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Like in politics, scene productions can be sorted in a bunch of main movements. Both quality and crap kinds of productions freely co-exist in every movement, so it's not a qualitative sorting, but a tour of most common style streams.




From left to right...

Joke Folks
Groups like Metalvotze or ODD have produced well-known joke prods. The goal is to make pure fun, no matter the code or aesthetics. The Wild compo is full of these videos featuring starwars fakes, and many demos are starring Lego characters or Bill Gates. No meaning, not pretty, not smart. One word : booze !

Oldschoolers
90's are more and more far, but many fellow sceners seem to feel the 8/16bit nostalgia, with rotating cubes and checked spheres where bumping all over a pink & blue gradient background. More headache to read these sin-scrollers, more sprites to fill your 320x200 screen, more rotozoomers with the same evil face again. Sometimes an excuse for young groups for releasing strong crap, the Oldschool style still have few solid defenders who produce clean & nice intros.

Scene Poets
A demomaker can be extremely sensitive. That's why we could find an incredible amount of flowers, waterfalls, birds, dolphins in 90's and 2000 demos. Not to mention the angel (naked) girls. Because of the eternal scener's pain, we could appreciate the everlasting depressive poems in enormous typo layers. A scener can be romantic.

Hardcore Coders
A demo does not necessary need any theme. Nor gimmick. Nor nothing at all, just code, a 3D engine and hi-poly models. CPU-intensive reflections, metaballs galore, subtile color schemes. A coder's demo does not waste its time with emotions, design or whatever. Burn, CPU, burn ! Adrenalin by Smash Design is a perfect example.

Design Ravers
Can be considered as the alter-ego of the Scene Poet, but with a smart mind instead of a cheesy heart. Inspired by every contemporary visual art movement (sci-fi, nu-media, revival...) these demomakers tend to surprise their peers with original elements. And mainly, we can see in their demos what VJ's use to beam on raves' walls. Variform by Kewlers can be considered as a leader of this movement.

Abstract Gurus
The perfect opposite to the Joke Folks movement. Abstract Gurus produce incomprehensible demos with abstract shapes, noises, using preferably uncommon (or even random) schemes. Their demos are designed to show unique artistic situations. These guys are not trying to gain new friends, obviously (scandal !).

hahahahaha.. awesome willbe :D i guess i'm stuck between joke folk, oldskooler and design raver.. how hard to just pick one :)

may I have a design raver topped with some abstract gurus? XD

why are coders between poets and designers? :)

Haha great- Is there a particular reason that coders are made pink?

I've put the hardcore coders in the middle, because it's strictly empty, neutral. No spiritual content, just plain, boring code.
And usually, depending on what will bring the graphicians & musicians, their demo could belong to one or other category :)
I'm so cruel =D

i'm in the anti-scene-poets camp. scene poetry definitely sucks!

i guess i'm closest to beeing harcore coder.

you forgot to add musicians. or are they the other half of the circle? :)

Why is the blue area with design ravers so big compared to the other ones. There are very few design ravers in the scene (atleast the PC scene...LOL)

Interesting idea. Could be further elaborated on in an article. Maybe some people don't agree with the particular model presented here and would like to present other models. Perhaps a survey could be done to see what demosceners consider themselves belongig to what group and how strong the individual groups are.

Thank god I'm not in that half circle.

about 65% coder (not hardcore yet), 35% abstract (not guru yet)

Disclaimer: I can mostly relate to amiga sceners, but I think it applies to all sceners...

Very nice exploring on scene philosophy, but please remember that demos and intros are not done by one people only (ham/software failure aside ;), but rather in a team... so giving some examples which are very near in time:

kalms = hardcore coder (but willing to cooperate with demo designer ;)
louie500 = hardcore graphician + scene poet
tudor = hardcore modeller + scene poet
yolk = hardcore musician + abstract guru
rubberduck = hardcore coder

Pour lots of patience into the mix, shake and then you have a balanced production which may appeal to most sceners ;)

BTW, coders can also be poets or gurus or whatever else, just think about ham, touchstone and many other coders with demo-directing abilities.

Don't forget : it's not a individual classification, but of what is produced : the demos / intros.
Of course, and thankfully, every people can have a more or less variety of inspirations (tendancies), as illustrated by Winden.
If you want to sort people by categories, it's not a half circle that will be needed, poor fellows !

Adok: what you say is clever... People can have a different opinion about it. They might react and all... Why not posting it on Pouet's BBS ?

I'm all of those except an abstact guru and a poet. Then again, under poet you DID mention a naked girl..

I'd consider my self being an Abstract joke folk guru radical.

This is just a thread to make you all lamers feel good about yourself. Suddenly you are something.. Pfft!

I'm on the right side. (sounds pretentious? ;)
And I vote willbe (who rocks) for President!!!

Interesting idea, really. And surely worth an article or two...

i consider myself a (more or less hardcore) coder - other people can do design, but i just fail at that bigtime :P

Finally, some interesting threads on Pouet (This and the other one about preselctions)!

Well,. it's hard to think, cause as most of the other people, I belong in more than one category. Surelly I am more tending to the left than right, to the oldschool and hardcore coding,. and then I may take some of scene poetry and design raving combined with the first two ones, even if it's very subjective what those categories, since I liked Variform but not other designish demos. Jokes and Abstract are less in my interest, even if sometimes I enjoyed demos of those kinds too..

And yes, I'd love to see a poll (where someone can vote for more than one category, or better,. to mark his interest in a grade from 0 to 5). That WOULD be interesting..

..at least if a lot of sceners vote.

A poll wouldn't be that interresting in my opinion.
All streams are part of the demoscene and fully belong to the digital culture (oh wise words).
I did not make this to enlight any movement among others. The point is rather to draw a wide view of the scene styles, spotting opposite forces here and there.