pouët.net

i dont understand :(

three quarters of the people posting here don't -but it doesn't stop them from thinking that they do.

This whole "releasing at parties" conversation was fucking tired in 1992, and guess what, it still is! Here's a fucking prophet at work for you: "some people will go for cheap success, when all that really matters is rock-solid respect". That's advice that'll make Hitler stay in school, kids!

The post with the linkage to all those utterly forgettable winner-demos was the beacon of light here.

the best ever voting system was of course at boozembly.

what ryg and preacher said are the wisest words. In a democracy there aren't first- and second-class citizens (for example those who have given years to army and those who haven't, like in the nazi system depicted by Robert A. Heinlein in Starship Troopers... godwin point accepted, Tom :), the scene should be about freedom over elitism if you want fresh blood.

if you want a demoparty to be a show where people pay the entrance only to watch the show and then a jury decide on the winners, then it will drift like icedancing competition to corruption (friendship corruption in the demoscene case) and sux! beside the organizers of big demoparties aren't kamikaze, they won't establish a jury that would make most people run away :p

btw do you prefer to be the contested official winner or the moral winner that gets fame through polemics and history ? do the math, or maybe ask moppi ;)

If you don't like who's president, blame the voters. If they fall for cheap theatricals and bullshit, then fine - they are retarded and so they vote for a retarded presidential candidate.

The joy of democracy - the guy who puts up a better show wins.

Not really rocket science, is it? :)

rocket science \o/



(powered by John "God" Carmack)

bloody demoscene. it cant decide what it is. is it a form of mass-entertainment, an artform, or somewhere for geeks to show their mastery of computer hardware? or all three? or none of the above? and where does competition fit in, anyway? shouldnt that aspect have been killed off in like 1993 when you became unable to judge a demo based solely on how many sprites they stuck on screen at 50hz?

ok, let me attempt to be serious. personally i get equally pissed off when something incredibly boring but well made does better than something i really enjoyed watching, and when something very well made and great in almost every aspect loses out because it misses one small part of the picture - e.g. it doesnt have crowd-pleasing direction, it didnt have bigscreen impact but it works great on the small screen, etc.

i definately dont agree with jury voting to decide the results. but given that the public vote is simply an average with all things considered (some more than others), suuuuuurely there's room for a few nominal "jury prizes" at major demoparties like assembly and breakpoint to award demos which did something brilliantly but maybe didnt get recognised by the voting public - to award technical achievement, artistic vision and so on. just an idea.

The Altparty people have been giving out a special altparty prize for the most innovative or special entry in Assembly competitions for at least a couple of years now. I think it's a good idea and worth considering at other parties as well.

Maybe there should also be a Moral Winner category in the scene.org awards for the entries that should've won ;)

@Zest : Frakking awesome ! :) I noticed it too on Armadillo's blog. This is simply Von-Braunish !

Preacher, I thought it was called Best Demo..

The difference between Jury and public voting:

2004

Breakpoint winner: Winnerdemo (no mention at scene.org awards)
Assembly winner: obsoleet (no mention at scene.org awards)

scene.org best demo: Planet risk (2nd at Assembly)
scene.org most original concept: Assembly 2004 Invitation (2nd at Breakpoint)

--

So, I don't know how some people can say that public voting have been proved to be right...

Voting systems are like the scene. dead.

trace: I still like to watch Winnerdemo and Obsoleet (the music is the main reason in both cases) while ASM 2k4 invitation looks nice but bores me after some time.

Have I lost now my rights to vote at demoparties?

Get it, there are people with different opinions – you don't have to like them, you don't have to agree with them. But you should respect the pure fact of it.

Madenmann: Right... then, for you, what's the difference of a demo and a youtube video?

Oh God...

Yep, thank you Trace, now this discussion is getting REALLY silly.

No, thank you, don't give me the credits, it's all thanks to you, specially you kb, one of the main reasons for this topic was your arrogant comment on media error (arrogant from my point of view of course, most likely to be silly to say it's arrogant for the rest of the world).

I think some of you are taking things much too seriously.

Hello?? Aren't we supposed to have fun creating and watching demos? Is it all about competition and winning? (...and whining like a toddler whose lollipop is taken away if the results aren't as whished...)

Good productions are fun to watch. Boring ones are.... like... boring. You'll see that at the audience's reaction - both live at the bigscreen or afterwards on pouet.
The reactions might differ as the demos, audience, their mood, type of presentation, ... differ as well.
But you have to live with that. You have to.

