What is demoscene about, according to you?
category: residue [glöplog]
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Essentially, I agree the demoscene is mostly non-capitalist.
Well... sounds like nice idea but first I would ask here is how's that versus all that big business party sponsors, head-hunting, working for worldwide present corporate gaming industry... and so and so...
PS. never too much love in this world.
Well, as a party organizer, if you want to provide somewhat decent party equipment and features and at the same time don't charge ridiculous high entry fees, you need some kind of sponsoring.
Since nobody earns money while organising a party or releasing a production (rather the opposite), I agree that it's non-capitalist.
friendship
I'd say that the demo-scene is a bit capitalistic: Many sceners (especially coders) got recruited to the capitalistic game-companies. The scene was/is like an unpaid internship to the professional world, to be able to work in a group on a project.
demos are opium for the masses!
Oh, and even some demo-creators try their best getting paid: by coming top 3 at demo-compos (demo-parties).
Mind expanding.
:) Just debunking that "it's non-capitalist."
Well, no. I would say the amount of prize money (if any) you get at demoparties probably covers the expenses to get there and compete, but for it's not an adequate pay for all the hours that went into a top-3 production. (But it's also not meant to be)
*for sure
I'd say that nobody is 'in-it-for-the-money" == definition of non-capitalistic
In some demos, the demo-creators even tries to sell source-codes and/or tries (writes in scroll-texts) to get a job in the game-industry, or want donations to keep releasing demos (hi Delta/RSI!).
I think that many demo-creators wants to make it into the game-industry, and they can use their own demos as showreel (I read that Smash/FLT sent his demo to get into the game-industry).
I think that many demo-creators wants to make it into the game-industry, and they can use their own demos as showreel (I read that Smash/FLT sent his demo to get into the game-industry).
Waffemann: Sounds to me like all your arguments date back to the mid-90s. FYI, we live in the year 2019. Wouldn't you think some thing s might have changed over the last 25 years?
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I'd say that the demo-scene is a bit capitalistic: Many sceners (especially coders) got recruited to the capitalistic game-companies. The scene was/is like an unpaid internship to the professional world, to be able to work in a group on a project.
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In some demos, the demo-creators even tries to sell source-codes and/or tries (writes in scroll-texts) to get a job in the game-industry, or want donations to keep releasing demos (hi Delta/RSI!).
I think that many demo-creators wants to make it into the game-industry, and they can use their own demos as showreel (I read that Smash/FLT sent his demo to get into the game-industry).
No offence but that sounds more like what you want to believe happens, rather than something that you actually saw happening.
That's not to say doing demos hasn't been a positive impact on my professional career, but there are a lot of demo-related things that are detrimental to it too. (Attitude is a big one.)
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Oh, and even some demo-creators try their best getting paid: by coming top 3 at demo-compos (demo-parties).
Couple of problems with this:
- Revision 64k compo 1st prize was I believe €500 - split 3 ways that's €160/kopf, deduct the entrance fee (€60) and you get €100 - which is roughly the travel cost, so you're breaking even at best.
- Let's say you got in free, hitchhiked, worked alone, etc. and you get to keep the €500. We worked on the intro about 2 months in our spare time, so let's say we put in 50 manhours (which is a very very conservative guess) - that makes your hourly rate €10/hr, which is basically a junior webdeveloper rate for something that is crazy complex.
- Also, why do you say "by coming top 3" like it's a foregone conclusion? :) You know there's a competition, right? There's no guarantee you'll win even if you're the best if someone else makes something that the crowd likes better. When it comes to getting paid it's even dodgier than freelancing cos there at least there's a contract you can legally enforce if they don't want to pay you :)
I'm actually surprised that today we don't have anyone supporting their demo-making hobby with donations via Patreon. That's very common in the internet art-making world outside of our niche.
Except for ps of course. And Ferris.
fizzer, welllll..... ;)
I stand corrected. :)
Wow, this thread looked like such a Bad Take City I didn't even wanna think about a post here, but now that we seem to be veering into this territory, let's indulge a bit...
Is Demoscene capitalistic? As capitalism is a economic system, we should first take a look at whether Demoscene can be considered to be or include an economy, at least in the microcosmic sense. Firstly, viewing the Demoscene doesn't at least seem to be a prevailing thought within it. We lack many common aspects of what constitute economic systems, such as policy or codification, planning, or some form of currency being exchanged for the goods we produce (for the most part). We might have a "market" which to some extent dictates what sorts of goods we produce, but we also have to extend its definition to such a broad extent it becomes difficult to say whether it bears any resemblence to an economic market anymore. Beyond those it's quite difficult to even grasp at comparisons, from which I think we can for now attain that the Demoscene is not an economy, but nevertheless let's go on with seeing if the Demoscene is "a bit capitalistic".
