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dubmood: just repeating that demoscene emerged from cracking doesn't make it any more true. that you can't stand that is your problem. :-)

the scene emerged from piccolo mouso

If we can (I don’t know, can we?) agree that demos evolved from intros, then there’s no point in further discussion. Intros to what?

I’m sure research papers on the subject exist. Don’t ask me for links bcz I couldn’t be assed to dig for them atm, but I believe anyone can find them online by him/herself.

4gentE: it has been discussed here already, threads can be found on this website. (short: we can not agree that demos evolved from intros, demos as a form predated intros to cracks. remains the question: does a crack intro scene predate a demo scene as a cultural thing? neither, they emerged at about the same time from a common computer enthusiast background.)

I don’t harbor strong opinions on the subject. What comes to mind is distribution. How would C-64 demos get distributed in say 1986? Through the swappers snailmail network right? Oh, there’s an underground network in place? Why is there a network in place? Could it be for distribution of cracks?

Yes there was an underground network in place in 1986, and earlier. It wasn't strictly about cracks - all kinds of stuff was getting swapped, legally and illegally, including gfx and music rips, games, demos. A demoscene (with no cracking activity) existed in 1986, but swappers tended to swap everything.

I had no idea that “a demoscene with no cracking activity” existed in 1986. But this is perhaps due to me having a very limited exposure to the scene in the 80s. And limited memory. I kinda remember it like this: pre-game or in-game messages and early intros piqued my curiosity from the start. At one point, demos started dripping in along with the cracks. Then intros got beautiful. We started to take them apart, change texts, gfx… Mags started analyzing routines from intros. I ceased caring about games. Then some of us started collecting demos. Venlo this Venlo that Venlo Venlo Venlo. This recollection would imply that cracks preceeded the demos. In this case (mine). I see now that experiences vary.

on the c64 demo-only groups that did away with games as a carrier (or excuse) for artwork were few in the beginning, but they did exist. many groups had members of both sorts, and intros (to cracks) vastly outnumbered demos from 1986 to ca. 1989. this might explain the bias that many people experienced. the case is much more clear on amiga, and especially ataris.

Krill, I am sorry but I'm not gonna skim through 7 pages. So please forgive and correct me if I'm not understanding you right, and instead just jumps to conclusions based on having had this discussion a million times before... but is this anywhere close to home?

Since your current stance on pirated software isn't compatible with the history of the demoscene, this triggers an identity crises that makes you consider that based on a couple of early, mostly corporate, hardware demos, the demoSCENE predates the release scene.

This discussion reminds me of a period in the early 00s when, especially vocal anti piracy sceners, started writing their real names in demos instead of their scene handles. In some strange effort to try to distance themselves from the release scene legacy of the demoscene.

Sorry to break it to you but the releases came first then came the demos. After all, where is the proof that the demos existed beforehand...? I have heard this argument a lot over the years, but the facts depict a rather different story imho.

defiance: the mythological facts depict a rather different story only until you do some reasearch :-)

Weren’t demoparties called to copyparties at the beginning?

Jeez I’m illiterate. Weren’t demoparties called copyparties at the beginning?

bifat: I did my research and the legends indeed were not so legends but mostly kids pirating software the couldn't afford. Then they decided to take credit for their action by showing off (of course what else kids would do?) their effort by putting a small banner with a couple of effects in front of the software they cracked.

But why should the demoscene be ashamed of its cracktro roots? Wasn't, after all, the nulled software preserved intact by these actions of these kids rather than being lost forever or rendered unusable over the decades? :)

I too find this new take on ancient demoscene history weird coming from bifat and Krill. If it came from someone who is coding Vulcan/GLSL shaders and stuffing them into Windows 4k, I’d totally understand the urge to remove him/herself from the unlived shady history. After all, what connection do the newschool demosceners have with the cracking scene? None. But C64/Amiga veterans? Well… At first I thought they were trying to say that the crackgroups were mere vessels for the “real” demoscene, commissioners of sort, but it seems they are saying that this “real” demoscene somehow preceeded the cracks scene. From what I know about it all I find these claims slightly ridiculous, but I don’t know that much, and I am open to new evidence if it exists.

