pouët.net

Hi Reality,

I'll tell you exactly how I feel when I watch your streams.

I feel angry and disappointed that the production values are so bad because I, like many other party organisers put a huge amount of work into creating as smooth an experience as possible when we host these events, and people submitting their productions put a significant amount of effort into their work.

This means not just firing up a stock OBS install and faffing around bouncing from app to app with the mouse pointer going all over the place and opening YouTube clips and random windows, having large spaces of dead air and apologising profusely.

This means ensuring demo playback is as authentic as possible, native captures where necessary, rendering images and videos to appropriate resolutions and queuing them up. Normalising audio and ensuring tracker files are rendered in the appropriate playback engine.

This means having effective titling, OBS scenes, branding, stingers, transitions, placeholder clips, background music, realtime renders from separate systems, adequate bandwidth and infrastructure, microphones, lighting, video equipment and mixers. You can even get by with a lot less with planning. I'd recommend binge watching the Gaming Careers Youtube channel to nail it properly. Rehearse like crazy if you're not comfortable.

I feel like you're misrepresenting the demoscene and for someone so keen on outreach you never seem to take quality seriously. Or at least, I have said on many occasions to improve this but it never seems to work out. You have friends that are willing to help of course, so USE THEM. Solicit criticism instead of back patting.

You can do more to plan these events properly and improve quality. Look at the stream of Solskogen or something like that and see how they go about things and be realistic about what you can achieve and consider whether you are the right person for the job.

I'm only bringing this up in a public forum because I'm tired of seeing this go over. I've distanced myself from the UK Demoscene somwhat as I feel like you've co-opted it to an extent and feel like I'm protesting too much because people continue to enable you and supporting what is in my opinion mediocre.

I'm fully prepared for your friends to nail me to the cross over this, but I'm exhausted. Please for the love of god, get your shit together. Come back stronger and more prepared, do it for the scene and not to prove anything to me. I want to see you do well, I know you're a great person with a big heart and a lot of love from the scene. Just do it justice.

Thanks,

Ruairi

@ruari - what I filter from your feedback is 'dont do things all alone by yourself'. Doing all the compos, the slides, the backend, the streaming, the social media etc is a LOT of work which always gets under-estimated. Get some extra ppl around you so you can focus on one thing (if this is streaming out, the compos, the administration, ... that is up to Reality to decide)

@franky Exactly this. Nova would be nothing without Kris, Hoffman, d0pefish, Nuey, Polynomial, Kieran and all the other helpers who chip in -- the only thing is that reality has done this before and these problems could have been foreseen. Kris and I did studio rehearsals and equipment tests a week before we ran Nova 2020.

I do realise I have high standards and to an extent some of this was learned the hard way by unfiltered people like devastator/dcs - but it was stuff I needed to hear and act on, and I respect that, and everyone benefitted as a result.

I have tried speaking to reality before but it doesn't really go anywhere - things like reusing Nuey's web site template engine - NOPE! - reality would rather create a site from scratch and have to keep applying fixes. I just stopped trying to help.

Uhm, was it the intention of Hogmanay to be up par with other A-game online parties then? I expected this to be some tongue-in-cheek endeavour already days before tuning in based on earlier communication, its website, the somewhat odd scheduling and the joke compo compo, thus when i watched the twitch i wasn't disappointed nor annoyed by certain things not going supersmooth and kinda even enjoyed the impromptu aspect of it. It was still done nicely, relatively on time, quality of entries was well above expectations, and most important of all, it was enjoyable to watch. So, r404, good job!

and if this was apparently bad for outreach and showing 'true demoscene quality', come on... that ship has sailed many years ago already. who are you trying to impress anyway? :D

@Bruno Valero: Enough people that I've spoken to were frustrated. I've nothing against tongue-and-cheek endevours but at the very least I'd do my best to present other people's work in the best light possible (not to forget that it is new years eve for the audience). For me to not do that would feel negligent, but I don't expect everyone else to have the same values as me.

1. There's nothing wrong with a tongue-in-cheek moderation style, everyone can bring their own flavours to the scene and see what sticks... But many people have been putting a wonderful amount of effort into their prods and when you show their work I do not care where you tongue had been before because you actually owe them not only your best self, but your improved and tested self.

2. There are some great points (all of them, actually) in ruairi's feedback post. There are wonderful party organizers out there who would love to share their knowledge with anyone who knocks on their "door" asking for help.

3. And @Bruno Valero:


The answer should be simple and everyone who doesn't agree with me is free to take a long walk and get some fresh oxygen to that brain. We should impress _ourselves_ because deep inside we really do love the good shit. Are you seriously feeling that "Meh." lifestyle? Come on ;)

Thanks Ruairi for that criticism it was very much needed and has been taken to heart. Thank you as well for the phone call.

No problem, I'm eager to see what comes next... :)

(btw Kris actually does all the OBS work and we all chip in on PartyMeister / Wuhu, I do my best and occasionally fail with Pablodraw, but ne7 guides me on the right path)

i feel bad for reality. i think overall reality404 just bit more then them could chew. reality noticed the preparation wasn't getting done in due time, i told them all about how doing the daily streams for inercia was the only thing that motivated me to keep doing what needed to get done and how it helped immensely to ensure the basics would work, mentally organize priorities and get all the planning done in due time, solo organizing without a planning discipline doesn't go very far. we even suggested cancelling at some point, when reality mentioned being overburden by work and anxiety, but reality just tried to power through it i guess. it's a hard call to decide to cancel something when folks are already hyped and doing productions for it, so i understand that. but can also be extra pressure piled on you, causing more anxiety instead of driving your motivation to prepare and test things to ensure it'll be as perfect as it could be. last minute crashes destroying obs setups, while having to deal with compo preparations at the same time, was the drop that overflowed the hogmanay cup. no matter how well you prepare, shit will always happen when you actually go live, and when it does you need to be thinking clear and fast and deciding correctly on the spot to get things done. reality managed to delegate a lot of the stuff that was overflowing them (like capturing entries that should have been submitted with a video), but just not fast enough to make a smooth experience.

atleast you tried, and i think you learned a lot from this experience. and people still managed to check all the productions released, so it wasn't a complete fail in that department.

i think the main takeaway is that if you're organizing something, always prepare way ahead, test your setups well in advance and test them against all fail case scenarios, have plan b's/redundancies for everything that is critical and learn to delegate better when it's clearly above your ability to resolve alone. demoparties should not be organized without the inner acknowledgement that it'll take a huge chunk of your free time (and then some).