The Scene, In General And Particular

Written by trid

It was 5 or 6 years ago when I decided to quit the scene, but then I started to miss something. And after reading some articles in the last issue of this nice mag, I started thinking about it. Back in 1992, and earlier, there has been also an discussion about the scene, if it's dying or living up again. (If you are short on time better stop reading, this will take some minutes!)

Articles from Quartz/Officium, Paranoid/Eclipse and Makke/Comic Pirates have forced me to think it over again - and to write it down.

The scene, as the whole world, changes steadily, that's clear. When Germany was reunited it didn't change that much for the 'western' part, but for the people living in the 'eastern' part everything changed! What I want to say is this: 1st we can't forsee every change or development! And 2nd we can't say if changes or developments make it necessary to change ourselves! Our, personal, way of living, working and thinking.

I see that there is a strong relation between the warez- and the demoscene. And yes! By dividing them both, the demoscene was affected more heavily. In the warezscene it isn't necessary to do something, you 'just' have to trade some warez, or to know where to get them. There are people spending no thoughts about who offers those warez. They just want to have the latest games or appz or whatsoever. You don't need to do anything but download what you want. That's easier.

Since the split up, we in the demoscne lack our most important resource for new talents! Thats my opinion, and I think it's true! When I came into the scene the first time, back in 1986 (I think), I started up with cracks. Somehow I found my way to the demoscene then, but I had lots of contacts that swapped both, cracks & demos (that was on C64!).

Then it changed, the people yelled FRIENDSHIP and FUN, and fled from the evil. You see, this cracker scene was just a big fight between some big groups, who has the game XXX cracked & spreaded first. Therefore you had to have best connections to original suppliers. The faster you got it the faster you cracked it... and so on.

When they fled into demos, they took over this 'competition'. Not every group, just a few. I remember that I could hardly await the latest issue of Mamba, or Sex'n Crime because there always have been some articles where one guy offended another, or group vs group.

People love to hear about such things. Really! Don't know but I think they needed it. While on cracks, they competed for the latest games, while in demos they competed for the better routines, and if your routines were bad, you told shit about the others...?? No, not all of them. In fact it has always been just a few groups or persons. But they entertained the masses, made newbies come by. There was life in it.

They started concerning about the scene back on c64, as well as today on PC, and before that on Amiga, Atari, Acorn ... endless...

What to do? As long as there are newbies coming up the scene can't run dry on occupation. But at the demoscene we give up too easily!

Did you ever stuff a net search engine with "WAREZ", "APPZ" or "CRACKZ"? You would get thousands, millions(!) of links to warez pages.

What if you search for "DEMOS" or "MAGS" or "DEMOSCENE" ... not much. I got tons of dead links... few worked, but haven't been kept updated for one or two years! Puuh.

If there is anybody who wants to succeed on the net, he has to offer something that makes it worth to spend money & time on viewing it! It easily eats up huge amounts of money of you are surfing on the web. It's not enough to provide some JAVA and some decent design if your site was created in 1993.

There is a lack of real innovations and new ideas in the scene. Is it possible that there is still an rivalry between windows & dos? I can't believe! Today, every damned PC gets into sales with WINDOWS95 or Win98. That's another reason for less interest on the scene. Today they want Graphical User Interfaces, and the scene keeps working on dos? Ok, there have been a few(!) productions under Win95. But most are done the old way. Far top long! It's time for a big change now! We are trying to improve our skills steadily, but then we rely on old operating systems? And we dare to cry that the scene is dying? Get serious. Btw, HUGI-Staff has realized this, because you can run it from Windows!

And there is another point I want to lose some words on. Demo Design! Just have a look towards hollywood. Compare the first, in the earlier years taken, movies where KingKong fought against that T-Rex - that was around 1930, compare this with Jurassic Park! It's them same Dino, but does look and act very different! Use NEW techniques.

On the other hand, have a look on 'Metropolis' by Fritz Lang around 1920. Did anything change that much? Not everywhere! When the scene-world was young we hated graphicians that used scanners. Today we are used to sketch our art on paper, scan it, and colorize it by hand on PC.

Does it really matter if you are using DirectX under Win95/98? Isn't it more important to entertain the audience? To keep them nailed in front their screens while staring at the demo?

ONLY THE RESULTS COUNT! That's what you can learn from performing-arts! The scene changes, and maybe it is dying - if it's dying it is dying slooowly, but it depends on our behavior! Keep your dreams and imagination, and try to build a new base for innovations!

THE SCENE IS YOU!

- trid/ComicPirates