technical field and very hard to judge so we need people like you who really grok the technical aspects and are willing to debate them with others. We already have technically very competent people on the jury, and trust me they dug deeply into the technical aspects, down to running prods in a debugger to look at how a trick was made. But with OTA being such a complex subject we will be happy about anyone adding their expertise to the jury.

Also keep in mind however that the category is "Outstanding Technical Achievement" and not "Highest Number", and we deliberately leave considerable leeway to the jury in defining what constitutes "Outstanding" to them. The raw technical aspect is a huge factor of course but they are free and encouraged to take other aspects into account, such as the impact the achievement in question had on the scene, or knowledge sharing. In that respect, Nine's effect of triggering a whole new series of sprite records cannot be dismissed.

Both The X-File and Codeboys and Endians were heavily discussed in the jury, but in the end did not make it into the final nominations. I understand how and why you may disagree with the jury, just understand that we do try very hard to come to a decision that feels good, correct and balanced to the jurors, and if you feel like we're making objectively bad decisions here we ask you to join us with an open mind and help us do better next time.

Sorry, I regret my choice of words because I didn't intend to imply the judging process was not thorough.

I was surprised that those demos didn't make it into the top five because they stood out to me.

Oh, i wasn't complaining, really. :) I can only guess at how tough it must be to agree on such things.

As for jury service... i guess conflicts of interest/prejudice may be a thing there?
Couldn't judge about a prod i was heavily involved with and have a clear conscience, i guess. (So this year'd have been ruled out, and 2022 as well, and... uh, coming years hopefully as well to some degree. :D)

Thanks Jobbo - and sorry for being Stern Orga Dude, it's a touchy subject :)

Krill, that is indeed a tough problem but we do have a process of sorts to guard against conflicts of interest - you abstain from any discussion and votes on your own prods. It's not a silver bullet of course but it's a compromise to enable the people who are best at judging prods - the ones who make them - to participate. You have to know whether you trust yourself to be impartial towards other prods when you have one of your own in the race but if you do trust yourself so will we.

All that said of course making prods > rating prods so "no time for jury work must make demo" always trumps anything :)

I'm baffled by the constant response "join the jury if you care". There's a huge chasm of levels of "caring" between caring enough to be mildly annoyed and complain about it in a forum, and caring enough to take part to improve the process.

As for myself, I don't care about what the jury members thought is good enough to nominate, and how many productions to nominate. But I'm definitely annoyed by the decision to put oldskool productions that take care and coding effort (shut up about midschool, that's not a term), and FUCKING LUA scripts in a web app (fantasy consoles), in the same category.

Do I care enough about it to be annouyed and post my contempt here? absolutely. Do I care enough about it to take part in the process, not even close.

maybe just say care one more time!

to the sound of the beatles:
all i care is rant trolololo

Technical achievement in the midschool, using Lua. That's why Meteorix can be considered a joke award at best, but it's fine for what it is. :-D
What could possibly save it is to have exactly one category: Best demo, across all platforms. I suspect that all the schools and side-awards are excuses.

Hey, I invented the term MidSkool :)

Kewl, I nominate you for the upcoming meta award, which honors achievements in demoscene self-referentiality and self-reinforcement :-)

but in what purity level?

With the purity that necessarily comes with a jury award... obviously

Have you read this out loud before hitting enter?

Excited for Meteoriks and the Revision Demoparty!

We will have fun!

Made me smile.