Evoke

Competitions

Competitions are the beating heart of Evoke and the demoscene itself. They are the reason why we gather, cheer and stay up late at night polishing code, pixels, samples and shaders. Behind the scenes of every party, you will find a passionate crew of beam team and compo organizers making sure that your creations shine on the Bigscreen. It feels magical when it all comes together, and we warmly invite you to be part of this experience.

Take a look at our competition list and see what fits your passion! You don’t need to be a pro, and you don’t need to know anyone – if you’ve made something cool, we would love to see (or hear) it.

General Rules

In case of questions concerning these rules or the competitions at Evoke simply get in touch with us.

  • The usage of third-party content is prohibited, unless you are legally permitted to use particular third-party assets. This explicitly excludes AI-generated content, see below.
  • (Generative) AI content will be disqualified as part of the preselection process. Usage of AI is prohibited. Entries containing AI content that pass preselection do so by accident, not endorsement, and are still violating the rules. For more details, see the rules of the individual compos.
  • The competitor must be present at the party (except for the ANSI/ASCII and 3D Scene competitions). In case of a group production, at least one member of the group must be present. Every attendee may contribute with a maximum of one entry for each compo.
  • The music composer is not allowed to be registered with any copyright society. This includes, but is not limited to, all member societies of BIEM. Please get in touch with us in case of doubts prior to taking part in a compo.
  • Entries must not have been released before and they must be handed in before each deadline.
  • The organizers have the right to cancel a compo if there aren’t enough competitors.
  • There will be a preselection if there are too many entries for a compo (for details see below).
  • You have to agree that we’ll spread your contribution (e.g. through scene.org or other sites).
  • You may submit a screenshot for your release.
  • The organizers reserve the right to make changes to the competition rules and to disqualify any entry which is not suitable for the compo for any reason. This includes anything violating german or international law.

Preselection

In compos which are potentially crammed (like the music compos), preselection is a necessary evil. Of course, it is understandable that every participant wants to present his song over the party’s PA to the audience. Yet it is not much of a benefit if the audience is no longer receptive after half of the compo - assuming that all entered songs get played. Evoke’s MP3/OGG compo attracts between 30 and 50 entries each year, and playing all of them would not only exhaust the audience, but also make our timetable explode (more than usual anyways ;-) ).

So, preselection is inevitable. Yet, we at Evoke want to make this process as transparent and fair as possible, so that your entries get an equal chance. We believe that as a musician who invests hard work into a song, you deserve to have detailed insight into the preselection mechanism.

The following preselection model is used at Evoke for music compos with over 15-16 entries (such as the MP3/OGG compo):

  • Four people get chosen shortly before the party to be the preselection team. The nomination follows the principle of having a preselection team consisting of individuals with very contrary musical tastes, so that ideally no style of music gets discriminated. Also, the team members have different “professional” approaches to music: ideally there should be three musicians (two scene musicians and one “reallife” musician) and one “consumer”. The names of the preselection team members are not being disclosed to the public to protect them against harassment from disappointed musicians, yet participants can be assured that the preselection team is composed with the aim to give your music the most weighted judgement.
  • After the deadline for submission is elapsed, the preselection team gets summoned to listen through the entries in a separate room. Without communicating with each other and without knowing who composed the songs, they write down a value between 1 (worst) and 5 (best) for each song they listen to. The preselection team members are requested to value the songs not only according to their personal musical taste, but also judging the composer’s productions skills and the grade of uniqueness/innovation.
  • After the listening session, the music compo head collects the votes and counts the points for each entry. The 15-16 songs which collected the highest amount of points are thus chosen to be played to the audience.
  • Unlike some other demoparties, we will NOT spread your entry if it didn’t pass the preselection, so it is not counted as “released” and thus can be entered at any other party. So your hard work was not in vain, even if your entry didn’t get played to the audience.