Ars Electronica 2001: Simon Carless - Electrolobby Questions + Related Visuals.
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1. "From Bedroom Programmers To Media Gods".
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[SYNOPSIS!]
I'll be charting the history of the 'demo-scene', from 'oldskool' crack-intros to amazing multimedia presentations. I'll be then showing how the quirks, limitations, and innovations of that unique artform (the demo!) have led to those aforementioned 'bedroom programmers' going on to be leading lights in many forms of media, from flash animation, through films, to (_especially_) videogames.
You probably want to know what demos are. Here's a definition:
Demos, (short for 'demonstrations'), are executable programs created purely for art's sake, featuring impressive or spectacular audiovisuals. People make demos because they want to make something that will be spread worldwide, seen by a lot of people, and appreciated by them for being skilfully designed. Perhaps you can think of a demo as a music video on a computer, but with equal emphasis on the visuals, the music, and the code. It's something to watch, enjoy, and marvel at the creativity of. Demos can be beautiful :)"
The main point of the whole thing is that not only are demos cool, the competitive nature, pure creativity, and limitations of the demo-scene really set people up to be 'stars' in other digital media industries!
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[QUESTIONS!]
Here's some questions you can ask me at either the Sunday or Monday sessions (many of these taken from the original tnc interview questions, other ones are in brackets!):
What are demos?
(How did the demo-scene start?)
When was the peak of the demo scene?
The demo-scene was a true underground phenomenon. What’s the link with today's game industry?
What are the key skills for these people?
Any high-profile examples?
(What's the state of the demo-scene nowadays?)
The Lens Flare screenings show that the relationship between the Hollywood film industry, and the gaming industry is evolving. Looking at film-to-game and game-to-film examples, like The Matrix, where do you see it going?
At this year's Milia in Cannes, Philippe Ulrich from Game-Company Cryo Interactive said that, due to increased production costs, investment money is going primarily to mainstream vehicles. A far cry from the times when he himself started in the eighties…
What’s the role of independent game producers like Eric Zimmerman’s group, GameLab, creator of Sissy Fight and one of last year's electrolobby residents?
(Ask me any other questions you like about:
a) the state of the console market
b) who I think is gonna win the next-generation console battle (Sony Playstation2, Nintendo Gamecube, or Microsoft XBox!)
c) massively multiplayer on-line games, both PC and console (especially console since Sonic Team and "Phantasy Star Online" are leading the way in this, and they'll be at the festival!)
d) anything else about networked play, consoles, videogames crossing over into other media, you'd like!)
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[VISUALS!]
Here's the stuff I'd like to show at both Sunday and Monday in terms of _cool_ visuals for the demo-scene. I realise I won't be able to show all of this, but we can either show some at one and some at the other, or just pick the best and show them.
1. A really oldskool Commodore 64 demo to show where the demo-scene started. We can run this on a PC with CCS64 emulator, but even with disc images, it takes about 30 seconds to load (in the emulator), so it might be worth making a video of this beforehand and just playing it back at the right time, otherwise we have to estimate 30 seconds before for playing it, there's some emulator settings to mess with, etc. Get an idea of what these look like by looking at screenshots at http://jez.c64.org/demos.html [PLAYTIME: 20 SECONDS - 1 MINUTE (or more, depends how much you want - i'll pick the exact demo nearer the time, can even show you choices.)]
2. A brand-new REALLY cool looking PC demo to show the best stuff the demo-scene does nowadays. This runs on the PC with the decent graphics-card you'll have supplied, so if the presentation is in a different place, you could make a direct-feed video of this at an earlier date too (but it loads pretty much in real-time, so you can just play it too.) [PLAYTIME: 20 SECONDS-2 MINUTES - depends how much you want, i'll pick the exact demo nearer the time, can even show you choices.]
3. The Bluespoon club visuals system, done by Alex Evans, aka Statix. I got a copy of Version 1 of this which is kinda world-exclusive to Electrolobby (well, it's only even been shown in clubs before, there's no released code for it online!). Alex Evans is the guy who came from the demo-scene and now works at Lionhead and worked on "Black And White", which is an amazing game, and this is another example of how the demo-scene helps you work in other media - it's a real-time reactive club visuals system. So we'll play a CD in a PC and then run the bluespoon.exe in it, and it'll react to the music - it's really cool! [PLAYTIME:20 SECONDS UPWARDS - depends how much you want.]
[NB - we could also show "Black And White" the game itself, cos i'll be bringing a copy, as an example of a game people graduating from the demo-scene have helped create, but I'm not sure what we'd show - perhaps we could just video 15-30 seconds worth of normal gameplay footage? Someone needs to play it, it won't just play automatically by itself.]
