Demoscene: The Circle Of Life (Written By Magic of Nah-Kolor)
Prologue
Please note that this article was previously released in an diskmag on the amiga but I decided to update it and re-release it in Hugi#33 on the PC. Enjoy this small overview.
Improving and Developing..
Everybody in the scene wants to improve their skills. Everybody wants to improve theire productions. No matter whether you are a coder, musician or graphician or even the maker of a diskmag: Everybody wants to reach higher and higher. If possible, to become one of the best around. This is an undeniable fact! Usually it takes at least some years to get noticed troughout Europe. Keywords for a fast breakthrough are motivation and originality and having enough sparetime to produce your qualities.
More Active In The Beginning
If you look at for example a graphician, he is really active in the beginning of his scenelife. If he really has some talent he will get noticed by a better and more famous group where he can develope his skills even more, until he is asked by one of the best groups around in the scene, in which he can cooperate with some of the finest people around. In the beginning a real glancy carreer awaits him. The demoscene notices him, and gives him attention, shaping him more and more into a wellknown scener. In time he starts to top the remaining charts around, and at parties alot of people recognize him.
Gliding Towards The End
Sometimes I really envy sceners who have not been in the scene for that long! Everything is still new to them. A person who has already been around for lets say 5 to 10 years, has almost seen it all. He is famous enough already, but that isn't important for him anymore. He visited a lot of parties and knows about everybody who is worth knowing. Maybe he even cooperated with some other groups or persons throughout the year(s) on some productions. In other words, he knows how the whole concept of demoscening works. Still he searches for some other challenges and goals within the scene, just to gain some more motivation for doing something every now and then, but in the end everything will come to an end. Sad really..
Why Should I Stop?
Sometimes I hear people say: "Why should I quit the scene? My life outside the scene is perfect, I don't see any reason to quit." They are quite right actually. Why should you stop doing what you have been doing for many, many years? I guess that is just the beauty of the scene. Just when you thought somebody has had it, he releases some of his work again, although he is getting older and has to focus on a lot more than just the scene - he just can't be as active as he was in the past.
Young & Active - An Example
For example, take the coder Imbusy from Brainstorm. He released his very first demo at The Assembly 2006 in Finland called Iterate. Shortly after that, Brainstorm took him in as a member. Just three months later he released a musicdisk called Chillosophy coded by him with graphics by Critikill and music by Xerxes. He came from far and just started. He is really active because he hasn't been around for so long. For him, the scene is probably important, everything is new. In fact, he was born in 1989 when I was already scening on the Amiga computer. Fresh blood is what the demo scene needs, yeay!
Experience Makes Us Lazy
Of course there are some exceptions, but the best combination for a good group is to make sure that some of the members are really talented, and that they have not been in the scene for that long! So they are really active. And in combination with some more experienced sceners who know 'how the play the game' this can make a real winning team, which can last in the scene for a long time to come. Do you now know why a lot of people say that the 'Old Days' were really the best? Because everything in the scene was still new to them. They didn't experience it before. If you know how it all works there is not as much satisfaction as when you just entered our little subworld called 'The Demo Scene'.