Quality Control - by Wade/ex-Gods, ex-Nerve Axis
The term `Fun production' at one time was used to describe a demo or intro created for fun purposes, for the entertainment of the audience watching. Such examples that fall into this category would be Ninja by Melon, Iraq demo by Animators, Linus by Palace, Boogie Nights by Subspace and the more recent 911 by Limbo to name a few. The aforementioned are appreciated for their originality and flippant approach to the scene, thus proving that obsessive coding is not always the way to reach demoscene success.
The fun aspect of the scene is something of a rarity these days as demos portray a nerdlike seriousness aiming to compete with PC counterparts. Groups such as Melon, Movement, Rednex and Polka Bros developed entertaining concepts within otherwise average demos. It was more the graphical and design aspects that played a large role in the demos from these groups, ranging from animations, trippy colour pallettes or an original theme. Sceners became familiar with their style, yet had no idea of what was about to take place in their latest demo. There were many Melon intros that included no complex code at all, only pictures, yet they remain some of the most memorable productions of the scene.
However, many sceners have mis-interpreted the idea of the `Fun Production' and continue to create demos with absoloutely no distinct quality or humour factor. Keso are one such prominent group, participating in party competitions with a mass of childish dpaint squiggles and pictures accompanied by a shameful soundtrack. These demos are not at all funny or entertaining, but we continue to see them released. On occassions we even witness such scrawlings outplace serious entries that have taken the authors time and effort to make. It`s democratic abuse, the audience at party competitions are given the opportunity to vote and so many of them use it to promote this effortless and moronic behaviour whilst discouraging the endeavours of skill and effort.
We can also see an increasing quantity of these inane efforts in graphics competitions depicting a 5 second scribble or harshly coloured images outlined with an oversized brush. Why would sceners find a point to a pathetic doodle when there are high quality and far more humorous pictures like Stallone by Joachim, Woody Allen by Gfx Twins or Groovy by Facet? It comes as a great irritation to download pictures from the latest party to find that 50% of them are joke entries, especially when some are over 200k in size.
On the other end of the scale we see demos such as the Party 7 demo by Loonies "Goa Traince". A demo with a great display of coding excellence some of which even outmatched the winning demos in terms of technicality and speed. Unfortunately the Loonies attempted to produce a spoof of the popular TBL demo `Goa'. In doing so `Goa Traince' appeared very tacky and diverted the viewer`s attention away from the rather impressive collection of routines. The garish colour pallettes and grainy backgrounds do nothing to assist the demo`s comedy aspect, yet sacrifices any attempts to be taken seriously. I`m sure everybody likes to see a high spirited and imaginative demo, but this isn`t achieved by sheer uglyness.
With modems playing an essential role in the scene today it becomes quite costly to download majority of releases and when one is paying or sacrificing BBS credits to see a 3mb demo of dire quality the fun aspect is somewhat lost.
There are ways of discouraging the low quality factor in our scene and enforcing an unofficial quality control. Some would consider it censorship, but that isn`t always a bad thing if it saves time and money and promotes quality scening.
Method 1 is to include `Lamest production' or `Lamest group' categories into scene charts as a deterrant to all pointless releases. By doing this the scene would have chance to express their least favourite aspects of the scene as well as their favourite. Those whose name constantly appears among these negative charts will then realise that they must try harder.
Method 2 is for party organisers to arrange a pre-competition judgement that eliminates all time wasting entries. It must be a very tedious experience for the party attendees having to watch several hours of futile `jokes' while awaiting the more genuine entries. The purpose of a scene event should be to offer an entertaining performance to the paying audience, afterall the cost of travel and entry is often greater than that of a music concert, cinema or theatre and one wouldn`t expect a cinema to show tacky homemade camcorder movies. With commercialism dominating the scene, party organisers are no longer doing a selfless good deed for the sake of the scene, they are making profit and one should demand a worthwhile show. It seems so ironic that partys now allow competitors to use the highest specifications available, yet do nothing to discourage low calibre entries.
Another aspect that should undergo quality control is originality. After watching the intros and demos from the Party 7 I found it very hard to distinguish between them all as they used the same resourced routines, similar soundtracks and the same presentation as one another. Many sceners at the Party 7 also admitted that they slept through most of the competitions. Wouldn`t it be far better to handpick the fastest or most detailed clones and eliminate all others without an original concept? By doing this we would stand to see far less entries into party competitions, but at least it would encourage something positive, it would mean that coders would have to improvise with an original concept or be able to offer something of great quality before they could enter a party competition. Maybe then we would see more releases in between parties too.