Capitalism is characterised first and foremost by the private ownership of the means of production. Means of production in this case would be the tools we use to create our goods. For an example for modern Windows productions this would most commonly be Microsoft Visual Studio. This if course is not a Demoscene product, but if we limit the scope just to inside the Scene, it pragmatically is something we collectively have access to. Similarly we, right here on this website and elsewhere, have a multitude of tools freely (as in *sigh* beer) available to us. The ultimate control in the sense of access to most of these (excluding the ones licensed under open-source and libre licenses) lies on their creators though. However, we generally aside from keeping the sources closed have attitudes of restricting tools to certain priviliged groups (at least not in the long term), unless they are strictly for private use, and even less a tendency to try to monetarily gain from such tools. Notable exception to this might be Notch, which lives a sort of a double life, one foot in the external world and one foot in the Demoscene where it sprouted from. Notch is not the be-all and end-all to the Scene (yet) though, nor are other 3rd party "Engines" for that matter, so we can disregard them. I have no idea what the earlier mentions of "sell source-codes" are about. Donations or using the Scene as a platform to gain notability outside the Scene don't have anything to do with capitalism.
What about the areas where monetary exchanges are involved? Demoparties. In this case we definitely can attest that a Demoparty is a product or a service that a person buys from the providers, and even that some Demoparties compate which one another for visitors in the form of venue, compos, prize money, et cetera. This is not something parties explicitly do though, since we seem to have for good reasons decided that it's not productive for our community to create such competition and tensions. In fact parties tend to implicitly co-operate to some extent and spread out their dates to minimize overlap and maximize potential attendance. However, it's noteworthy that very few parties to my knowledge operate for profit. I believe in fact a lot of Parties are registered explicitly as non-profit organizations(?). Sponsors seem to also be included only in so far as to reaffirm the financial security of the event. Additionally Breakpoint organizer Scamp has declared that the first iteration of the party left him personally if I recall correctly over 10,000€ in debt, which didn't inhibit him from wanting to keep organizing the event. It would appear that parties aren't organized to maximize the their benefit for the Demoscene, not for reasons of profit, and certainly not private profit. Same with the competition prizes, as Gargaj outlined.
So, is the Demoscene socialist then? No, because the Demoscene is not a fucking economic system. We interface with one, but that's a necessity from operating within it and needing to use products it provides; doesn't make Demoscene itself an economic system, let alone capitalistic or tied to the existing one. At best you could argue it's a mixed economy but at that point we'd be just making analogies and it'd be better to just drop the comparisons and focus on the actual aspects of the Scene, which I'm going to do right now. There are couple noteworthy aspects albeit not inherently tied to capitalism that also exist to a large extent in the Scene. Those are class hierarchy and meritocracy. We value certain skills and positions more than others, often in relation to their scarcity or necessity to the viability of the Scene. Additionally we often tend to value less opinions from people deemed to be of "lower hierarchical standing" (see the often touted image here). Both of these are almost inseparable concepts from capitalism, I'd even argue necessary for it, but still don't make the Demoscene capitalistic. At best it makes it a hierarchical meritocracy, which still sucks though.
Conclusion: Demoscene is not capitalistic, certainly not because of partial monetary involvement or interfacing with an actual capitalist system. Hope you enjoyed my own Bad Take. At least it's wordier than yours.
Is Demoscene capitalistic? As capitalism is a economic system, we should first take a look at whether Demoscene can be considered to be or include an economy, at least in the microcosmic sense. Firstly, viewing the Demoscene doesn't at least seem to be a prevailing thought within it. We lack many common aspects of what constitute economic systems, such as policy or codification, planning, or some form of currency being exchanged for the goods we produce (for the most part). We might have a "market" which to some extent dictates what sorts of goods we produce, but we also have to extend its definition to such a broad extent it becomes difficult to say whether it bears any resemblence to an economic market anymore. Beyond those it's quite difficult to even grasp at comparisons, from which I think we can for now attain that the Demoscene is not an economy, but nevertheless let's go on with seeing if the Demoscene is "a bit capitalistic".
