pouët.net

I think that, back then at least, there was a relationship between the number of game companies you would have in a country and the size of its demoscene. That combined with other factors such as gaming/computing awareness (through media such as specialized magazines) and computer availability would affect the size of the demoscene.

Countries having a strong gaming industry like UK or America (and even France to some extent) would attract burgeoning developers very early. I mean, every aspiring coder or artist would love to make a living of their skills given the opportunity.

Creating games is actually the closest thing to making demos (with the added value of financial reward) and these days a lot of young people will do that instead of branching to demoscene, thanks to the availaibility of good tools and information in general.

After reading again Factor6's initial post, I realized it is difficult to provide any adequate response.

I. What is the question ?

I.A) The intention behind the question
His real question seemed more how to get a job in a game company when you are feel isolated in Easter Europe,
my advice would be :
-move to UK or Montreal physically after branching with ppl who have made the leap through irc for example (easy) ;
-stay home, set a game studio and ask them to distribute awaiting vertical absorption (requires financial backbone) ;
-stay home, get paid on algorythms through rent-a-coders (hard).

I.B) The simple "reason" as to why nowadays...

So the answer to the explicit same sub-questions :
1) "Does the scene interest depend on local mentality or culture" ;
2) "What do you think is the key that people of some countries are less interested in demoscene than others?"
is : money. If you have money, you have time. If you have time you can participate more into hobbies.
And yes coincidentally, since the mid-90s this is related somehow to "cold" weather countries,
mainly rich northern Europe. No wonder most golden era successful demoparties originated there.


II) Mixing everything up

II.A) Flawed assumptions

As for the perceived question related to demoscene history :
-it mixes present and past ("is more or less popular" vs. "in the past before Internet") ;
-it mixes scene with crackscene implicitely and demoscene, omitting phreaking scene for example ;
-contains false assumptions, notably but not solely :
--France and Germany are not same population (70 vs. 82 millions) ;
--BBS costs where never prohibitive per country because of blue/red boxing and AT&T loopholes ;
--language barrier did not play a role either because English was the de facto desperanto ;
--in other post : no, not all sceners wanted/want to hop on the game industry.
--the number of game shops per country did play a early role albeit solely for "suppliers".
-omits "scene" was initially unorganized and often local so preemption is often ill-advised.

II.B) Ponder beyond...

So really, you can read Demoscene: The Art of Real-Time by Lassi Tasajärvi, although biased.
And then ponder on maybe seven generations which hardly nobody can embody (not me at least) :
-early "scene" : US/Australian phreakscene through 2600 mag and boxing, swap is snailed ;
-second "scene" : North America BBS/HST era welcomes crackscene becoming back-office for US FBI raids ;
-third "scene" : demoscene's first crack releases through that medium, Europe becoming safe-haven from raids ;
-fourth "scene" : organized cohabitation - Europe is 1st and last leaf (suppliers+swappers), US remains crack ;
-fifth "scene" : demoscene parts from scrackscene slowly and northern Europe has biggest demoparties ;
-sixth "scene" : cracking is NOPing surviving crackgroups do Xvids mainly while relying on infiltrated game companies.
-seventh "scene" : demoscene becomes hwo to make games, paperback books are written, outreaching is accepted.

II.C)...And accept it

Perception nowadays is based on who yells the loudest with his vision.

This omits that :
-some "scenes" have been prominent throught these periods whilst seldom mentionned, example : the ascii scene ;
-some countries have been prominent throught these periods whilst seldom mentionned, example : Spain ;
-some sceners have been prominent throught these periods whilst seldom mentionned, example : Made/Bomb cf. Fear;
-some groups have been prominent throught these periods whilst seldom mentionned, example : Silents.
One could fill a thousand pages with such discrepancies.

To this, there are as many sub-currents now as there are "sceners".
It's accepted the "scene" or demoscene is what you want it to be, in incomplete and random order :
-retro-coding or size-coding ;
-e-mag charts diffusion propaganda ;
-scene is dead period ;
-mathematics/iq/diploma "who has the biggest" ;
-nostalgia worshipping Solid Gold/Future crew ;
-oldskool (rigid HICAPS) or newskool (GL or DX ?) ;
-4chan style web trollin/gloping ;
-scene archiving exhaustively ;
-ircnet warl0rding ;
-new politically correct fascist learning channel ;
-the "friendly scene" ;
-die-hard telnet BBS isolation (internal) ;
-Dvdriping or caming torrents ;
-hacking to some extent (anonymous and all) ;
-chip-music keygens ;
-NFO Nukers channeling ;
-Ascii packs forever scene ;
-demoparty organizing or attending ;
-professional electronical music subgenre ;
-game-industry/makers outreaching mainly in US to Nvidia etc.

This illustrates that one would be hard-pressed to answer the question where is the "scene" ?
Which scene ? What period ? oldskool or newschool ? Publicized or unknown ? etc.

