The Scene in Crisis?

Written by Zerox/Gods

After reading several articles and statements in the previous issues of Hugi, I have some opinions I want to share.

Even though I am an Amiga scener, I more and more feel like a computer scener in general and have begun to read PC mags and tried to see what's happening in this big scene. What I first noticed was that PC sceners feel that their scene is in danger. And this I find very strange. It seems like you have adopted the latest years of depression from the Amiga scene.

The Companies

The creator of Amiga went bankrupt in 1994, and ever since the negative tendencies have become stronger and stronger with new owners not being able to release a new machine. However, the Amiga has not only lacked new hardware, but also software. The game industry is nearly dead. As for the PC, the sales have exploded after this. You have gotten improved machines every year. Both the hardware and the software keep getting better. Your game industry is reaching new heights all the time. This leads to my next point.

Newcomers

When the Amiga game industry went down, and many of the talented sceners began working for big game companies (for PC, Nintendo, Playstation etc.) we lost a great resource. Only a few new souls joined the Amiga scene, as it was hard actually to buy the machine and parts in many countries, and because not many new games were being made. There were a lot of different PCs which were easy to buy, and a lot of new games are being released. This attracts new people, and some of them join the PC scene.

And as the Amiga scene began to fade away, many Amiga sceners joined the PC scene. Actually quite many of the known PC sceners and productions originally come from the Amiga. You get the best of the best, and the Amiga loses more talents. For instance, my group Gods has sceners that have been in the Amiga scene from the start, and now... well, you have guessed it, we have joined the PC scene as well. Even though Gods was a young group on Amiga, and is now a very young group on PC, we supply many productions. We experienced a BIG and open PC scene, and have from our start in 1997 (on PC) already released three demos, and all of them winners (The Saturne 5, The Gathering 98 and The Party 1998). This would have never happened in the Amiga scene; no new talents enter. And I can tell you that the PC scene will get even more talents from the Amiga scene in the near future. There are no signs whatsoever that the PC will die the next years. You have big companies that produce the hardware and software, which get new & young people to join the scene, and you get the sceners from other platforms too.

The Development

In the beginning the Amiga sceners created big parties where to meet and compete. These big parties have now been taken over by PC sceners, I am mainly thinking about parties as The Gathering, The Party, The Assembly and others. At the beginning Amiga sceners made fun of the bad PC demos, and the PC demos started imitating the Amiga demos. Now it's the other way round. I guess the change happened already back in 1994/95. The PC demos are innovative and the Amiga demos try to copy. The effects and speed are truly amazing, and more demos have great design and great gfx in general.

A Threat?

The only threat I can see as for the PC scene, is that great sceners leave because of their age, family life, school and work. But that's not a big problem as new sceners will always come and make even better demos, intros, diskmags, musicdisks, slideshows etc. There's also the threat of many sceners wanting to become professional. They create companies to make money out of their hobby, but then again new sceners will take their place. Like in Gods some people have left to make their own companies or working for other game companies, and I guess more will follow. And in some time the group will die, but new groups will come for sure.

As a conclusion, if nothing real revolutionary should happen the next years, like a brand new superior machine should appear, the PC scene will get even stronger. You have absolutely nothing to fear, so keep on releasing quality production for your fellow sceners.

- Zerox/Gods