The Gathering demo party
|
|
The_gathering_party_overview.jpg
The Gathering (abbreviated as "TG" for short) is the largest computer party in the world (and holds the record for the world's largest temporary network). It is held annually in Vikingskipet Olympic Arena in Hamar, Norway, and lasts for five consecutive days (starting on the Wednesday in Easter each year). Every year, TG attracts more than 5000 (mostly young) people, and the demand seems to be several times higher (see the ticket sale controversy below).
| Contents |
History
The Gathering was first arranged in 1992, as the demogroup Crusaders was told to "do it better yourselves" after complaining about an existing party. 1100 people gathered in Skedsmohallen at Lillestrøm, way more than the expected count of about 500. The following years, TG continued to grow (1993 and 1994 had about 1400 and 1800 visitors, respectively), and although TG95 saw a small decline in the number of visitors (1500; Crusaders was not responsible for TG that year, and it was simply called "Gathering 95"), it was clear that one would soon need a bigger place to be.
The venue decided upon was Vikingskipet Olympic Arena, built earlier for the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics. Providing lots of space and good infrastructure (abundant power, good parking opportunities, etc.) it was the ultimate party location, and in 1996, the first TG in Vikingskipet attracted 2500 visitors. However, TG has continued growing, and has been sold out every year since 1997 (see The ticket sales controversy below); TG04 attracted about 5100 visitors.
Daily life at TG
TG lasts for a full week (from Wednesday to Sunday every Easter), and thus is both longer and of course bigger than most other computer parties. Most people tend to let their daily rhythm go and instead sleep as they see fit (many simply in front of their computer, but most people on the tribunes); most of the time is usually spent before a computer, but many like to use the opportunity to meet new or old friends in real life. People have wildly different opinions about what constitutes a proper computer party; the common trend at TG these years seem to be warez, games (the most popular being Counter-Strike) and IRC (powered by the large and fast network -- when it is up at all, of course). However, many people find this too boring in the long run (and after a few days, most visitors inevitably get bored of just playing games), and there are lots of unofficial mini-events happening all the time. Informal competitions to build the highest tower of Coke cans are not uncommon, and people have been spotted having their own private mini-rave-parties put together by a few people and a PC with loudspeakers. In short, everything is possible with a bit of creativity; some people (most of them slightly older than the average TG visitor) tend to view the gamers/warezers as un-creative, mostly dull people.
Happenings and the demoscene
TG has always been a hub for young creative people to battle it out in many types of competitions; demo coding, music, graphics, animation, games, hardware-modification and Dance Dance Revolution to name a few; in addition, there are usually concerts and other things happening live on stage once or twice a day, as well as seminars etc.
In the first years, the focus on TG was pretty much on demos, but as TG is held at the same time as Breakpoint, a German scene-only party (and the earlier Mekka & Symposium), many European demosceners have left TG in favour of BP, and TG, like most other computer parties, has become more of a gamer event. The scene at TG still lives on, though, as TG has introduced features such as a demoscene-only area, "creative cashback" (those handing in entries to the creative competitions get a discount) and other demo-oriented events. In fact, you have to go back as far as 1996 to match the amount of entries handed in to the creative competitions at TG04.
The following competitions were held at TG04.
Demoscene
- Combined demo (Amiga, PC, Mac)
- Combined 64k intro (Amiga, PC, Mac)
- Wild/animation
- Tracked music
- HiQuality music
- Pixeled graphics
- Rendered graphics
- Fast intro
- Fast music
- Webdesign
- Useless utility
Game
- Warcraft 3 (1 on 1)
- Unreal Tournament 2003 (1 on 1)
- Counter-Strike (5 on 5)
- StarCraft: Brood War (1 on 1)
- Battlefield 1942 (8 on 8)
Crew
The organization Kreativ Aktiv Norsk Dataungdom (KANDU) is formally responsible for hosting TG. In addition, there are about 200 volunteers participating to make TG become reality every year; these are collectively called the crew.
The TG crew is split into multiple sub-crews, such as a democrew (Event:Demo), a gamecrew (Event:Game), a first-aid crew (Security:Medic), a network crew (Tech:Net), a server crew (Tech:Server), etc.. (The exact list varies somewhat from year to year.) Each of these has a chief who reports upwards, and is responsible for some aspect of the party.
All crew members are volunteers and unpaid; the only advantages a crew member has over a normal visitor are free entrance, access to a crew-only sleeping room and hot food served a few times a day. All members of the crew must arrive at the party place one day before the party itself starts, and stay one day after the party to aid in cleaning up afterwards. (Some people, such as chiefs, typically come even sooner.)
Everybody who wants can become crew (except for the Security crew, where there is a minimum age of 18), by applying at a special interface called wannabe. The chiefs usually pick their own crew, based on the applications coming in and previous experience. Crew members from earlier years must re-apply every year if they want to be crew again, but it is rare for a person having done a good job and then not be selected the next year.
The ticket sale controversy
Up to and including TG01, TG tickets (as all other tickets to everything else happening in Vikingskipet) were sold by Billettservice, a company closely related to the postal service in Norway. Partly sold via the Internet, partly by phone (but always picked up at a local post office), the Billettservice system broke down hard every year as thousands of people tried to order tickets to the event simultaneously.
To try to make the ticket sales a bit more smooth, a group of people closely related to the administration of TG made a separate company called Partyticket (or Partyticket.net, PTN for short), selling unified ticket-related services (such as ordering, payment, seating, handling competitions etc.) to smaller and larger computer parties. Partyticket went online for the first time in 2002, and like Billettservice instantly went down under the massive load, partly due to a problem at the third-party service authorizing credit card transactions. However, the tickets were still sold out in a matter of hours.
2003 was not much better; a lot of problems had been fixed (and PTN had successfully managed the ticket sales for several other computer parties), but there were still problems left, and it was decided to postpone the ticket sales by one day to fix the problems that had been discovered. The sales went relatively smooth the next day.
In 2004, one hoped that one would finally see the end of the problems, especially as a new queuing system and new hardware was installed; however, the server again buckled under the enormous load, and the queueing system was found to be severely buggy, apparently shuffling people around in the queue at random. This frustrated a lot of visitors, many of which never got tickets at all. Many people blame the ticket-sales problems directly at PTN and has tried to pressure TG into choosing some other solution.
In 2005 the queuing system was changed. Instead of buying actual tickets, people were put in a virtual queue, thus loading the server a lot less during the peak hours. The next day, people were processed from the start of the queue (but no more than 200 at a time). This system ended up working a lot better than the queueing system from 2004, despite some misconceptions in the media.
References
- Tasajarvi, Lassi (2004). Demoscene: The Art of Real-time. Even Lake Studios. ISBN 952917022X. pages 45-54.
External links
- The Gathering official website (http://www.gathering.org/)
- http://www.kandu.no/
- The Gathering: Computer Parties as Means for Gender Inclusion (http://pdf.textfiles.com/academics/SIGIS_D04_2.01_NTNU1.pdf) by Hege Nordli, an academic paper about The Gathering demo party and parties in general. (PDF)de:The Gathering (Demoparty)