Defiance: I wouldn't know why you're bringing up a term as "ashamed". Ashamed of what? What's interesting here is historical accuracy. Computers were spurring creativity, and it was obviously a good idea to use them for doing creative things purely for their own sake.
A few people recognized this early, while others were fiddling around with altering games. I see no right or wrong in this. When two or three people of that kind gathered, it was a party and all kinds of stuff got copied. It was held together by a common network of swapping and scenes became really distinct only in the 1990s. Yes: For a while, the crack intros outnumbered demos, those done purely for their own sake. We have had numerous examples in this and other threads.

bifat: You pretty clearly described copyparties which later became the demoparties we all know, so what gives? :)

Please, read carefully. I never said the demoscene predates the cracking scene, just that in my book there was one scene of enthusiasts in the beginning, with some people cracking and others creating stuff on their own, with some overlap in who did what within a release, within a group and what a group did. That scene then gradually diverged into several sub-scenes. The surviving artefacts don't seem to contradict that view of history.

And this has nothing to do with being ashamed of anything. You can find the odd "crack" by me on CSDb (but most of them i kept for myself).

Defiance, what gives: From the dawn of time, at parties demos, gfx and music rips, sample players, tools and all sorts of stuff were made and copied - including games - sometimes even with intro - but more often without :-)

Was there even a separate cracking scene for the demo scene to emerge from back then? At the time it just seemed like a mishmash of enthusiasts who were thrilled by using computers at all. My impression is that once computers became mainstream and the novelty wore off, people become more conscious about what interested them, and specialised scenes for demos, warez, music, ansi, competetive gaming, etc. crystalised and separated from the early anything-goes-proto-scene.

What gives? With Krill (as is often the case) i dare say i sense some besserwissery.

the idea to make cool looking things with computers sure is older than the cracking scene. but the "scene", its traditions, its competitions and finally its members cant deny roots in the piracy business. its not important when or where the first thing you could call a "demo" was made, its important what formed this community.

i think the fact that pirated software reaches a lot more people than pure demos was true back then and is still true now, for obvious reasons. so maybe "true" demosceners hitchhiked that train at some point and then went off again to do their own thing but there sure is some sort of connection you cant discuss away.

and while we are at it, what about the "artscene" which is basically ascii/ansi art for bbs, nfos and such? still no piracy connection?

wysiwtf: what is constantly being summoned is the myth that (crack) intros predated demos. this is clearly wrong. so the idea might remain that today's demoscene is a cultural successor or offspring of the cracking scene. that's also wrong - there was no such distinction when early demos were already being made.
there was hardly a point in the 1980s when someone jumped to one's feet shouting: "we are oh-so creative, let's do a demoscene." - but already deep in the 80s people of the same background had no interest in unprotecting games to begin with (or lost interest in doing so), because they knew they wanted to waste no time and do the creative things that the computers had to offer.
kind of interesting that many here don't value those pioneers more highly, but rather stick to outdated myths. :-)
what might be interesting to discuss is the question if the earliest "tech" and demos from other platforms than C64 were from a different cultural background than the demoscene we have today.

First of all, the Commodore 64 Scene is the mother of all computer scenes. The structure of THE SCENE, the namings of cracks, demos, musicians, graphicians, came all from the C64 Scene.
Yes, first was Intros, nobody called them "Crack Intros" or "Cracktros". From Intros evolved the Demos and the Demo Scene was created. In the begin crackers did not say: "Cracked by ..." they did say often "Broken by ...". In the early stage of the cracking scene, was often in the cracked game only a text line edited in the game, that did say "Broken by ..." or later "Cracked by". Sometimes you had only the SYS line with the crackers name.
Here is a old cracker group from 1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eW36UJHOQc

Bitfat I love how you keep saying "do your research" to people who evidentially did 1000 times more research than you, just because you don't agree with them.