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2024-07-27 16:00

angelo

Registered: Jul 2024
Posts: 13

Howdy

Hi there. It's my first post here, so lemme introduce myself. I'm angelo, or æn.d͡ʒə.loʊ, or unj, a founder of KSKPD, the group behind polish unesco application.

I'm in process of researching some early-computing stuff, including an idea planted by @Krill and @bitfat, that the default narrative of "In the beginning it was a cracker scene, that developed into demoscene later because $REASONS" might be worth challenging.

I might be asking in various sub-forums questions around data on this site, but while I used to be a part of demoscene as a coder (1995+), I also owned PC exclusively since my first computer in like 1990. I skipped 8bit phase completely, so please bare with me, if the questions sound obvious or straight-up outrageously naive :)

2024-07-27 16:25

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2980

Parts of these recent threads About the origins of c64 demoscene and Message for 4agentE and to some lesser degree the first examples of rasterbars on the c64 and the amiga are about the "alternative" reading of history.

It appears to me that a "solid" hypothesis with agreed-upon common terminology to be found and then tested against would be in order, as these and previous threads on other forums hint at quite a few misunderstandings between the debating parties.

Also Gröpaz's interjection about the influence of Compunet warrants some investigation.

2024-07-27 16:50

angelo

Registered: Jul 2024
Posts: 13

Quoting Krill

Parts of these recent threads About the origins of c64 demoscene and Message for 4agentE and to some lesser degree the first examples of rasterbars on the c64 and the amiga are about the "alternative" reading of history.

Thanks. Will surely read through it. Personal testimonies, interviews and discussions like these definietely provide very valuabe insight where to look for stuff, and how to look on stuff. Although my current working-idea is to actually base this on the analysis of the "artifacts", that would be as close to "facts" as we possibly can get.

Quoting Krill

It appears to me that a "solid" hypothesis with agreed-upon common terminology to be found and then tested against would be in order, as these and previous threads on other forums hint at quite a few misunderstandings between the debating parties.

Yeah, debate can be heated sometimes. That's true. SInce our discussion on pouet, I have looked a bit into the foundations for that claim, and it seems these are unfortunately weak foundations. The origins of the demoscene in the Wikipedia entry is based on Markku Reunanen's paper from 2014 called "How Those Crackers Became Us Demosceners". The paper claims to have settled the discussion once and for all, but in my humble opinion it is also based on weak data, that does not justify drawing authorative conclusions. Many of the research papers are also citing either Markku's paper, or its sources which are isolated personal histories, or even 3rd hand testimonies. So I would say there's room for improvement.

For now, as I said before I want to focus on data. I've pulled csdb, janeway, zxart, speccy, demozoo, ada and pouet archives, giving me more than 800k (with duplicates) records. I wanna see how trends on productions and groups look like based on this, but first I need to do some data cleaning. Hence the questions I'll be posting here on categories for example.

That of course does not mean I am not open for discussions or even proving me my approach sucks :)

2024-07-27 17:00

hedning

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 4732

I found this paper interesting: http://widerscreen.fi/numerot/2014-1-2/crackers-became-us-demos..

2024-07-27 17:05

angelo

Registered: Jul 2024
Posts: 13

Quote: I found this paper interesting: http://widerscreen.fi/numerot/2014-1-2/crackers-became-us-demos..

that is unfortunately exactly the very paper I was referring to above :)

I don't say it's not interesting. It is very interesting, BUT: the paper says:

Quote:

Most of the authors who have written on the topic were not part of the original scene themselves, so they have had to rely on second-hand sources where conflicting details have already been left out. My aim in this paper is to trace the origins of the story and offer a new perspective to the various reasons that led to the gradual separation of the two scenes.

So sure, this paper is better in a sense it relies on first-hand sources. It's based tho on few (6, s-i-x) interviews, and it's hard to claim the group is representative in any statistical sense, and claiming that you can draw conclusions from 6 sources is in my humble opinion a bold move.

2024-07-27 17:54

Jetboy

Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 337

So you are one responsible for that unesco crap.
Scene did not need that. We were fine without you.

