How much is your FILE_ID.DIZ worth?
Please note! I've written this article to present the opposite side of what seems to be the general opinion! Read the last 2 paragraphs before you run off and trash me. :)
So here I am, sitting in a hotel near Heathrow. That's a big airport in the UK, if you didn't know. And for some strange reason, I feel compelled to put ascii to doc for Hugi 22.
I'm dEF bASE, and you haven't heard of me. I've been on the scene a while, nearly 10 years if you count the small inactive 2 years I recently had. It was a strange thing, returning to the scene. When I left, I was sysop of one of the largest UK amiga scene boards, a member of Faction & Ramjam, and one of the bosses of Crosspoint. At that time, a lot of my friends were leaving the scene, & most of the dialup boards had closed. I left for personal reasons, but the scene was undergoing a change, and I wasn't sure I liked it. So, in true scener style, I quit.
And now I'm back. 18 months later, I dialled the net, /join'd a few channels, and had a look to see what was up. I saw about 5 names I knew. The scene had changed, and I didn't like it. So I left.
6 months on, a full 24 months after I closed the BBS, I thought about the scene again. My local cable company had started offering cheap leased line access to the net, and I took it. Again, I /join'd a few channels. This time I noticed a few more names. I got chatting to my old m8s, who pointed me in the direction of other guys I used to know. Some had changed their nicks, some had changed servers & channels, but they were there. And my faith in the old scene was restored.
- "Old sceners never die, they just get archived"
"Old scene" you say? Sure did. Before you click the exit button, I'm not about to bitch about the new groups & guys who have appeared on the scene. Other people do that far better than me. I'm going to say something different. In a moment, after I change tack for a second.
There have been 2 recent threads of discussion recently, both along the same lines. It's all about demo style these days. Skandor wrote an interesting article on restricting demo-platforms on CFXWeb, and his ideas have been discussed and, rightly or wrongly, generally found to be valid. The second thread seems to have grown from the first, and it's the "are demos an artform?" discussion. There is a lot of opinion about this, and I have my own. I'll come back to it.
Back to where I wasn't. A lot of new groups & sceners have appeared in the last few years. I've maybe noticed this more than other people, as I've been off the scene completely for so long. I found this strange - back in the BBS days, we used to see a few new people irregularly appear on the scene, and they would work their way around the boards. You know - find Digital Candy from the Scene Storm CD, trade a few 0-3 day files, and eventually end up with a/c's on Fine Line, Electric Warrior etc etc. If they ended up on the "known" boards, then they had probably done their part. You at least knew they were worth the user.data space. :)
Changing tack again. Why was Digital Candy so popular? Simple - lots of files. Lots and lots of files. A large userbase. A really large userbase. Oh, and we mustn't forget - 6 node ringdown. 6 NODE RINGDOWN! That was the holy grail back then.
So it was no surprise that when Net access became affordable, the scene migrated en-masse to telnet boards, IRC & FTP. IRC - who needed multinode chat any more? We all know this is what killed the dialup boards, so I won't be going into that here.
By now you're probably wondering just what the hell I am talking about. Well let me bring all this together.
- "1 copy of BitchX is all you need"
Net access is publicly & easily available. To get in the more "leet" channels, for want of a better word, requires nothing more than a /join command. Boards were private - the sysop decided who got access, and who got F10'd. This therefore made most of the scene private - if you couldn't get on the boards, you couldn't get on the scene. And this is, in my opinion, what made the scene great.
It was our sanctuary, where the world was as we made it. Releases were judged by your peers, and you only worked for the good of the scene as a whole. Yes, you wanted to get your group or handle recognised, but in doing so you created releases that the scene could use.
The net has killed this. The scene is now public, and answerable to everyone & anyone who cares to download BitchX. And along with it has come the "Are demos art?" argument. And if they are, art is something that is not just restricted to the scene - it needs to be viewed by the whole world. It may take a while for the world to adjust to demos being art, but hey, the world adjusted to The Tate Modern Art Gallery, and half of the shit in there is literally "shit"! (One guy sold a tray of dog-shit for a huge sum.) Thanks to the dedication of guys like Pheon et al, who are pushing to get demos shown at SIGGRAPH, demo=art may soon be a reality.
