The demoscene can be an utterly useless experience to have. Who cares about what you can do in 1024 bytes? On the other hand, the scene is like a secret society. Sceners give other sceners work opportunities, and recommend each other for projects. I’ve heard stories from sceners going to a job interview, mentioned their demogroup, and basically got the job. “Yeah nice demos man, you can start monday”.
Some huge companies were born as demoscene groups. DICE came from The Silents. IO Interactive came from Cryonics. The IT-company TAT started as Yodel. And there are individual sceners who have managed to become “famous” on their own. Famous in the sense of getting plenty of recognition within a specific field or in the mainstream.
The purpose of this list is not to make a general “this is what sceners are doing outside of the scene” (check Scener Release list, demosceners on Wikipedia, old-ish list of sceners in the games industry) but to show examples of people who managed to go from the scene and do something out of the ordinary.
The entries on this list have not been scrutinized and researched as much other texts here, such as the Timeline. Please report any errors you might find, and feel free to suggest new additions by commenting or mailing (faxATgoto80DOTcom). And please get in touch if you want your name removed from this list.
Big thanks for the help: Akira, Tempest, Deadguy, Stage7, lug00ber, S. Alexander Reed, Inigo Quilez, Alex Evans, Mistigris, Bryface, Fine Cut Bodies, Kaneel, uucidl, Paniq, Glenn Lunder, Mordi, Hunter Chorey, Saga Musix, Kuba Winnicki, Rez, the Pouet-tweeter, Henri Toivonen, Bent Stamnes, iLKke, Simon Carless, evil paul, David Weinehall, Markku Reunanen, Esko Ahonen, Amplitude Problem, Øistein Eide, Tim Koch, Gargaj, Juan Irming, Toni Kurkimäki, shawnphase, RadiantX, Velo, HP, d0us, Hedning, Saku Lehtinen, Steve Anthony Williams, Fini Alring, Jaro Janto, Niezly Jakub, all the people in the Demoscene FB-group, Jari Jaanto, DeeKay, Kris, Kovacm, Frost, and even more.
Audio & Music
The late 90’s scene spawned quite a few semi-famous IDM-artists. Brothomstates (Dune/Orange sometimes together with Yolk/Parallax) have released IDM on Warp and are part of the TPOLM-universe in the scene. Bogdan Raczynski (Karl) released on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex Records, but started in the tracker scene as Karl. The label Merck released sceners and sceneroids like Lackluster (Distance/TPOLM), Ilkae, Blamstrain, Vim, Machinedrum, Frank and Bill, md (Mellow-D/TPOLM), Xhale, Crankshaft (Yolk/TPOLM), Tim Koch (Serkul/Cydonia).
Adam Skorupa (Scorpik/Pulse, Poland) – a composer and sound designer famous foremost in Poland.
Alek Száhala (Apofis/TDC, Finland) reached some fame with his Hard NRG music in the 00’s.
Alexander Odden (Flipside/Nazareth, Norway) is in Pegboard Nerds.
Anders Carlsson (Goto80/HT^UP, Sweden) that’s me doing this list and I’ve made some stuff.
Anders Johansson (Static/Rebels, Sweden) is an editor in the film industry.
Andrew Sega (Necrös/FM, USA) of the synthpop group IRIS. In this video he talks about the scene stuff.
Anthony Rother (Anthony R/Online) made music and almost went to the Venlo party december 1988.
Attila Fodor (Poacher) does music as Fine Cut Bodies.
Axel Hedfors (Quazar, Sweden) is Axwell in Swedish House Mafia.
Bas Bron (Strike/Axis) makes music as Bastian, De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig, etc.
Bjørn Lynne (Dr. Awesome/Crusaders, Norway) works with music for games and other media.
Charles Deenen (TMC, Netherlands) formed Maniacs of Noise, has worked at EA, and works with games and movies.
Chris Coady (Christopher Robin/Trance, USA) is a well-established music producer working with bands like Beach House and !!!.
Christian Morgenstern (Christian Morgenstern/Covert Action Team^Essence, Germany) became a big techno artist in the 1990’s.
