The Gathering (computer party)

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The Gathering 2006 Logo
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The Gathering (abbreviated as "TG" for short) is one of the largest computer parties in the world. 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 ~5200 (mostly young) people, and the demand seems to be several times higher (see the ticket sale controversy below).

Contents

[edit] History

Overview of The Gathering 2005
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Overview of The Gathering 2005

The first The Gathering (not taking into account a non-related Finnish party with the same name) was 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); TG05 and TG06 attracted about 5200 visitors.

[edit] Daily life at TG

TG lasts for five days (from Holy Wednesday to Easter Sunday every year), 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 arena stands); most of the time is usually spent in front of 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). However, many visitors find this too boring in the long run, and there are many 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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

[edit] Game

[edit] 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 not to be selected the next year.

[edit] 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.

In 2006 everything went smoothly.

[edit] Network

  • Year: Internet Connection, Network Status
  • 2003: 1gbit, major network problems fixed first day
  • 2004: 1gbit, major network problems fixed first day
  • 2005: 1gbit, major network problems.
  • 2006: 1gbit, was upgraded to 1.5gbit halfway through the party. No noteworthy network problems.

[edit] Name

Most years, TG has a name or “tagline”; the tagline doesn't really mean much, but it still influences the logo (or the other way round) and some other material. A list of names includes:

  • The Gathering 2000: “Follow the Flow”
  • The Gathering 2001: “A Cyberspace Odyssey” (after “2001: A Space Odyssey”)
  • The Gathering 2002: “The Gathering: Reloaded” (after The Matrix Reloaded, a reference to the endless reloading to get a ticket on PTN)
  • The Gathering 2004: “Rescue of Fractalus” (after the Lucasfilm Games game Rescue on Fractalus!)
  • The Gathering 2005: “We Are The Robots” (after the Kraftwerk single)
  • The Gathering 2006: “The Dark Side of Pluto” (after NASA's first probe to Pluto)

Various logos can be found at [1].

[edit] Theme Song

Every year, one or more songs are before, during or after the party unofficially designated as that's years “TG song”, simply by virtue of being played a lot on various people's loudspeakers. Which songs actually qualify is somewhat subjective, and some songs have been popular more than one year, but an incomplete list follows:

[edit] Demo and intro competition winners

The Gathering demo/intro compo winners, 1992-2006
Year Platform Demo 40-64k intro
1992 Amiga Wayfarer (Spaceballs) N/A
1993 Amiga Desert Dream (Kefrens) 40k Intro (Lemon.)
1994 Amiga Sequential (Andromeda) Bjarne (Stone Arts)
PC Superunknown (Five And Then Some) Das Grelle (Gollum)
1995 Amiga Deep (CNCD & Parallax) Jobbo TG'95 Intro (Spaceballs)
PC Dope (Complex) Fluid Motion (Valhalla)
1996 Amiga Tint (The Black Lotus) Lights (Stellar)
PC Inside (CNCD) You Am I, You Am The Robot (Orange)
1997 Amiga Captured Dreams (The Black Lotus) Gene (Fudge)
PC CNCD Vs. Orange (CNCD & Orange)
1998 Amiga Rise (TRSi) Imitation None (The Black Lotus)
PC Non-3D: Dimension (Gods) Jive 2 (Sublogic)
3D: Planet Cornball (Complex)
1999 Amiga Supermonster (Spaceballs) Fusion Is No Good For Me (Spaceballs)
PC Yume 2000 (Future World Mix) (INF) Public Demand (Purple)
2000 Combined Hypnopolis (Spaceballs) glAss (Psikorp)
2001 Amiga Powergod (Spaceballs) mx.9kru (Nocturnal)
PC Triple Five Tsunami (Fadeout)
2002 Amiga Scrimm (Spaceballs) Masse Lego (Nocturnal)
PC Thermo Plastique (INF)
2003 Combined World Domination (Odd) LOL 2K (Neon & Lug00ber)
2004 Combined Our Demo (Outracks) Nemesis (Excess & Kvasigen)
2005 Combined Meet The Biots (Portal Process) Cubism 2 (Kvasigen)
2006 Combined Animal Attraction (ASD) Smoke This (Portal Posse)

[edit] Trivia

  • TG is also an abbreviation for (among others) Târgu-Mureş, a Romanian city. This leads to several Romanians joining #tg at EFnet (TG's official IRC channel) expecting to find other Romanians there. At some point, this actually went far enough that many of the #tg regulars have a pre-recorded message in Romanian explaining the situation and the channel's intent, as few of the Romanians knew English well enough for a proper explanation.

[edit] References

  • Tasajarvi, Lassi (2004). Demoscene: The Art of Real-time. Even Lake Studios. ISBN 952-91-7022-X. pages 45-54.

[edit] External links

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