Proper Amiga Productions Release Management. The different distribution channels to reach various audiences. Written by Magic.
Proper Amiga Productions Release Management
Written by Magic of Nah-Kolor
Proloque
In the early days of the Amiga scene to get a hold of the latest demos sceners visited copy parties, exchanged demos via the post, x-copy was used a lot to just get a demo distributed. In local town area’s Amiga users found each other to get hold of demos or held meetings organized in schools and pubs. Others visited (international) exhibitions. When the modems found their way into the scene modemtraders spread demos to BBS around Europe and the globe, too.
In a way these were magical times. The pre-internet Amiga demoscene era. Demos found their way around to the people at home in one way or another. Especially the good demos! Demo packs containing intros and demos were made and widely spread by the many swappers out there. Demo’s and intro’s competed at the parties around were duplicated on floppy at the party itself before leaving for home again.
But how is this today anno domini 2022 ? Once you finished your production what are the ways to get them to as many Amiga enthusiasts to see them? What is a proper way to to manage a release and bring it out in the open?
This article will dive further on this topic and related topics on the side.
Today’s Amiga community
Today’s modern internet based Amiga community is quite divided. To name some of the most known ones, amongst other Facebook Amiga pages, Twitter, ADA Amiga, Demozoo, Pouet, Scene.org, Aminet, EAB, youtube and even some BBS’s are online again. (using telnet) For years now digital distribution is the key to get an Amiga production reaching out as widespread as possible.
Most people around the globe who have any interest in the Amiga demoscene have a few things in common they are part of a smaller internet based community. And if not Youtube is a place where Amiga productions are watched a lot. Also the users of real hardware are divided. Many have a gotek drive to boot from a USB stick. And some just have the usual floppy disk and/or hard drive. There are many different places that can be reached to distribute and promote your Amiga productions!
The Floppy Strategy
While real hardware prices went up quite a bit in the last years The Elektronic Knights (TEK) released there amazing Hologon demo apparently in December 2020. For their own reasons and with strong believe it was choosen to use snail mail only to send a floppy disk with the demo to some one.
TEK released an intro to announce the demo and how to obtain the new demo by floppy. No digital distribution was choosen. As Okeanos explained TEK’s way: „Exposure is not important. We want the demo to be played live on real hardware.“
But as time went by, excluding more than 99% of the entire Amiga community through all the distribution channels, websites and digital distribution in general it was just a matter of time before some one had to step in. NoName of Haujobb released Hologon digitally at the 18th of February 2021 with an oldskool ‚crack‘ intro even with it. What was the reason for Haujobb to release Hologon digitally? And why the oldskool intro?
Jurassic Pack contacted NoName of Haujobb: „The intro isn’t so important. It was just a homage to our common roots. And maybe a stylish decoration for an uncommon act in the scene.“ NoName explains and continues: „The real reason was to rightfully nominate it for the Meteoriks Awards which sadly required an online link.“
Release Management
The TEK example shows proper release management to reach your audience is not only distribution on a floppy disk. In the old days groups had a BBS as a WHQ. Today demo groups have found those in specific Facebook and Youtube pages. Social Media promotion and quality youtube captures are known methods to reach out into the community of all sort of Amiga users and enthusiasts.
Many former sceners and/or Amiga users from back in the day still watch demos through youtube for example. With the pandemic the last 2 years and online parties online digital distribution became even more important. As there wasn’t any way to copy that demo floppy live at the event after the compo.
Think about how your group could have some kind of release management. What is your strategy and when? How can you reach the targeted audience as much as possible? How can you use Social Media and other methods to serve your audience rightfully and peacefully? Their path to be successful in this is not about sticking to old traditions, nostalgic reasons and/or oldskool thinking, it’s about adjusting to every new phase the Amiga Scene reaches through time.
To adapt to the new surroundings and technology. To have a good listen to what the Amiga community wants and how to serve it. A wise man once said: „You can’t stop progress from happening, even in the Amiga Scene!“
And that’s just how it is. We are the Scene!
Epiloque
After this article was written I did meet Bifat of TEK at Gerp 2022. (Hi Bifat! Thank you for the nice open chat and the two floppy disks with the new TEk demo!) We had a long conversation about like almost everything mentioned you have read above. There is of course no right or wrong. Bifat explained to me his vision.
It is basically to release his demo on a floppy disk and on a physical party like Gerp. Then everybody can do with the demo on the disk what they want to do with it. The new TEK demo however uses some kind of tracksystem and more tracks as usual. Maybe it’s harder to make an adf file out of it. Bifat also told me that the demo will look slightly different on an emulator than on real hardware. Different visions are okay anyway.
I was just glad to make a live video recording during the competition for my Youtube channel called nahmagic (scenes.at/0hi48h).
It seemed that the live stream had many issues and there was no audio during almost all the time while the Amiga compo at Gerp was running. So my recording was the only one that was available. Okeanos and Slash were happy I saved the day with my recording. Of course don’t forget to run it on real hardware either if you can. And if not, go to my youtube channel!
The video of the TEK demo (live at the Gerp party) is available here.
Magic.