So there are complex prods that are incredibly cool, but once in a while a group achieves to wow the audience with simpler ones.
Does that devalue the complex prod?

Sometimes so much value is put on complexity that the fun in the demo is neglected.
Is the audience to blame if they don't like it?

Is complexity better than creating a certain mood, plethora of fancy effects more exciting than fun, beating others more important than showing one's abilities?
THAT's the real jerkfest.

Yeah, silly indeed. Trace, you are comparing apples with oranges here. The Assembly 2004 invitation might have had a more original concept than Winnerdemo, but party voting isn't done in such categories, it's simply "which did the visitors like best, with each visitor being allowed to apply whatever standards he has". The majority of the visitors - and this includes me - found Winnerdemo to be better than the invitation, period.

smash: For such "best whatever category"-stuff I think some time distance is really helpful - make sure you've fully understood the concept, watched the prod several times, checked that it's no cheap rip of something, be able to compare it with other releases from that year etc. The current concept of leaving those category awards to scene.org looks good to me.

Also, a further inflation of the number of winners isn't good neither. We already have shitloads of compos and therefore winners at Breakpoint, and have to share the prize money among all those.

A newcomer award may make sense - but OTOH, for a newcomer the feeling of viewing his own production on the bigscreen in front of the audioence is award enough already, and usually motivates to improve on themselves for those people.

Regarding the "moral winner" stuff: We more or less already handle this at Breakpoint. As you may or may not know, we do not distribute the prize money for the compos before the party, we do that after all compos have run. If a compo only had weak entries, it will get less prize money assigned. If there is a compo with 2 nearly equally good entries on #1 and #2 (the #2 being the "moral winner" case), we'll make the difference in prize value between #1 and #2 smaller than usual.

i think there should also be prizes given out to the entry that gets last in the compo. that would fill my pockets quickly with finger print scanners.

can I just give my 2 cents here, because you mentioned Obsoleet and I was present at Assembly 2004.

When I saw all the demos I thought that the placing would be:

1) Obsoleet
2) We cell
3) *maybe* planet risk - and that because of the infamous 'blood cells' scene that got an applause, or come clean.

I just knew obsoleet was going to win because it got the most clapping of any other demo. And you know something, it deserved it. On the big screen it looked quite stunning. Only if you start dissecting it at home you do realise that it is probably not as good as some other productions.

I felt really sorry for kewlers getting a fifth position (the demo with the physics, that came 3rd, also got lots of clapping unfortunately).

Come scene awards, ofcourse, nobody remembered the physics demo (see I don't even remember the name) or obsoleet. But at the party place it rocked and got the cup. And hats off because those are the rules of the game.

Trace: I don't really get what a comment that basically says "your demo was not so good" has to do with party compo results (especially because I not even attended ASM07)... oh wait, I do. And as you officially started the ad hominem attacks a few posts ago, let's put it this way:

Sorry, did I insult your oh so superior taste with my oh so inferior one? Let's remember... the whole thread is about YOU complaining about results that didn't match your personal taste. YOU openly admit that you "adjust" *cough* even jury-based (!) results that don't suit YOUR view of things (and this is what every at least a tiny bit self-respecting party organizer should STEER THE FUCK CLEAR OF). And last but not least YOU are openly insulting people who try to make you realize that tastes are different, implying that they don't know shit and can't even tell demos fron youtube videos.

Yeah, RIGHT.

In other words, both "entertaining" demos win and "artsy" demos win at some point.
Problem being?

Trace: this is getting seriously boring now...

The funny thing here is that 10 years ago I was seeing the demoscene in that way too. In fact, back then, what I wanted to do is making the demos a bit more entertaining and fun. Adding jokes in between effects because the spanish demos were quite boring back then (too technical (from my POV)). And I remember being highly criticized by some people because I wasn't giving any value to the code or anything, I was just closing my mind to the "ah.. it's boring" (peter griffin voice here).

It turns out, that after years and years doing graphics, I realise that, what I really like from the demoscene, and who creates the most interesting demos (for me), are the coders with creative skills (statix, memon, navis, rainmaker...), so somehow I strat trying to learn just a bit of coding, so my contribution to all this isn't just static graphics or static 3dscenes, but code generated stuff.

So, with a bit of coding knowledge, I can see better the effort of everyone, and I'm not anymore just thinking if I'm being entertained or not. And now, I'm again criticised because the only think that matters of a demo if it entertains you or not. No matter how much work the guys have done on it.

Well, I guess my mind developed in the wrong direction.