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"The scene is dead" has become a meme by now. For example the "new talent" Meteoriks award is introduced with "For a scene that has been dead since 1999, our wa
by GuB-42 1y ago
"The scene is dead" has become a meme by now. For example the "new talent" Meteoriks award is introduced with "For a scene that has been dead since 1999, our walking dead are pretty fresh".
It is well alive. Sure, we still see some of the same people from 1989, and the average age is certainly going up, but it absolutely doesn't mean we aren't seeing new blood. Styles change, technical achievement is usually seen in the sizecoding or "wild" competitions, while PC demos tend to be more cinematic and focused on art. We are seeing new things, like livecoding shaders and fantasy consoles. Of course, the Amigas and other oldschool platforms are still there, with new tricks being discovered year after year.
There are still regular demoparties. Revision, the successor to Breakpoint and Mekka Symposium is doing well year after year. With the addition of some online events like Lovebyte.
Things come and go, but there is no sign of the scene really being dead. Heck, we even seen older demosceners bring their children to the parties, with some of them already doing cool stuff.
- gjsman-1000 1y agoExactly; it’s like model railroads or stamp collecting. Never truly dead! (I mean this with deep sarcasm.)
- GuB-42 1y agoI think one of the difference between stamp collecting and the demoscene is that while stamp collecting was quite big for a time, the demoscene has always been a niche thing. For a time the demoscene looked bigger than it was, mostly because of all the cracks. But for the people who actually produced stuff or went to demoparties or even just seek out productions that weren't cracks, it has always been a small world, like a few thousands of active people worldwide.
- mlyle 1y agoI think there's still people hacking around doing cool stuff. Things like PICO-8, etc. It's much harder to throw a big party these days in general, and especially so about technical niches. Hack Club is popular with youth, but much more about smaller gatherings.
- dr_dshiv 1y agoPICO-8 is super fun way to explore the joy of constraints. Over the summer, we hosted a vibecoding PICO-8 game jam in Amsterdam. It wasn’t a demoparty but we nevertheless had some amazing demoscene folks show up with c64s and example demos. We attracted a handful of teenagers and had nearly equal gender balance—and made some really creative games. We definitely experienced some hateful online vitriol about vibecoding (eg “you are the human equivalent of cancer”) but that was to be expected—this event was almost deliberately about the tension between deep understanding and rapid iteration cycles. I found the tension between vibecoding and demoscene to be really enjoyable and productive.
- 7thaccount 1y agoI went to a coin/stamp shop not too long ago to kill some time downtown and the guy said basically nobody cares about stamps anymore. Still plenty interested in coins.
- lioeters 1y agoWith the decline of interest in stamp collecting, are the prices of rare stamps and collections also depreciating? Or maybe the prices are even higher because the few who are interested know that stamps are forever a thing of the past, and in a way that makes them more unique and have timeless value.
- 7thaccount 1y agoI think the demand has fallen so much that it's likely the former, but this isn't my area.
- beeflet 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFXIGHOElrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFXIGHOElrE https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59105 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59105
- bitexploder 1y agoComputing in general is /huge/ now. X is dying is funny in tech. By raw number of participants has it ever really changed? Take MUDs for example, I remember my MUD days. There are still hundreds of active MUDs. Is X really dying? Who knows.
- malfist 1y agoI remember playing MUDs in high school because my system admin blocked all online games, but didn't block telnet. I credit it with my high speed typing and finally getting better than 50/50 at spelling. I'm towards the later part of my thirties. Just checked out their website and they still seem to be alive and well. Don't even require telnet anymore, lots of browser or desktop apps to do what a telnet terminal did
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- MiiMe19 1y agoThe demoparty I help host is doing a "the scene is undead" theme this year since it is on Halloween.