Summer Lovin'!
Written by Paranoid
Damn, the summer is here again, which means some guys will be sweating it out over exams, others will be looking forward to long school holidays, and most will be walking around with an erection that could drag a horse from a swamp. Every year around this time, the scene gets really active, mainly due to school holidays, and people having more time to do their productions, or organise their group (which they probably neglected to do for the rest of the year). I myself find it more difficult to sit in front of a monitor, when looking out my bedroom window, I see the sun blazing down - and scantily clad women frolicking in the heat... mmm.... Although the scene is just a hobby (and those people who take it too seriously should go out and experience the real world - it's best at summertime) it pisses me off that for most of the year things are so quiet and boring, with the only releases being from the occasional party, and then suddenly, when a lot of people don't use their PCs very much (i.e. summer!), you get the scene coming to life.
There's probably gonna be some crews getting started this summer, that won't be with us by next summer, and who we definitely won't hear from in winter, and the sad thing is that those guys will make some great productions and do really well during their holidays... but then? Zip. Maybe if those guys spent about two hours watching TV, instead of 4-5 (or more) and a couple of hours doing their scene productions, we could have a proper all year round scene. Don't get me wrong, it's only natural that you get more releases during the summer, but it's a problem when you get hardly any decent productions coming out during the rest of the year. This period of inactivity makes the scene more stagnant and people will just get bored with it.
You'll probably achieve more notice/fame if you release some good productions semi-regularly throughout the year. Rather than doing everything during the summer and popping back into hibernation with the bears and other mammals... hehe... I suppose organisers are to blame, since they should spread schedules out better... if your pixeller or musician does loadsa stuff during the summer, keep it for during the rest of the year, instead of releasing all the work during 3-4 months. That way, you'll have plenty of stuff for when they cannot really devote much time to it. Your stuff will stand out more when there are not many other releases, and your group will recieve a reputation of being reliable and active.
The same thing goes for parties. It's great to see a whole load of quality productions coming out for parties, but who really has the time to download it all? Not many I think. That means that if your cool demo/intro didn't come in the top 10, not many people will download it! Wouldn't it make more sense to release it in October, or February when sceners are starved for releases? Then people would check out your work and would be more likely to appreciate it and focus on its good points (although sceners are notoriously difficult to please nowadays!). Supply and demand, that's what it's all about basically. So maybe you should think about making your group well known as reliable and active, rather than 'the group that came 17th in the demo-comp at X Party', and then the average scener would have more releases (properly spaced-out) to enjoy!
- Paranoid