pouët.net

We ended up in 4th place at The Gathering 2005 with our prod Reflections. During the show the crowd (sceners and gamers) really liked our motion captured dancer and I suppose that was one of the main reasons people voted for us.

Navis from ASD commented on our "crowd pleasing dancer" and I have heard others comment on demo compo winners as being "crowd pleasing"---ASM'04 winner Obsoleet and BP'04 winner Winnerdemo being two good examples. Ofcourse there is a difference between watching demos at a party bigscreen and at home.

But why are people so angry with crowd pleasing demos?
Is there any way to solve the problem?

fuckings to crowdpleasers.
do the demos as you want them too be.
as long as you do something.

Anything usually referred to as "crowd pleasing" is ugly, cheesy and cheap, thus doing something with taste should solve the problem.

reason

I guess it is just crowdpleasing in an obvious and boring way.. Obsoleet appealed to the good old nostalgia feelings that have been appealed to way to many times already.. (C64 rules at end of demo or something etc)..

I don't want popdemos that feature lovescenes, happy melodies, humour and stories. That combination is probably as crowd pleasing as it gets, but it is a bit boring as... uuh.. boring.. The more style the better!Interesting styles needs original thinking/doing. hurray!

Depends on the crowd...

At TG I would say it's probably bad, very bad :-)

I make Shane-pleasing demos. If other people like them that's cool, if not who cares if I have fun?

the Standard Answer (tm)

Shane: could you please start being a nice standard troll and NOT say things all the time which i've got to fully agree to? ;)

Yeah what the fuck is up with doing something people enjoy! That's not what art is about!

ManJIT:

I take personal interest in matters like this. Feel free to mail me at crowdwinners[craxh!blablabla]infeline.org

Do not be alarmed! While this adress may seem awfully strange, there are some tricks to it that I have invented. I have carefully chosen not to reveal the ACTUAL adress here since evil spambots search the net for anything connected with an elephantine appendix A..or @ if you will.

you must replace [craxh!blablabla] with such a symbol for the mail adress to be valid. The "username"; 'crowdwinner', is an arbitrary adress that I put up now so we can discuss this in private..meaningfully!!!5431.

I'm very sorry for all the precatautions taken within this act, but I reject spam both in particular and general. For instance, I have recently received some obscene mails concerning unconvential sex. This has displeased both me and my friend, Bjerte.

Please understand my worries concerning this, but also my worries towards the very topic of discussion you have raised here.

To have a fruitful discussion, we should start with defining what you mean about 'crowd pleasing'. I could not find a good definition on this on Wikipedia. It seems like we could run into a rather unpleasant amount of misunderstandings unless we clarify and reach concensus on the very meaning of this idiom.

I understand I'm being awfully nitpicking here. On the other hand, you only came fourth..at the gathering..and I don't see why I should "cut you any elite slack" or make any other allowance.

Keep in mind that a proper deinition delivered, by electronic mail, will not be considered spam.

Mr Twist Laser:

I am not completely sure I understand the complex syntax of your email address construct. After following your instructions I end up with:

crowdwinners@infeline.org

Is that correct?

what wayfinder said!

make love not sex

Eh ... Maybe some of you misunderstood me here. I'm not trying to market our products or say we are cool because we make crowd pleasing effects. Rather, it seems a lot of people at Pouët.net are angry with party visitors voting for the "wrong" products.

My view is that a fair amount of cowd pleasing effects or messages such as 3D models of oldskool computers are a nice addition to a demo. But they should never be a driving force, that would be cynical.

Anyway, feel free to stuff your demos with all kinds of design arrows, oldskool machines, cheesy legomen engaging matrix-like fights and what not, if it makes you happy.
Then please don't whine if people thumb you down on Pouet (uuuh!) or if no one will care about you, your productions and your crew five minutes after the prizegiving...

i refuse to discuss proper balance of demo aesthetical crowd pleasing elements with someone who thumbs down panjabmoore.

dixan, it's not about cliches. those don't hurt. it's about badly done cliches.

so, manjit, if you get a thumbdown for "crowdpleasing" stuff, then it means people think you hoped to use something that big crowds like for getting more votes, but you failed. if you get a thumbup for the same reason, you can join candela :-)

My comment on the dancer was that a very nice idea / effect (crowd pleaser - I used it as a compliment) was not helped by the implementation.

I like crowdpleaser demos if they please the crowd i'm in.

Navis (and others):

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Crowd pleasing is not always a bad thing. But some comments about crowd pleasing effects or messages sound as if pleasing the (non-scene?) crowd is a bad thing.

In the case of Obsoleet and Winnerdemo I can understand that people would have wanted another winner, sometimes in retrospect. But getting a round of applause during the compo is a great boost after weeks of work. I would like more postive reactions from the crowds in general.

ps:

I'm sorry but I just didn't like Panjabmoore. Agree to differ? ;-)

manjit: look mate, you whine about why ppl dont like crowd pleasing elements and then down thumb a crowd pleasing demo because "you just dont like it". so wtf do you expect ppl to retork you? besides resurging yet another fucking "demos should be about code" "no! they should be about art" "no! its about warez" "no! its about we beeing leet" useless discussion? just demo and stfu. -_-

conspiracy theory: manjit is norwegian, stuck up, and clueless. he must be activator!

ps: How about not joining the threads you dislike? It gives peace of mind. Anyway, I view "crowd pleasing" as a class (multiple inheritance allowed) and Panjabmoore might be an instance of that class, but my discussion topic regards the class, not specific objects.

skrebbel: Sorry, ManJIT is Swedish. The other things we can discuss at some party. ;-)