A comment on
'Scene Spirit -
Where has it gone?'
The original article the following statements refer to was published in Hugi Magazine issue 28, which was released in December 2003.
In Hugi #28, Adok discusses where the creativity and constructive feedback has gone on the scene. Most importantly, he stresses the fact that many self-appointed "sceners" does not contribute to the scene, they merely enjoy the fruits of other people's hard work.
On the other hand, this is not necessarily only a bad thing. The whole point of making demos should be because you want people to see them. Not all persons are capable of contributing constructive critisism. For example, I'm not a coder nor a musician which limits my critique of effects or music to a mere "No, this is not very good. I like demo XYZ or song ABC a lot more". I would be out on very thin ice if I started talking about OpenGL, hardware registers, appreggios or octaves. Demos are art, and art is something subjective to the viewer.
Of course the scene would be a much better place if everyone started doing something creative. I too am tired of people who go to party after party without releasing anything. The giving and taking is more and more turning into just taking. But there is also a major flaw - and a quite ironic one - in Adok's article.
Adok writes "[...] 'Sceners nowaday tend to be pure consumers'. This statement is about the majority of people who consider themselves members of the Scene: not those who make the productions that place in the top three at big parties [...]".
Obviously, not everyone can win the demo compo at Assembly, or come in at second or even third place. These groups are usually among the very top level of sceners. They have been coding/pixeling/composing etc. for years and finally their efforts are paying off. But then Adok continues with contradicting himself: "[...] but the ones that watch demos, read diskmags and occasionally release a little production or publish a few articles. Ghady feels that most of them take more from the Scene than give back to it".
This is where the logic fails. How can anyone become a top-class demomaking guru without watching lots of demos and then releasing the odd production for feedback every now and then? How can someone who is actually contributing to scene be compared to a mere consumer? Take a look at the early productions of any scener and you will realize that in most cases it is of pretty poor quality and the release dates are very sporadic.
Noone could possibly claim that being a part of the scene is achieved only by winning the big compos. The scene needs the small releases, too. Otherwise it would never develop and evolve.
I admit that there are parasites who suck out the creative spirit out of the scene, but there are also up and coming sceners who should be encouraged, not yelled at, for releasing a small production every now and then. Doing that doesn't feel very much like the Scene Spirit, either.
Comment from Adok: I agree on this. One must always keep in mind that people are dynamic beings; they learn and develop. We cannot foresee with certainty who of the new sceners will become the next Chaos, the next Lizardking, the next Visualice or the next Adok one day. Maybe they will even introduce wholly new concepts and bring the scene great innovations - things like werkkzeug1 and pouet.net, for example.