I'm pissed that people like you are stepping on a work of thousand enthusiasts for personal profits, writing bullshit pseudoscienentific papers, sucking government donations and setting up bullshit studies that teach nothing useful.

disrespect

2024-07-27 18:19

4gentE

Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 285

Historians, for example, base much of their arguments on evidence and stories that are equally unverifiable. A good historian will tell you that the best they can hope for is to tell a good, and relatively accurate story. All cultural production, to a certain extent, is a kind of myth-making. The trick is to do it responsibly, I think. Note that when I say “cultural production” above, I include all the social sciences and humanities. For me, academic production is also cultural production. (Trevor Paglen)

2024-07-27 18:38

ws

Registered: Apr 2012
Posts: 251

I came in as late as 1987 into the C64 stuff. In those days, there was, from what i heard, no talk of a "scene" (Except for Police and the press who classify groups of individuals as a scene). All that was there, was a scene in a criminal sense, as if you would talk of a drug-user-scene "drogenszene" or something close to organised crime, as the pressure from police was extremely high these days.
The only connection point between (the offline, non-bbs) people were contact-books, long lists of swapping contacts who you were supposed to send and get your disks from. I would guess that 90% of all the swapping was offline, via mail. Notable: having non-gaming or non cracking-related stuff on these swapping disks was considered lame. I personally remember seeing some first high class demos popping up on magazine disks in late 87, and that stuff always left the people i knew like "what? no game? boring!".
And i believe all the major first demo-effects were discovered by crackers.
If there were demo-people who made just demos, there simply would be no incentive to do so, because the driving factor behind the (offline) spreading was warez. This is also reflected in that era, when you had up to 5 intros from different groups infront some imported game. You wanted your name in there and you wanted your group represented, and you added a contact address! BBS'ing was super expensive and blueboxing was a dangerous thing to do.
So maybe there were very few individuals who released early "demos", but those were quite certainly not those who started the main wave of intro making in a sense that we know today. It is most likely some coincidental parallel development, but as far as i know and remember, there was no reason to make an intro or a demo unless you wanted attention from the crackers. (And we wanted that attention, badly. To get the new stuff faster. But we didn't know how to code.)
This is my view of it as a simple "user", "consumer" and then swapper. In the beginning i wasn't even in a group (none of the guys i knew were) but swapping (via mail, in germany only) already.
And few years later on the amiga, it was full-on commercial piracy. 100 disk/month abo for x amount of money. Thats actually how and why we then started an amiga group. Commercial import and then spread in our area (for free, to look cool, to collect, mainly.) So many disks, never played most of it, just keep em coming. Until the day the police showed up. That brought a horrific screeching halt to all these activities among my buddies. Soon after, everybody quit and went on to the PC, as simple "consumers" again (i started my first job, so i quit gaming and PC-ing entirely, except for making music).
We were like roughly 20 people.

2024-07-27 19:15

4gentE

Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 285

I’ve heard at least 10 or 20 recounts like this one above. My own memories are similar. So, I think the argument that Markku’s paper relies on only 6 interviews is kinda irrelevant. I don’t think the revision of “demoscene emanated from crackerscene” approximation (common knowledge) will happen. I think You’re wasting your time. But do go on, try and prove me (or should I say most of us) wrong.

2024-07-27 20:21

Pex Mahoney Tufvesson

Registered: Sep 2003
Posts: 52

I don't think there was a cracking scene prior this demo from 1972: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naGntYNTSQM
Imho, I think there is a bigger picture somewhere that we need to look for before coming to conclusions on the origin of the demo scene. / Pex

2024-07-27 20:26

hedning

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 4732

Quote: I don't think there was a cracking scene prior this demo from 1972: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naGntYNTSQM
Imho, I think there is a bigger picture somewhere that we need to look for before coming to conclusions on the origin of the demo scene. / Pex

Oh, please, mr. Tufvesson. Don't be silly. Cervantes had to write a follow up to Don Quixote as an answer to all pirate copies of the original book that was made in the early 1600's. ;)

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