Cliff Lothar, a newly hyped electro artist, has a scene background but maybe I’m not supposed to tell…
Daniel Hansson (Matrix/Zone 45, Sweden) co-founded the synthesizer company Elektron.
Den Svenska Björnstammen, a Grammy-award winning Swedish pop group, have two members from the scene: Sombie/Tazadum and Buzzie/Syntax Terror.
Dubmood (Dubmood/Razor1911, Sweden/France) runs the label Data Airlines and works full-time with music.
Erez Eisen (Erez Eisen, Israel) is in Infected Mushroom‘s and used to make MOD and S3M music.
Frédéric Motte (Moby/Dreamdealers^Sanity, France) works with game music and studio music.
Fredrik Segerfalk (Moppe/Oneway) runs Analog Sweden and recently crowdfunded 25,000 euros.
Guillaume Leroux (Lunatic Asylum/Quartex/Paradox) became famous in hard trance with Meltdown in 1993 and then made more stuff.
Gustaf Grefberg (Lizardking/Alcatraz, Sweden) made game music for e.g Wolfenstein and Syndicate.
Hans van Vliet (Hunz, Australia) formed the videogame band 7bit hero and works with music.
Jamie Watts aka Kilowatts and Skeetaz (Purple People Eater/Mirage, USA) releases techno, IDM, breakbeat, etc.
Janne Suni (Tempest/Fairlight) became famous when Timbaland sampled Acidjazzed Evening.
Jesper Kyd (Jesper Kyd/The Silents, Denmark) works with soundtracks for games and movies.
Joakim Cosmo (Jucke/Judas, Sweden) is a well-known techno/house DJ in Sweden and Denmark.
Jochen Hippel (Mad Max/The Exceptions, Germany) worked on game music for a while and then ??
Johan Antoni (Nibbel, Sweden) founded the famous Swedish music store Jam and makes music as Urban Electro Squad
Jonne Valtonen (Purple Motion/Future Crew) makes music for games, theaters, orchestras, etc.
Joris de Man (Scavenger, Netherlands) was in the Atari scene and now makes game music.
Jouni Helminen (Dharma, Finland) released drum n’ bass on Moving Shadow in the 00’s sometimes together with fellow scener Prob.
Juan Irming (7an/SYNC, Sweden) makes music as Amplitude Problem.
Juha Kujanpää (Dizzy/CNCD, Finland) is sort of famous in folk music.
Kenneth Graham (KG, USA) is a serial entrepreneur and was a prominent DJ in the Los Angeles area in the 90’s and 00’s.
Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz (Wierza/Venture, Poland) is a freelance composer, well established in Poland.
Logic Bomb‘s original members were the Amiga-sceners Jonez and Thug, who made the European Top 20 diskmag. Jonez was also in Byterapers and Triad.
Markus Kaarlonen (Captain/Frantic, Finland) made eurodisco for Dance Nation in the 1990’s, smurf hits and then Poets of the Fall. Also works at Futuremark.
Martin Iveson (Nuke/Anarchy aka Spaceman/Lemon) now makes records and game music.
Martyn (911/Movement, Netherlands) is quite big in bass music.
Matt Simmonds (4-mat/Anarchy) “invented chipmods” and has made music for many games.
Mattias Ziessow (Hellhound) plays in one of the more famous Swedish pop-EBM bands, Spark!.
Muffler (Muffler, Finland) is a big name in drum n’ bass.
Oskar Stål (Flamingo/Light, Sweden) is the CTO of Spotify.
Oskari Tammelin (Phantom/Jeskola?, Finland) made the Jeskola Buzz music software.
Patrick Lindsey (Bass/The Silents, Germany) is a techno DJ and producer.
Paul Harris (member of BBC) is part of the house duo Dirty Vegas who got a big hit in 2003.
Raphael Gesqua (Audiomonster/Melon Dezign, France) makes music for games, movies, etc.
Ronny Pries (Ronny/Teklords^Farbrausch, Germany) has released techno on labels like Forte and Superstition.
