pouët.net

Several categories are clearly missing: thumb up of the year, piggy of the year, and thumb down of the year. I really admire the way how some people can select the thumb radio buttons on Pouet so insightfully.

"Most eclectic CDC selection"

Oh, how could I forget the most essential thing: Youtube link click of the year!

"Demoscene code of conduct police of the year" award is also in order. Teach the self voters to respect authoritah!!

"ZX platform subdivision of the year"

2 nominations \o/

It's a little bit sad that there are only 13 categories. There were quite some interesting unusual categories suggested, and now we have almost the same you expect from such an award. So why asking for categories in the first place?

Maybe there weren't enough entires suggested for those catagories, or enough jury members, or just enough time to hand out more than 13 awards.

Obviously the majority prefers sticking to the traditional stuff over and over...

What Knoeki and T$ said.
We voted what categories we'd want this year, among everyone who had applied as a juror. The limitation in number was due to the length of the show. The result turned out to be exactly the traditional stuff, plus a small number of good new suggestions.

This is what people like!

And seriously, would you have given up "Best Hi-End Demo" for any of the other proposals?

I've said this before, you can't adopt the image of "the central award show for the demoscene" and not do what is expected from that. You can expand on the idea, but you have to expand starting from the fundamentals.

The category nomination process pretty much proved my prediction correct from the start: Most of the suggestions simply boiled down to "here's what I wanna see" (or if I want to be overly cynical, "here's what I wanna get nominated in"), which is rarely a good idea, because it begins a process of eventual extreme granulation at best and parody at worst. Instead you have to consider the bigger picture, and pick award categories that are 1) representative of the values of a good demo/intro (i.e. award things that demos are supposed to be good at) and 2) allows a good selection of prods to be considered. That way you're providing incentive for people not just to interact with your award process in the months leading up to the show, but also to consider your award as an additional factor of motivation all year round. That's not to say people won't make great pixel graphics or music if there's no award for it, but once you've reached a point of acceptance, it'll be a factor for people - and that's a good thing. But for that you need predictable categories. The current process pretty much favored whoever felt like yelling the loudest about their interest.

To address the concern about "unusual" categories: I've been talking to the organizers over the past year about how you could do an awards show that is less traditional, among the lines of abolishing the category system and instead picking a number of prods that stand out and simply awarding them based on their individual merits - this would allow giving awards to prods that are really good, even though they might not be the best at any specific property. It would also help keeping the award show fresh and versatile, and would provide the motivation for demomakers to keep their demos versatile as well, to help them stand out.

Sadly I don't think there is middle ground between the two approaches, mostly because the output of the scene itself has very little middleground; you're either a "traditional" demo, or something completely out of that range. The category suggestion method simply falls into the trap of trying to cover both and it makes both suffer as a result.

Well, as far as I know, at least he "That's not possible on this platform!"-category isn't traditional in any way. And I'm glad it's there :)

Will iT ever be possible agAin scali? You Guys probably Will win with 88miles in front of the rest :)

I'm not sure if we want to subject the Revision audience to the world's loudest PC speaker again :)

@Gargaj

wow..i totally agree with you this time

Actually, yes. Didn't think so a few months ago, but: yes.



I'd really like that, though I have a hard time envisioning how a jury process would work because there is no way to split any work between people. Just argue it out in a group of >10 people? I wouldn't want the strongest voices to dominate. Voting? It's supposed to not be about counting numbers. Have only 3-5 people as jurors for the whole thing? There won't be enough overlapping expertise in design and music and tech and obsolete computers, so it will be hard to make it about more than personal favourites of the jury's single "expert" on that topic, however balanced their view may be. The neatly packaged categories mean you can have a very small group of people as jurors that are actually able to reach consensus on their comparatively small task. I like your idea better, but I have no idea how it would work in practice. Maybe have the (larger) jury start at the beginning of the year, constantly discussing a pool of "so far, those prods might be in, for those reasons" candidates, in order to spread the work over time and keep everyone in the loop?

It wouldn't be necessary since there are no "losers" in that approach, the only potential conflict would be if someone argues that an award shouldn't happen.


Awards are inherently undemocratic, so I would much rather favor a small jury who is willing to put their name and reputation on the line in the context of the whole award, as opposed to an ever growing staff that just keeps pushing the results towards the median.

On that note, we as a scene has interfaced with the "outside" enough to at this point to consider involving semi-non-sceners (like Flight404) in the process.

The paradox of democracy is that you elect people you trust with more expertise than yourself to act on your behalf.
These people may act in ways you don't agree with. Which may just be your lack of expertise showing :)

So yes, the Meteoriks are modeled after something like the Oscars. You don't know exactly who the jurors are, but you know they are 'craftsmen' from your industry, rather than just the random moviegoer audience, who generally don't have the expertise to value a movie beyond just superficial entertainment value.
That's what gives the Oscars special meaning.

made by craftsmen! anyway, i'm rather more interested in who is the Leo of the scene.org/meteoriks awards ;)

with a lot of spit in the filthy beard!

If you want less traditional and more different award categories you should better start at the beginning which are the competitions during the year. The awards just try to collect the most amazing results afterward.

I remember that altparty (as well as some other parties) tried to feature special competitions as well - the reception was way below the traditional demo/intro ones.

From my impressions, having also been at Alternative Party over the years, whilst maybe the first time the compos were run the reception wasn't that great - however, in future years the reception and entries were better. I think it depended on how the particular compos were seen.

so what less traditional options are there? the main categories of best demo/64k/etc is already subjective as fuck. focusing into particular traits like direction or soundtrack even more so, so, rather keep the stuff shallow as fuck so it might even match public opinion.

...huh?

i think maali has also a point there. from point of consensus. awards are always bound to be meaningless. like voting in general.
if we want to go the group masturbation way why not look at tits and ass.

Same.