Charts suck!
And still we are hosting them
Almost every diskmag hosts scene charts. What for? There are so few people who fill in votesheets that none of these diskmag charts can be called representative for the scene. They are not even representative for the readers of the mag. And even if every reader bothered to fill in the votesheet, what sense do charts make?
Usually votesheets ask you for the "best" or "top" demos, intros, coder, etc. But how can you know who's or what's the best of his (or her, or its, or whatever) category? Do you know all coders? Have you actually seen them coding? No, just by watching the demos he made you cannot judge a coder. How do you know he wrote the code you admire himself and did not rip it from somewhere else? How do you know how fast he codes? Perhaps that's also important to know to rate a coder. How do you know how well he can optimize his code? That's also an important criterion, isn't it? At least I would define it an important criterion. So, how should you do this? You can't compare two demos and say one is better at speed-optimizing than another because the 3d scenes in his demo run faster. 3d scenes can be very different. One would have to run the same scene with several 3d engines to estimate the coder's ability to optimize. But perhaps the scene doesn't run slower because the coder sucks at optimizing, perhaps his 3d engine has been written for more complex stuff and the scene would run much faster if he removed the support for the complex stuff. Or, hey, maybe he is even the better coder just because he wrote a 3d engine with more feature? And how should one compare a C++ coder to someone who writes all his code in Assembler?
Another example: musicians. Firstly, do you know all musicians? Secondly, based on what criteria should you rate them? On the technique, how well people can use their trackers? Then you have the same problems as for coders. Or on how you enjoy their music? Do you think Scorpik is best because you like his music style? But what about people who don't like his music style? Maybe in their opinion another musician is the best musician?
This leads to point #1 I want to make clear with this article. Nobody can rate who's the "best". Those who think they can are lamers because they think they are God. (Where God stands for a being that knows the absolute truth. Whatever this is, it's certainly not human.) So if you are a proper stickler, you should actually refuse to fill in any votesheet in which you are asked for the "best demo". As a stickler you should demand that the editor writes at least "the in your opinion best demo". Sounds horrible? Well, it does. Better: "favourite demo". Or "fave demo" to use scene slang. Or any other expression that says that the answer to this questions is subjective.
"Oh come on, that's just too pedantic!" Yes, it is. But I say, read carefully. Have I ever said that all of you should do this? No, only the sticklers among you. OK, I know, I am a stickler. Otherwise I wouldn't write articles about such topics.
Okay. "Fave demos." Good. Blah. What else did I want to say? Yes. Writing "favourite" instead of "best" or the even worse "top" (so not the very best people and prods are meant, but only some of the best, some who/which belong to the "top"?) solves a lot of problems. Now conscientious objections connected with filling in a diskmag voteform are no longer justified (except if you have no favourites - that's another chapter). But it does not solve all problems. What problem does it not solve? Simple: that scene charts make damned little sense. You will never learn from scene charts who the best people are! You will never learn from scene charts what the best productions are! Because nobody - at least noboy I know - knows the absolute truth. (Everything is relative, including the assertion that everything is relative!) And by asking for the people's favourites instead of the objectively best, the desire to find out the absolute truth has been given up altogether.
So what significance do diskmag charts have? In short words, they may indicate whom and what your voters like, but I think even that is usually not the case. I imagine that many people vote for certain persons only because they appeared in some other charts. It's probably even wrong if you say that diskmag charts indicate whom and what your voters know. No, you will laugh: All that diskmag charts really indicate is whom and what your voters have heard of.
Even though I know how little substance diskmag charts have, I have been hosting charts in Hugi for a while. Why? Because of popular demand. It is readers like you who wanted to see charts in Hugi again after one year's break. I served your wishes even though it was clear for me that the significance of these charts would be close to zero. This is because so far I have been regarding Hugi as a service for its readers, and the desires of Hugi's readers have been far more important for me than my own ones. Hugi is only work for me, I do not benefit from it in any way. If it were not for those of you who regularly tell me how important Hugi is for their lives, I would not make all this effort.
Now a racy story. Not only do I host charts in Hugi, I am also often asked by editors of other magazines to fill in their votesheets (and to write articles, too). So far I've always played the game in order to serve the editors, despite knowing what sin I was committing. Until I once decided to fill in a votesheet honestly. Actually it wasn't even a votesheet, that is, a form where you have to enter your votes at predefined places. It was just a request by the editor to name the "top 5 coders of all times", the "top 5 active gfxians" etc. If I had written long comments into a voteform, I'd have understood if the editor had got upset because of this. Inserting comments would destroy the layout of the voteform and thus would require some manual reprocessing by the editor in order to be able to evaluate it with a vote-counting program. But this time it wasn't a votesheet, it was just a request to send the editor a list of top sceners and productions. I thought that my chance had come.
I extensively commented on what criteria I voted for certain persons or productions. I also skipped several sections and explained why I couldn't judge who the "top 5 coders of all times" were (because in my opinion, one has to watch a coder coding for a longer time in order to be able to judge his coding abilities), why I couldn't judge who the "top 5 friendly sceners of all times" were (because in my opinion, this requires that you know all sceners that have ever been active), etc. When I pressed the "send" button in my mailer, I was confident that the editor would be intelligent enough to understand my explanations why I thought scene charts didn't make much sense in this form, and I even hoped that this could start a discussion which would result in a new, better scene charts concept.
That was a big mistake. Instead of the editor replying to my comments and taking on the discussion, he flamed me in the next issue of that magazine for not being able to fill in a "fucking votesheet". You want me to quote the flame? All right, here's it:
"Next time instead of big bable about your problems just name the 5 best.. thats what was asked.. and when you dont wanna vote you just dont vote.. leave it blank you know... you dont HAVE to force the votecounter to read 8 lines of mambojambo to arrive at the conclusion that you werent going to vote. And btw, as this is a scene newsletter when i mean top 5 its implicit that they are sceners. Game musicians might be very elite and cool musicians but if they never released a track for the scene i dont see how they can be considered sceners...
"I just wonder how the hell do you run a diskmag with charts and cant even fillout a fucking votesheet.. im sorry if i sound rash but counting votes and stumbling upon this sort of things makes me sick, one thing is to not know well the scene and vote little or skip some category.. I can understand that some people don't know the scene well or have gone abit innactive but making fun of the votecounter IS NOT nice!
"I know that i'm going to get flammed for this comment about you but i don't give a shit!"
Do I have to comment on this?
No. I think this article answers it pretty well. And if you have not understood my point, you can't be helped anyway.
Ah, want to know what game musicians I voted for in the section "top musicians of all times"? No problem. Their handles are Melcom and Dr. Awesome. Melcom was active in the scene from the late eighties until recently and released loads of tracks and musicdisk to the scene. For some more information on him, read his article in this Hugi issue. And Dr. Awesome? If you have not heard of him, you probably know nothing about the history of the scene. The number 1 Amiga musician at the beginning of the ninties. Formerly a member of Crusaders. Now working in the game business. Occasionally still releasing tracks to the scene, for example the tune that won at DejaVu '99 or a contribution to the Audiophonik CD. At least because of this, this editor should have known him.
This very editor later claimed that I would not know "1/5th of the scene" and therefore be a lamer. Now I ask: Who's the real lamer?
And if you wonder about the charts in Hugi: We're now trying a slightly different concept, as you'll see after opening the votesheet. Instead of asking you for the best of all times, we're asking you for your favourites of 1999. Here the voters is more likely to have an overview, as the number of productions released in a year is not that high compared to the number of productions ever released.
Feel free to send us your comments.