Rune RK (Spaze/GiGA Prod) is a music producer who’s worked with eg Coldplay and Nicki Minaj.
Slusnik Luna (included Strobo/Stellar, Finland) reached the UK top 40 in 2001 with the track Sun.
Tim Jackiw (Mel/Pearl, Australia) is now big in minimal techno.
Thomas Detert (X-ample Architecture) was a famous C64-composer and then made mainstream success with the eurodisco group Activate.
Thomas J. Bergersen (Lioz/Index) has worked with big mainstream artists with his Two Steps From Hell company.
Toasty (Damo/Reservoir Gods, UK) was doing dubstep very early, and used to be a scene coder.
Tomas Danko (Danko/Fairlight) became famous with Starchild, worked at DICE, and now works with beer.
Ural 13 Diktators (Finland) started as a music group on the Amiga under the same name.
Øistein Eide (Øistein Eide, Norway) deejays and produces as Boom Jinx.
Design & Visuals
Andrzej Dragan (Dreamer/Flying Cows) is a famous portrait photographer.
Balazs Kiss (Ward/Enlightenment, Hungary) used to organize the RAGE parties and now works as with lighting and effects for movies like Hobbit and Avatar.
Frauke Bönsch (Fashion/Farbrausch, Germany) is an award-winning photographer.
Íñigo Quílez (Iq/RGBA) is famous for his tiny demos and has worked for eg Pixar and received a VES-award for his work.
Irfan Celik (Ivan/Smash Designs, Germany) does 3D work for major Hollywood movies.
Janne Kontkanen (Olwi/Carillon^Complex, Finland) has done major research in computer graphics and was part of a team that won a technical Oscar.
Melon Dezign became Melon Dezign.
Misko Iho (Pixel/Future Crew) is an award-winning film director and music video producer.
Oliver Gaspirtz (OMG/Amok, Germany/USA) did the first C64 diskmag and is now a cartoonist.
Peter Baustaedter (J.O.E/Scoopex^TRSI) makes visual effects for movies.
Rune Spaans (Sparkler/Megastyle, Norway) did VFX for the low-budget hit movie Troll Hunter.
Szabolcs Menyhei (Inferno/Haujobb) works with 3D graphics for movies like Godzilla and Ant-man.
Thomas Abrahamsson (Bluestar/SYNC, Sweden) founded Elfwood, the largest website for fantasy art.
Thomas Obermaier (Pro/Nuance) makes tools for visual effects, popular in the movie industry.
Thomas Pringle (Dr. Zulu/GiGA Prod) works with illustration and concepts for games and movies like Cloud Atlas and Bioshock 2.
Games
Andreas Varga (Mr. SID/HVSC Crew, Austria/Netherlands) does engine code for Guerilla Games (Killzone etc)
Ari Seppä (Duce/Extend, Finland) works for Rovio on Angry Birds as a GFX artist
Alex Evans (Statix/TPOLM) founded Media Molecule and worked with games like Little Big Planet.
Bugbear was formed by members from Byterapers.
Christophe Balestra (Oxbab/Oxygene) is the co-president at Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us)
Daniel Scott (Dan/Anarchy) started at Core in 1991 and has since then worked on many games.
DICE was formed out of The Silents, and many sceners work there today.
Funcom involved many sceners.
Gerhard Seiler (Photon/Lazer, Austria) and Harald Riegler (Energizer/Lazer, Austria) formed Sproing, one of the larger independent game development studios in Europe.
Grand cru (Finland) was formed by sceners like Ilkka Paananen and Markus Pasula.
Housemarque (Finland) was a merger of Bloodhouse (created by Bloodsuckers) and Terramarque (created by CNCD).
IO Interactive was formed out of Cryonics.
Jaakko Iisalo (Croaker/Halcyon, Finland) made Angry Birds with music by Ari Pulkkinen (Djartz).
Jim Malmros (Jimbo, Sweden) has worked for IO and DICE on games like Hitman and Battlefield.
