The scene needs new challenges

Vic / Acme & Level-D

It's late.. 4.30 monday morning and I've just got back from work.. Browsing the net a little and because ojuice was dead I checked scene.org. There I noticed the poll: 'What do you think of the releases of this year, 2001?' When I clicked 'ouch the scene is dying!' the results popped up. To my surprise I was not the only one who had selected that cruel answer! In fact, it was the second most selected answer! The sentence that got the most clicks was 'Stop whining and start producing'.. Which I basically see as the same answer, but the guy who thought of the answers may have thought otherwise.. Dunno.

Anyway, it is apparent that lots of people are a bit bored with demos these days. Often you will hear how boring those 3d demos are (I guess that's what 99% of all demos were this year). That moppy winner of this year's ASM was pretty good, even though it was no technical challenge, but it was excellently produced (it should have lasted a bit longer if you ask me, but a very nice demo it is).

But it's not my intention to write about the contents of demos. The thing I just thought about, and which made me think of writing this, is, maybe sceners need a new challenge? During the period of computer evolution between x86 and pentium (I ain't no amiga guy...), there was a lot of improvement in demos. I think it was simply because computers became noticably faster each generation and thus coders could make effects which could only run 1 fps on the preceding generation. The possibilities grew and people stayed amazed by all the new stuff that came out.

Now, demos aren't that much renewing because all the technological progressions aren't really noticable anymore. So that may very well be what the scene needs! A new technological challenge. It always has been like that.

Showing (off to) other people something they thought to be impossible on whatever platform. From some vague computer to amiga and pc. Turning a floppy drive into a co-processor as they did on c64 has always impressed me! But now, if you want more processing power, you just go to the store and get another processor! 2 GHz pIV... no problemo.. (even though my newly bought 1.7 pIV was a bit of a disappointment.. My sequencer only runs a little bit faster than my 1ghz laptop (!) which I now use for sequencing because it's more stable too... don't even ask me how much trouble I had installing... winME.. other story..). The point is, there is no challenge anymore in my humble opinion. The scene HAS BEEN a technologically based happening that has turned into a creative thing. That's not bad, but if people want to see really good computer generated graphics, they can turn on the tv or play a game instead of watching some 3d objects fly by (or fly through some vaguely realistic scenery for that matter...). It takes a lot of skill, time and money to create amazing 3d graphics.

My conclusion... A nice example: No Recess, Oldschool Remix. A demo on a mobile phone! It may sound stupid, but why not go back and try to do amazing things with a phone or any other forthcoming portable device which about everyone already has or will have eventually. It can mean silly gfx, standard movement, stupid bleepy monophonic sound... a phone doesn't have a sid chip built in as does even the c64 with which you could only do bleeps... in the beginning... later on they invented how to do digital audio. So why not try to do impossible things with today's baby computer and tomorrow's new standard?

Who will be the first to reprogram my nokia and play a demo with mp3 music when it rings?!

Find that new challenge and amaze us again!

Vic / Acme & Level-D