Hope I answered some of your questions.

A bit tired. In the above post please disregard typos and grammar errors.

Replace Made/Bomb by Gengis/Bomb aka F. Heinz who discovered how to apply Albrash's 2d.5 to the Amiga copper.

Also do not see harm where there is none. These are just a few examples to make a point. Again it is very incomplete.

Consider that the scene never had enough members to rule out the impact of totally random factors.

Single events can change the statistic easily.

Finland has Assembly, Norway The Gathering and Germany had Mekka so that's why these countries have the most sceners. But if you had organised a giant and cool party somewhere else back in the days, this would certainly have had some impact on the distribution of the sceners today.

Novel these big demoparties have evolved quite a bit and the number of sceners is not to be confused with the attendance of gamers. Not to imply these are not demoparties in the classic sense neither. But the demoscener scene is no more active in these countries than the zx spectrum scene in Russia, at least to me.

Errr... that's a bit presumptuous, isn't it?

the scene is the biggest in the countries where the most # of cliques perservere. Germany (Hamburgers and friends) and Finland (Helsinkians and friends) are apparently good at that.

the point is that all of those parties developed their own scene around them. the "assembly scene" or the "mekka scene" - locals who go to 1 party a year / release 1 demo a year, for whom the whole scene is that one event.

Yes I reckon it after proofreading. You are correct. It is not Factor6 that mentioned the game insustry in the thread.

and you use:
-way
-too
-many
-bullet points
-dude!

Baudsurfer: boy that post read like an over-analytical, drug-induced brain-fart.

Factor6: ever thought about which countries imported computers for sale at the end of 70's and early 80's? since. Population and size of country of course has something to do with it and politics. Easy access to "cheap" computers (Getting hold of computers like Atari, C64 and Amiga) and those were easy to program, popped off the demoscene (in some way, young kids thought it was fun). One could think of it as random as everything else is, and without me rambling to much you probably know allready. The demoscene is a global phenomenom.

Don't read that Tasajärvi brochure. There are proper articles and books, too: http://www.kameli.net/demoresearch2/?page_id=4

@Baudsurfer: The scene is like the mind. Overwhelmed by different schools of thought. The memeplexes. We need Zen.

Nope, not even a little.

gloom: why? if you say that its a phenomenom only inside one country then you must be living in another world.

rudi: In the USA, they had an active cracking scene before the C64 existed, yet no demos. In Japan they hacked musics from Games into collections, had diskmags, Graphics collections and "scene tools" like copy programs for protected the disks......yet....no demos. Especially not for their homegrown systems. There are only a handful intros for the Apple II and C64 in the USA from back in the days and virtually nothing for Japanese systems.

The Demoscene was Europe only back then and had a little influence to australia and middle east(And Japan since the middle of the 90's). Most demos and parties are concentrated even mainly in northern and eastern Europe. See http://www.demoparty.net/....

@Baudsurfer, I don't agree about money. People of xUSSR in 90s were very poor but developed strong demoscene activity. These boys were mostly schoolchildren and high school students, maybe they don't have money in the first place?

rudi: it's probably better if you don't try to put words in my mouth. Anyone who says that the demoscene is limited to a single country is clearly ill informed, which is why nobody is saying that. But logical fallacies aside..

The demoscene (as in: the actual community that actually makes demoscene prods) are very much a European phenomenon. This is indisputable, so please don't go on some ill-conceived edge-case rant.

Now: do people WATCH demos from all around the world? Sure, but even then it's almost a 1:1 match with the countries that has an active producing demoscene community. The fact that there are a handful of demoscene enthusiasts in, say, India or Colombia doesn't mean that those representatives has the same statistical weight as hundreds or thousands of Finnish demoscene watchers.

okay, i was wrong about the wording. happy now?
would it have been better to say "international phenomenom" like Dr.Slem suggests?
din jævel :)

No, it wouldn't - didn't you read what I just wrote? :) It's not international, global, world-wide or even "wide-spread". It's a very small and closed community, firmly placed near its European roots.

i like people, that i have no idea who they are, telling me what the demoscene is! i mean, after two decades apparently i still don't have a clue what the fuck i'm doing! but, and that's a fact, most certainly i am part of some phenomenon!

gloom: I havent said it was wide-spread nor a big and open community either.
Anyways. gotta go, talk l8r..

Nobody knows what it is, but it's provocative!

in·ter·na·tion·al [in-ter-nash-uh-nl] Show IPA
adjective
1.
between or among nations; involving two or more nations: international trade.
2.
of or pertaining to two or more nations or their citizens: a matter of international concern.
3.
pertaining to the relations between nations: international law.
4.
having members or activities in several nations: an international organization.
5.
transcending national boundaries or viewpoints: an international benefit; an international reputation.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/international?s=t