You come to the end of JP issue 19. Ghandy philosophises about the state of the Amiga scene and makes you want to read Zerox's article again.
JP is almost over. I sincerely hope that we will soon be able to meet again in real life. From what I hear, it doesn’t look very promising for the planning reliability of the „Revision“ party. You just don’t know very far in advance what orders the authorities will issue. And no organizer will want to charge double or triple the admission price. This is not a fair, but a leisure event.
JP #19 shortly before the end
Personally, I can’t do anything with online events. Yes, it may be that you get to know some people there with whom you would otherwise never have come into contact. But I need a counterpart. I want to meet the people I see every year. To hear how they are doing. And having a beer or two with them. You just can’t do that over a DSL line. That’s also the reason why I rarely sit at the computer at parties. I can do that at home too, I don’t have to travel all over Germany to do it.
Pouet is full of new demos, but not for the Amiga. Well, we haven’t known the situation any differently for at least 25 years. Every year at Easter, the scene gathers in Saarbrücken to celebrate their favorite computer once again. The situation because of the corona pandemic will probably change soon, the Amiga scene will unfortunately remain as it is now. Although good and interesting releases come out every now and then, the Amiga scene will remain as it is now. But the old river from back then, where there were new releases every week, has long since dried up.
What killed the Amiga scene?
The fractionation of the Amiga market into ECS/OCS, AGA and later also PowerPC and MorphOS etc. – that destroyed a lot of things. You can complain about that. But you have to accept it. There’s a lot more going on with the C64. That is certainly also because there is only one computer and all programmers have to adhere to the same guidelines. And because many still associate their youth with the C64. THAT was their gaming device and perhaps less the Amiga or other computers.
Finally JP issue 19 is ready. We are happy and proud to have put together another issue. Now let’s take a break and recover. After all, there is still a job, a partner, children for some and a dog for me waiting at home to have enough time for them. I hope you enjoy Jurassic Pack as much as we enjoyed making it.
What the future holds. Well, let’s wait and see. All the broken promises have robbed me of a lot of motivation at times. But it was nice to see for example Sane coming out of the woodwork to actively support us. Other people like Virgill or Magic have been asking around for support. Thanks for that!
Let’s cross our fingers
It is also a fact that the wind has changed. Diskmags are not so important anymore. Many people take a look at Bitfellas or Pouet, that’s enough for them. Or they listen to podcasts or discuss in forums. The consumer behavior has changed a lot.
It would also be surprising if we had stood still. But of course that’s a problem for such a dinosaur like the team of Jurassic Pack. Let’s cross our fingers, that with Versus another chartsmagazine will come out this year. People still do need charts.
Yours truthfully!
Lars aka Ghandy