4. [this one is sorta 'if we have time'] - Melon Design's animation for the official Beatles site, thebeatles.com! Melon Design were a _very_ famous Amiga demo-crew operating in the early 90s who had totally amazing graphical design, and they've taken that and made some _really_ good Flash stuff keying off the stuff they learnt about design in the demo-scene. You'd play the Flash video which is at http://www.thebeatles.com/ifeelfine/treatment/index.html :) It'd be nice to show some original Melon stuff as a comparison, but it's all on the Amiga so that's a big hassle - might be able to get one of the crack-intros running on WinUAE emulated on an Amiga [PLAYTIME: 20 SECONDS UPWARDS for the Flash intro, similar for any Melon Amiga intros we get running!]
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2. "Boom Boom Tschak: The Art And Innovation of Music-Based Videogames"
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[SYNOPSIS!]
This is about how music is playing an integral part in the _gameplay_ of many videogames now, and I'll be showing the history and innovations of music-based games, and most of all, how these titles innovate and dazzle, through use of custom controllers and through innovative graphics and gameplay. Some of the titles I'll be showing include the classic titles from Japanese developer Nana On-Sha, including "Parappa The Rapper and "Vib Ribbon", plus many of the titles in the groundbreaking Konami 'Bemani' series. And lots more obscure and geekyfun stuff besides :)
There's lots of interesting angles - for example, music videogames have sold millions of copies in Japan but never really taken off properly outside the East, there's the whole concept of videogame controllers as musical instruments, but mainly, it's just that making your own music as the main part of playing a game is a totally cool idea.
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[QUESTIONS!]
Here's some questions you can ask me at either the Sunday or Monday sessions (please rephrase and reorder these as you wish!)
Why are music-videogames so interesting?
What are the earliest music-related videogames during the 80s, and what principles do they use?
When did the music-related videogame really take off in the '90s, and why - what was the big breakthrough?
[I'll talk about "Parappa The Rapper" here and hopefully we can show it onscreen!]
After "Parappa", what was the next big trends in music-based videogames in both the arcades and home consoles?
[I'll talk about how the Bemani series by Konami took over and custom controllers became
the innovations in the music-game genre, and things got MASSIVE in Japan with "Beatmania" and "Dance Dance Revolution". Then I'd like to show the custom controllers onstage and actually play "Samba De Amigo" with the maracas, this being the craziest custom-controller game!]
Why do you think music games never made it big outside Asia? And why did they make it so big in Asia, come to that?
What advances have been made recently in the more experimental and 'out-there' music games?
[I'll talk about the guys who did Parappa at Nana On-Sha making the crazybonkers "Vib Ribbon", and I'll show that too! Plus I might mention some more peripheral stuff like "Sim Tunes" and other mainstream games which used music as a core gameplay mechanic like "Master Of The Lamp" and "Loom" or even "Zelda".]
What's in the future for music-based videogames?
You can also ask me anything about videogames, music interactivity in normal games (like, the soundtrack gets more frantic when there's a fight, etc!), the audio/video capabilities of next-generation consoles, anything you like.
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[VISUALS!]
Here's the stuff I'd like to show at both Sunday and Monday in terms of _cool_ visuals for the music-game feature. I realise I won't be able to show all of this, but we can either show some at one and some at the other, or just pick the best and show them.
1. "Parappa The Rapper" - this is the totally great Sony Playstation 'breakthrough' music-based videogame, where you control a cartoon character onscreen as he raps along to the music. I'd like to have a Playstation onstage and play a stage through, probably, doing alternately better and worse to show how the game stage and music changes. If the worst comes to the worst, we could record me playing it and make a video of that to play instead, this'll still work fine!
[PLAYTIME: 1 MINUTE UPWARDS, depends what you want.]
2. "Samba De Amigo" - this is the Sega Dreamcast maraca-shaking music game, so I'd like to play it onstage for at least a small amount of time, showing how you have to shake the maracas and pose in time to the music. :P If the worst comes to the worst, we could record me playing it and make a video of that to play instead, this'll still work ok.
[PLAYTIME: 30 SECONDS UPWARDS, depends what you want.]
3. "Vib Ribbon" - this is the really experimental wireframe Playstation game done by the NaNa On-Sha guys who did "Parappa" - I'd like to put my own CD of music in and play it with that custom CD (we can choose something interesting to play along to, as long as it isn't too difficult with the auto-generated levels!) [PLAYTIME: 30 SECONDS UPWARDS, depends what you want.]
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