Lasse Louhento (Kube/CNCD) is Game Lead at Supercell (Clash of Clans)
Magnus Sjöberg (Pantaloon/Fairlight, Sweden) is lead engine developer for Battlefield at Electronic Arts
Matt Svoboda (Smash/Fairlight) worked at Sony for 9 years.
Olof Gustafsson (Blaizer/TBL^The Silents) works with game audio.
Remedy was formed by members from Future Crew (PC), Scoopex (Amiga), Aggression (Atari) among others.
Shin’en Multimedia was formed by Abyss.
Simon Carless (Hollywood or h0l) is an established figure in the video games industry, writing and organizing events.
Starbreeze Studios grew out of the scene group Triton.
Straylight Productions (USA) was a game music group with Basehead, Necrös and Siren.
Sumea, the Finnish game company, grew out of Virtual Dreams.
Tatu Blomberg (Mr. Sex/Byterapers, Finland) worked on some major games. Also other Byterapers in the same company: sivu and t.o.b.
Politics and activism
Kim Dotcom (Kim Schmitz, Bitbug, Germany) who since Megaupload is a famous piracy/activist/entrepreneur. In the 1990’s he was a not very well-liked warez d00d who ran the BBS House of Coolness.
Peter Sunde (Nike/Craze, TRSI, Fairlight, Sweden) co-founded The Pirate Bay and has ever since been a sort of activist.
Tamas Polgar (Tomcat, Hungary) wrote the Freax book series, and is a well-known in Hungary for his radical nationalist/libertarian (?) activism that has led to several arrests.
The Bureau for Piracy (Sweden) that preceded The Pirate Bay involved several people with a connection to the scene, like CyberC.
Tony Krvaric (Strider/Fairlight, Sweden/USA) is a republican politician in USA.
Troed Sångberg (Red Fox/SYNC, Sweden) is one of the top men of the Swedish Pirate Party, and also works for Sony… as a futurist?
Code and Hardware
Adam Dunkels (Trident/Active) pioneered the Internet of Things.
Chris Heilman (Cupid/Hitmen) was an dev evangelist at Mozilla and later moved on to Microsoft.
Futuremark was formed out of the scene groups Future Crew and Mature Furk.
Haxx was formed out of Horizon.
Linus Walleij aka King Fisher/TRIAD is one of the top Linux kernel developers.
Massimino Pascal (Skal/Bomb, France) is a senior software engineer at Google.
Mike Hanney (Zam Diesel/NeXT, Sweden) founded the softsynth company AudioRealism.
Mikko Mononen (Memon/Moppi, Finland) is lead AI programmer at Crytek.
Nicolas Stefani (Miko/Tiny Toons) was rated in the top-100 coders in France.
Tomasz Pytel was one of the main coders of PayPal, and was active in the scene as Tran.
Yodel, a PC/Amiga group, founded TAT that was sold to Blackberry for 150 million dollars.
Jari Jaanto (Jaffa/Static, Finland) co-founded IRC-Galleria, the largest social media in Finland during the 00’s.
Art
Tommi Musturi (Electric/Extend, Finland) makes comic books and art, and has received Finland’s biggest comics prize.
Bengt Sjölén (Redhead/SYNC, Sweden) is an artist and serial entrepreneur and has exhibited his work at MOMA in New York.
Academics
Fredrik Kahl (Gollum/Fairlight) is a professor in computer vision, image analysis, etc.
Keijo Heljanko (Cable/Complex) works as an associate professor at Aalto University in the same department as Slayer/Scoopex.
Mårten Björkman (Celebrandil/Phenomena, Sweden) is a professor in computer science, focused on computer vision and robotics.
Markku Reunanen aka Marq/Dekadence^Fit is a lecturer and one of the most active demoscene researchers.
Niklas Beisert (Pascal/Cubic Team, Switzerland) wrote Cubic Player and is an associate professor in mathematical physics.
Perttu Hämäläinen (Farqu/Nikki Corruptions, Finland) is the professor of game design at Aalto university and the founder of the Virtual Air Guitar Company.
