Demoscene Research

The museum of technology in Warsaw is apparently running a demoscene-themed exhibition as we speak. Find out more here: http://retronavigator.com/post/141494252848/do-you-know-we-have-history-of-damoscene

Cogent Arts & Humanities will publish a special issue on the 1980s’ videogames and they even mention the demoscene as one possible topic. See here: http://explore.cogentoa.com/call-for-special-issues/video-games-and-the-1980s-call-for-papers

With a slight delay, we included into our bibliography the special issue (#47/2014) of the Polish cultural magazine Ha!art dedicated to the demoscene. It features 96 pages of materials related to the history and the present state of the scene, including interviews with Yerzmyey, Nick Montfort, and Val Grimm, a feature on the Amiga demoscene with recollections by Polish sceners, and several essays on historical, philosophical, technical and aesthetical aspects. A detailed rundown of the contents can be consulted in our bibliography. The issue is out of print by now, but can be read online. We are indebted to Argasek for providing us with a paper copy.

One more on this topic by Jørgensen, Sandqvist & Sotamaa who have been writing on it before, too. Just added From hobbyists to entrepreneurs: On the formation of the Nordic game industry to the bibliography.

Assembly (Summer) 2015 main demo competition was broadcast yesterday by the Finnish broadcasting company, Yle. The program can still be accessed through their online service, Yle Areena. Featuring your Demoscene Research representative Markku quickly at the beginning, too 🙂

Ars Technica just published a lengthy series of articles on the Amiga to celebrate its 30th anniversary. One chapter is dedicated to the demoscene. See here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/the-amiga-turns-30-nobody-had-ever-designed-a-personal-computer-this-way/

Bent “Gloom” Stamnes has again updated his statistics on demoscene productions. See the blog post here: http://blog.subsquare.com/state-of-the-demoscene-1991-2014/

Added Amiga ASCII -taide, Heikki Lotvonen’s BA thesis which was recently accepted at the Aalto University. The thesis is in Finnish and deals with Amiga ASCII art – the author has also made some nice works himself as the production part.

We just added a detailed abstract of Brendan Ratliff’s MA thesis on tracked demoscene music. The author, known to demosceners as “Syphus”, produced an extraordinarily well-written introduction into tracked music, its history and technologies, its specific correlation with demoscene ethics, and its survival in the age of MP3. While originally defended in 2007, it was put online by the author only recently. We highly recommend it as a sound and enjoyable introduction into the subject. You can find the abstract, alongside with a link to the PDF version, in our bibliography.

The Kultura Gier Komputerowych 3 conference was held in Poland on May 23–24 at the University of Łódź. This time the theme of the event was “Behind the Scenes”, which lured also demoscene researchers in. See the full program here. Our representatives Markku and Gleb were there, in addition to which Patryk Wasiak and Paweł Grabarczyk gave presentations on demo-related topics. Here’s a little recap of the presentations in chronological order:

• Patryk Wasiak: Początki polskiej demosceny i “polski model komputeryzacji” (The Early Days of the Polish Demoscene and the ‘Polish Model of Computerisation’). The presentation placed the birth of the Polish demoscene in the context of the introduction and popularisation of home computers in late-socialist Poland, encompassing phenomena like state-sponsored computer education and pirate software streetmarkets. It credited the scene with creating computer “brand communities” in Poland, i.e. collective identities formed around computer platforms.
• Markku Reunanen: Generations of Consumer Computer Graphics as Seen in Demos. The keynote dealt with various generations of consumer computer graphics starting from the 1970s, using demos as illustrative examples of how hardware has been pushed and misused creatively. The main paradigms presented were character graphics, bitplanes, hybrids, chunky modes, fixed-function pipeline and finally shaders. Slides
• Paweł Grabarczyk: Born Retro – Reflexive Demos on Forgotten Platforms. The essence of this presentation was “born retro demos”, i.e. new productions for old platforms that didn’t have a scene back in their heyday. Another interesting concept was Technical Evaluation Context (TEC), which encompasses various factors that matter when demos are evaluated by the scene.
• Gleb J. Albert: The 1980s Cracking Scene: Counterculture, Youth Subculture, or Part and Parcel of the Games Industry?  The presentation gave an insight into the early cracking scene and its conceptualisation. It challenged the two predominant narratives – viewing crackers either as subversive “digital activists” akin to hackers, or as criminal teens becoming the future personnel of the IT industry after “growing up” – and proposed instead a perspective on the cracking scene as being entangled with the early computer games industry from the very beginning, focussing on the multiple interactions between both spheres.
• Markku Reunanen, Anders Carlsson and Tero Heikkinen: PETSCII – A Character Set and a Creative Platform. In this presentation Markku, Anders and Tero described PETSCII, the character set used on 8-bit Commodore computers, and its creative uses based on their first-hand experiences on various retro projects. Slides

Some of these studies will be extended to research articles later on. The upcoming issue of Replay, the Polish Journal of Game Studies is one potential candidate. We thank Maria B. Garda, Paweł Grabarczyk, and the rest of the organising team for an excellent conference experience.