Comment by varispeed
4 hours ago
Why gatekeeping? Demoscene was always about doing the impossible with technology. Technology now is AI.
Demoscene should embrace it.
4 hours ago
Why gatekeeping? Demoscene was always about doing the impossible with technology. Technology now is AI.
Demoscene should embrace it.
I think i was pretty clear in my original post.
Its about people doing the seemingly impossible with technology, not technology doing whats possible with technology. If you use AI, you did nothing but ask it, and i could never be impressed by that.
And how would you vote in the competitions at demoparties? By tokens used?
Most parties strictly forbid the use of AI in production, but im afraid some people aren't honest enough to abide to that rule.
why would you have to vote any differently based on which tools are used
It's about how much control over the tool and the output the artist has. A photocopy machine and a pencil are both tools that can be used to make a copy of a photo. The machine is much faster than the pencil and produce a very accurate result, but only the pencil version has artistic value. The resulting artifact artistic value is a token that represents the creation process.
Because building something with AI is not as impressive as building something without it.
9 replies →
One is building a thing using your own knowledge and creativity and the other is building a thing utilizing the largest collection of stolen knowledge and stolen creativity
Have you heard of the "wild" category before
No. The demoscene was about showing the raw skill of its participants.
This obviously intersected broadly with getting the most out of technology, but the main purpose was always (and still is) showing skillsets.
You can show raw skill with AI used as a tool. Demoscene is not a suffering contest otherwise you might start questioning why the demos in the past were not written using ones and zeros, but they used assembler that makes it soooo easy!
> Demoscene was always about doing
Yes, but “doing” with AI is not actually doing it, is it? Yes, something gets done, but the end result was never the point of the demoscene. The finished product was merely the proof-of-work.
How far do you want to go? Obviously many demos were not written using ones and zeros and most likely the coders used compilers and assemblers to produce the binaries. They were also using linkers instead of merging the files by hand. Many learned the stuff using books, so it is just regurgitation of what they read in those books.
As with AI it's no different than delegating work to a group member. What counts is vision and execution.
From discussing with demosceners I think people pretty unanimously agree vibecoded prods are lame, if sometimes fun. There's nothing impressive about a vibecoded demo, and even if they are visually impressive, that isn't really the point. The point is that people actually made it, the demo itself is an artifact of the talent of the group that made it. If anything it's a bit awkward when people submit heavily vibecoded demos.
Yes demoscene is about doing the impossible with Technology, but its also about proving that your group is good at performing miracles with computers. Modern demos are still technically impressive, but art direction is much more important for a high-tier demo. It's not "we are doing this impressive thing" as much as it is "Look what WE are able to do with this technical trick we are harnessing". The group and people behind the demo is a brand and part of the experience.
My personal opinion is that if you think a 100% vibecoded demo is cool, you don't really "get" the demoscene. Nobody is impressed that you could vibecode a visually impressive demo. You aren't winning anyone's respect. Nobody will work to beat you (they will at best push Claude harder - its a question of money not talent). The point of the demoscene is to pull off impressive feats with computer hardware, and if you didn't even do it yourself, nobody cares, because it's not impressive.
I think few are going to hate you for outsourcing basic, repetitive work to an LLM. But if you go "hey claude make me a particle engine" it kind of misses the point?
Then again I'm not really a hardcore scener myself, with just a few mediocre prods, so maybe someone from Farbrausch, ASD, TBL, or others will show up and tell me why I am wrong.
There is no shortage of crap demos that were not "vibe" coded.
I am just saying that AI is also something to harness, show it can help create something mindblowing. I am not saying that everyone should now go and type: "Make me a blob animation with phong reflections, put a bouncy scroll bar with 80s looking fonts and craft Ikari style chip tune and book tickets to the next demoscene party".
>Why gatekeeping?
Because there is no natural right for you to be part of a scene. The right is earned, and every scene does well by keeping posers and mouthbreathers out.
>gatekeeping
Opinion ignored.