Tommi Junttila (Slayer/Scoopex, Finland) is an algorithm researcher and a university lecturer at Aalto University
Various
Daan Veldhuizen (Screes/RBi, Netherlands) has made acclaimed documentaries.
Denis Moschitto (MerlinM/Scoopex^Nuance, Germany) is a somewhat famous actor in Germany.
Jukka O. Kauppinen (Grendel/Byterapers, Finland) is one of the more famous tech journalists in Finland.
Oliver Borgardt (Cosmic/Nuance, Germany) pioneered 3D-printed jewelry.
Todo?
PRI/Oxyron released some records.
Shogoon was/is a classical guitarist?
Romeo Knight.
Check this and the demosceners category at wikipedia
This about sceners in games production
Darude used FT2, but was he in the scene?
Maybe David Fincher?
Rumour has it that Ulf in Ace of Base did Amiga music for the scene?
Goodiepal was supposedly involved in the scene?
Black Dog Productions reportedly made some demos.
Firefox/PHA works with mainstream music.
Urban Shakedown?
Coldcut and Bomb the Bass (etc).
Saku Lehtinen mentioned: “Hybrid Graphics (later NVidia) and ATI etc.”
Megasnail is a Doctor of Politics, Steve of Zenith is Doctor twice over in both social and clinical psychology,
Emmanuel Top?
CHIPFLIP 
June 12, 2015 at 9:35 pm |
“Melon Dezign became Melon Dezign”
Love it haha :D
June 13, 2015 at 9:57 am |
Cool! “a big shot in physics” link leads to undefined action.
June 14, 2015 at 8:01 am |
Danko works as head brewer for a Stockholm based microbrewery at the time of writing. He did work in the games industry a few years ago though.
Starbreeze was founded by members of Triton. Keops/Equinox worked(?) at Ubisoft (Far Cry 2). Cupid/Hitmen was an evangelist at Mozilla for quite a few years, and is now working for Microsoft on their Spartan project in an unspecified role (as reported by IT news outlets).
June 14, 2015 at 11:13 am |
The game-studio Starbreeze started out as Triton (famous for the demo Crystal Dreams 2 and Fast Tracker)
The finish game-studio Remedy was founded in 1995 by demoscene members from groups such as Future Crew.
Tomas Danko also made the classic rave-tune Starchild (wish is most often missed labeled as being made by Dune) he currently works at CAP as a brew-master however, making beer! (used to work for dice)
TAT (yodel) was bought by RIM (blackberry) a few years ago. They are however now closing there offices in Malmö and Göteborg.
June 14, 2015 at 4:51 pm |
There are tons of (ex-)demosceners who work in the games industry, but from a top of my head a few high profiles are:
– Oxbab/Oxygene (Christophe Balestra) is co-president at Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us)
– Kube/CNCD (Lasse Louhento) is Game Lead at Supercell (Clash of Clans)
– Statix/TPOLM (Alex Evans) was one of the founders of Media Molecule (Little Big Planet)
June 15, 2015 at 5:04 am |
“Danko/Fairlight works with sound at DICE?” — he is also known as Starchild, who made the track – you guessed it – Starchild.
June 15, 2015 at 8:48 am |
King Fisher/TRIAD is nowadays one of the top Linux kernel developers.
June 15, 2015 at 10:21 am |
Think Omega Supreme was involved with the Opera browser early on.
June 15, 2015 at 10:36 am |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Coady
aka ‘christopher robin’ of the mid 90s group trance, an old friend of mine
also ctrl-f ‘virt’ NOT FOUND
June 15, 2015 at 6:20 pm |
Maybe a stupid question, but I’ll take my chances :) –> Did Virt do scene stuff? I guess his music has been in demos, but… yeah, would you consider him to be a scener?
June 15, 2015 at 2:54 pm |
Captain / Frantic is now in the band Poets of the Fall and produced dance music during the 90’s as Dance Nation.
