Breakpoint 2010 comments

Guess what my favourite thing is just after easter: to dissect all the recent productions from Breakpoint and the Gathering and see what is the level of competition out there. Don't take me wrong though: I enjoy all new demos for what they are - 4 minutes of audiovisual entertainment - but as a producer myself I need to know what and who is at the forefront of PC demo development.

So here are some random thoughts:

• Pleased to see the return of satori with a demo that nobody else could reproduce. I am envious, in a good way, of Zden and I hope they make another one in the near future.
• The farbrausch demo was interesting: in the first 20 seconds I was bracing for a "paradigm-shift" production that would leave me in complete awe (echoing the days of debris). It didn't follow my expectations (they were too high anyway) for a number of reasons. Mainly because of too much repetition, not much of a storyline and several design issues (typography being a major one). Regardless, the demo is clearly amongst the best 5 of this year (if not then it's going to be one hell of a year for PC demos).
  
• The winner demo from the Gathering had almost everything that you would need in a 2010 killer production: top effect, graphics, timing with the music. Yet it is not destined for the pantheon. Why is that, you ask? This is an important question and I'll elaborate in another post, stay tuned!
  
• I've expessed my admiration for the demo from Fairlight - rightful winner and a very hard demo to beat in any competition (including next year's scene org awards). "Less is more" worked really well and I'm looking forward to their next step using this technology or something similar.

For me the question was: what would happen if Iconoclash was presented at that party (assuming the music and a hundred different details left to finish were all there) ?
It would have been one hell of a compo (not that it was bad as it was): a class of two mammoth demos (ours and "rove") against the sweet delicacy from Fairlight.



...I have a fairly good idea of what would have happened to the final rankings; but I'm not going to tell you.