Capitalism is characterised first and foremost by the private ownership of the means of production. Means of production in this case would be the tools we use to create our goods. For an example for modern Windows productions this would most commonly be Microsoft Visual Studio. This if course is not a Demoscene product, but if we limit the scope just to inside the Scene, it pragmatically is something we collectively have access to. Similarly we, right here on this website and elsewhere, have a multitude of tools freely (as in *sigh* beer) available to us. The ultimate control in the sense of access to most of these (excluding the ones licensed under open-source and libre licenses) lies on their creators though. However, we generally aside from keeping the sources closed have attitudes of restricting tools to certain priviliged groups (at least not in the long term), unless they are strictly for private use, and even less a tendency to try to monetarily gain from such tools. Notable exception to this might be Notch, which lives a sort of a double life, one foot in the external world and one foot in the Demoscene where it sprouted from. Notch is not the be-all and end-all to the Scene (yet) though, nor are other 3rd party "Engines" for that matter, so we can disregard them. I have no idea what the earlier mentions of "sell source-codes" are about. Donations or using the Scene as a platform to gain notability outside the Scene don't have anything to do with capitalism.
What about the areas where monetary exchanges are involved? Demoparties. In this case we definitely can attest that a Demoparty is a product or a service that a person buys from the providers, and even that some Demoparties compate which one another for visitors in the form of venue, compos, prize money, et cetera. This is not something parties explicitly do though, since we seem to have for good reasons decided that it's not productive for our community to create such competition and tensions. In fact parties tend to implicitly co-operate to some extent and spread out their dates to minimize overlap and maximize potential attendance. However, it's noteworthy that very few parties to my knowledge operate for profit. I believe in fact a lot of Parties are registered explicitly as non-profit organizations(?). Sponsors seem to also be included only in so far as to reaffirm the financial security of the event. Additionally Breakpoint organizer Scamp has declared that the first iteration of the party left him personally if I recall correctly over 10,000€ in debt, which didn't inhibit him from wanting to keep organizing the event. It would appear that parties aren't organized to maximize the their benefit for the Demoscene, not for reasons of profit, and certainly not private profit. Same with the competition prizes, as Gargaj outlined.
So, is the Demoscene socialist then? No, because the Demoscene is not a fucking economic system. We interface with one, but that's a necessity from operating within it and needing to use products it provides; doesn't make Demoscene itself an economic system, let alone capitalistic or tied to the existing one. At best you could argue it's a mixed economy but at that point we'd be just making analogies and it'd be better to just drop the comparisons and focus on the actual aspects of the Scene, which I'm going to do right now. There are couple noteworthy aspects albeit not inherently tied to capitalism that also exist to a large extent in the Scene. Those are class hierarchy and meritocracy. We value certain skills and positions more than others, often in relation to their scarcity or necessity to the viability of the Scene. Additionally we often tend to value less opinions from people deemed to be of "lower hierarchical standing" (see the often touted image here). Both of these are almost inseparable concepts from capitalism, I'd even argue necessary for it, but still don't make the Demoscene capitalistic. At best it makes it a hierarchical meritocracy, which still sucks though.
Conclusion: Demoscene is not capitalistic, certainly not because of partial monetary involvement or interfacing with an actual capitalist system. Hope you enjoyed my own Bad Take. At least it's wordier than yours.
i think whoever wrote that demoscene is capitalistic is because they are butthurt there is an entrance fee to demoparties + sometimes prizes are just a sum of money instead of receiving another party-branded mug or a pc speaker set :D
Demoscene is about friendship. And worship. And other ships.
wow, that escalated quickly.
noby, good read, thanks (and I mostly agree).
also I learned the word "meritocracy".
Does it really suck? Compos are open for everyone, and most sceners I know aren't so arrogant as to not be willing to talk to "n00bs" or explain some stuff when asked.
Doesn't meritocracy automatically arise from the fact that competition is one of the defining aspects of the scene? I do see some suckage when it comes to "quality preselection", but this again is born much more out of necessity and pragmatism (no 5h long mp3 compo plz), less from any kind of arrogance or hierarchy.
noby, good read, thanks (and I mostly agree).
also I learned the word "meritocracy".
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At best it makes it a hierarchical meritocracy, which still sucks though.
Does it really suck? Compos are open for everyone, and most sceners I know aren't so arrogant as to not be willing to talk to "n00bs" or explain some stuff when asked.
Doesn't meritocracy automatically arise from the fact that competition is one of the defining aspects of the scene? I do see some suckage when it comes to "quality preselection", but this again is born much more out of necessity and pragmatism (no 5h long mp3 compo plz), less from any kind of arrogance or hierarchy.
just another hooded sect
