The relationship of the demo scene to the game industry is similar to that of the gamemod community or the machinima community ultralow budget computer generated filmmaking. Demos are computer graphics hobby work. Working on realtime, cool looking, computer graphics projects gains members experience that is perfect for the game industry.Many members of the demo scene have followed their passion straight into the computer game industry. There they continue to work on realtime computer graphics and sound. Early sceners had extensive experience with ‘everything in assembly’ programming, 8 bit coding, et cetera, which has turned out very useful for programming things like the Game Boy and the new wave of WAP games cell phone games.Saxon Druce, from Australia, believes he was hired to his first game job because of his experience coding demos. However, he mentions that, “at the time I did it for the love of the code, not because I planned to get into the games industry. Being part of the scene you also get to discuss your ideas with other people, and show off, which all helps improve your skills. Also, you get some experience with building something through working with a few other people, both other coders and arty types, which is just like the real world.”Ten years ago the difference between the technology used in games and in demos was very small. Demos often displayed superior ability in very isolated and focused applications. It was common to see demos displaying graphic quality far beyond current in game graphics. The beauty of demos is that they need not be robust. They will not be sold and do not need to meet the requirements of users. Rather, demos at that time were notorious for making many demands of the user. Specific sound cards, video cards, operating systems, and memory managers were required. Literally half the demos I would download would not run on my PC.

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