There I was, sitting in my one room bachelor pad looking at a poster of John Lennon and the other non-noteworthy Beatles when an idea hit me like a lighting from a clear sky: "I will make a demo about my own depression". Now, this sort of idea seems at first very self-serving (which it is), rubbing-it-in-your-facey (which it is) and, well, controversial (which it is).

To understand what I'm talking about you have to know a bit about the history of demoscene demo design. Originally, of course, demos were mostly "electronic graffiti" or simple intros with very limited themes or storytelling medium. As the artform evolved during the 1990's, demoscene productions also began to experiment with ideas lovingly borrowed from movies, literature, music videos, performance art. Hell, nothing was sacred and everything was up for grabs. This is in no way a bad thing, do not understand me wrong. Art has always been about sharing ideas (and sometimes ripping them off and passing them as your own, making a bucketload of cash in the process [yes, I'm looking at you, Timba]). This evergrowing trend of "design" in demos started bringing more and more innovation in the actual content and meaning of demos, replacing the dull and repeated "effect-wanking" trend that dominated it before.

When I started making demos I decided that I want to design them as I would design a short piece of written fiction or a painting or a song. There has to be a theme, a story, something tangible there, beneath it all. Otherwise it would be just a hollow shell of technological prowess, which is in the end nothing remarkable or even memorable. I wanted to make demos that were "my own", and had a recognizable spirit and style, with uncompromising quality and variations in the themes and stories behind the design. So, for "Doctor" (released at The Alternative Party 2008, won the Alternative Demo Competition) I decided to do a design which worked as a cathartic exercise and a way to write a post script of sorts to my own bout of depression and the experiences I had with the depression medicine and the culture of depressed people. To tackle this challenge I decided to choose an epitome of mental health, a sort of semi-evil Dark Lord to deliver my message of the depressive state of mind and how there are no easy tricks or fixes to escape it. I chose Doctor Phil McGraw.

My co-designer and the master of Atari 2600 coding, Ilmarque, was tasked with creating the actual content for the demo (i.e. the effects, graphics, music), a task he had sort of fallen into in our previous productions. Now, Ilmarque is a kind of art machine. You feed him ideas, food and beer, and he produces brilliance. He's irreplaceable in my work process, as he seems to complete the required half in the "Trilobit method", so to speak. So we set on for the challenge, missing the deadlines at Breakpoint '08 and Assembly '08, and finally releasing the demo at Altparty '08. I was very surprised that people liked the very gloomy and downbeat demo, which was very unlike anything else I had designed before. In my mind, this goes to show that you can design a good demo with almost any sort of parameters, as long as you work hard and try to do the absolute best work you can do.

That's what I'd call the "scene spirit".

(And by the way, the amount of beer you need is way, way too much. Liquid solvent helps the braincogs turn!)