And I hope it never happens. I hope demos are NEVER accepted as art, in the mainstream OR elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, Pheon & crew are doing a great job with their SIGGRAPH publicity - I'm even helping them out - and I hope they are successful. So why do I think this?
Simple. Demos are OURS. They were invented by the scene, for the scene. Outsiders may feel free to view them, and that is precisely all they do. "View" demos. They don't understand the history behind them, and frankly they don't care. They like pretty effects (because of course, technically impressive routines are only for coders - art is audiovisual, not a billion lines finished with an RTS). If they cared, if they were truly interested in something more than eye-candy, they'd be on the scene.
- "Leonardo Da Vinci never used MASM"
But it doesn't stop there. Many (many!) years ago, art was the domain of an artist. He worked with raw materials, and created a beautiful picture. Now you can go to a few evening classes at your local college, and most people can turn out something half decent. It wouldn't sell for a million dollars though, and you sure as hell wouldn't want to see it hanging in La Louvre.
This is a vital difference. If your average Joe Public painted a picture and took it to La Louvre, they'd laugh in his face and tell him to get lost. But if demos were art, and Joe Public created some lameass demo with 10-year-old effects & ripped source code, who's to stop him from uploading it to the net? There's no Sysops around with Aquascan and Nuke any more.
What makes this worse is computers & the net is the ONLY method of distribution for demos. While you could say there is a lot of bad art on the web, you know that to be truly impressed you will go to La Louvre. But if there is only place to find demos, regardless of quality, you have no control mechanism.
That's not to mention the groups themselves. When I say groups, I mean the demo coder, the pixeler, the raytracer, the musician, the whole group of people it takes to make a demo. How would you feel if you created something special, and it was copied by every wannabe-democoder because that's all they know. Don't believe me? How many copies of the Mona Lisa have there been.
And inevitably, demos will become commercial. And if it's commercial, in the Western world it becomes educational. Don't believe me? Back when I was at school, we used to have lessons called "General Studies". 50% of it was about modern music (ie: dance, techno), and modern TV. Yep, stuff like Friends, or X-Files. How this will happen, I don't know. Will you have to submit a full dentro as part of your CV for that new coding job? Will you be required to name 4 founders of the modern demoscene in your school exams? The scene will become something people are forced to know about, rather than by choice.
So there is only 1 possible conclusion to this. Trends will reverse. The scene has become as open as it ever will be, and this will change. The scene will become locked down again - remember when you had to go searching for a NUP to get on "xyz" board?
- "May I see your passport, sir?"
You may have wondered why I mentioned Heathrow Airport at the start of this text. Heathrow is much like the scene will be. Or needs to be. Whichever. People land at the airport, and go to customs. If they are "undesirables", they can be ejected from the country. People are allowed into the country for a short amount of time, to discover the tourist side of our culture. They bring in business, and purchase our products to take back to their home countries with them. Here in the UK, we couldn't grow tropical fruit, but we can make damn good jams. So we give foreigners jam in exchange for fruit, because that is the sensible thing to do.
Translate that to the scene. People load MiRC, and try to /join #thescene. If we don't like the look of them, we make sure they don't get in. If they have something to offer, we let them in. They get a glimpse of the demoscene, the chatty, friendly (haha ;)) side of the scene. They bring ideas & data, and we give them the best demos that have been recently produced. And if they can offer something we don't have, then we'll exchange skills, and maybe they stay in the scene.
Now ok, this is a pretty radical view, and I've taken it to the extreme to make an example. But this will happen at some level. The scene won't like being thrust into the light of day in the big, bad world. Just look at what happens to every hacker, phreaker or DeCSS coder that has that light shone upon them.
- "Don't flame me ;)"
Please note! I don't necessarily believe everything I have written here to be true. I just wanted to present the other side of the argument, one that I haven't heard yet. And both sides of any story should always be presented. One thing I do believe strongly is that we need a little caution and a little thought before throwing the doors to the demoscene wide open to the world. If it happens, it could never be reversed.
You can listen to me, Clary & Fury, Adok and a whole bunch of other sceners rant and rave about scene related issues. News, discussion & having a laugh - it's all on the HaVoK Free Scene Radio, broadcast as a live SHOUTCast stream. Check www.thehavok.co.uk for more details, or email me directly at defbase@thehavok.co.uk.
Thanks for reading.