June 15, 2015 at 3:00 pm |
Strobo / Stellar is the other half of electronic music act Slusnik Luna (their track “Sun” was a big hit in 2000)
June 15, 2015 at 7:32 pm |
you should check out the post at facebook’s demoscene group – there’s plenty of updates following up to the post mentioning this blog-entry ▲
June 15, 2015 at 7:41 pm |
also, christian morgenstern, who was half of covert action team/essence on amiga made it big in the techno-scene until his sadly early passing. (http://www.discogs.com/artist/4292-Christian-Morgenstern)
June 15, 2015 at 8:58 pm |
Also, the narc, Kimble… his BBS was not called House of Card but House of Coolness.
June 15, 2015 at 9:17 pm |
right, thanks!
June 16, 2015 at 1:36 am |
Mr. Müsli/Tulou is a co-founder of Flightradar24.com
June 16, 2015 at 8:53 am |
here are infos about people from Atari demo scene: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=5475 (a little bit old infos from ~2005.)
– Niko / MJJ : Ubi Soft Canada (not EA !), Montreal
– Bigfoot / MJJ : Microsoft (if I’m not wrong) in Dublin/Ireland
– Zappy / Holocaust : physics stuff for a game development company
– Erik Simon (ES of TEX) is one of top developers in JoWood
– Richard Karsmakers (Cronos of Quartermass Experiment) is now a Teacher of I.T.
– Michael Raasch (Daryl of TEX) works as a programmer for a large german bank (although on last talking to him he’s now in England)
– Stefan Posthume (Digital Insanity of TLB) was working for E.A. in America
– Tim Moss (Manikin of TLB) was/is working for what was 989 Studios and is now Sony Interactive in America (lead programmer “God Of War”)
– David Moss (Spaz of TLB) was working freelance gfx for games and for Argonaut Games until they closed before christmas.
– Marc Rosocha (Marc of Gigabyte Crew) has his own company called Eclipse they did work on Atari Jaguar, PSOne and Nuon (grandson of Jaguar) and now are doing something in mobile phones or something.
– Jochen Hippel (Mad Max) was working in accounting or something, nothing in music except for private work.
ST-Connexion group:
– Alien works for AMD in the US, got a PhD in AI
– Ajrarn is working for a document management company in England, got a PhD in Document Management
– Belzebub works for Siemens in Germany, making cell phones
– Marlon has his own company making Palm software in France
– Krazy Rex has his own gfx company (Fly Bumbax) in Brazil
– Vantage works for Philip Morris, in France
– Nic’s / TCB : working for a physics company IIRC
NeXT group:
– Mit, is currently working in Canada at Electronic Arts.
– Chromix was working lastly at Paris on the game “Bet on Soldiers” as lead programmer
– Dbug, in Norway working on the game Age of Conan
– MrPink /RG working at EA UK
– Griff / RG working at EA UK
– Donald Fakk: Consulting as a low-level programmer/developer.
– Illegal Exception: General systems development consulting.
– Lobo: A.D. at Starbreeze studios.
– Metal Guru: Develops business systems for the graphical industry.
– Mouseman: Consulting mainly in Java/J2EE.
– Zam Diesel: Has his own business in the field of sound synthesis/emulation (AudioRealism).
– Zork: Runs a web site for price comparisons in Austria (Geizhals).
June 16, 2015 at 11:26 am |
Anders Bukh (Static/Rebels) is in film industry, worked in Breaking the Waves http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1064860/
June 16, 2015 at 11:46 am |
Important additions:
– Ari Seppä (Duce/Extend, Finland) works for Rovio on Angry Birds as a GFX artist
– Sparkler/Megastyle Inc (Norway) did VFX for the international small-budget hit “Trollhunter”
– Irfan Celik (Ivan/Smash Designs, Germany) does 3D work for major Hollywood titles (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1629556/ )
June 16, 2015 at 11:51 am |
Some more:
– Andreas Varga (Mr. SID/HVSC Crew, Austria) does engine code for Guerilla Games (Killzone etc)
– Magnus Sjöberg (Pantaloon/Fairlight, Sweden) is lead engine developer for Battlefield at Electronic Arts
June 18, 2015 at 10:55 am |
You’re missing Bas Bron aka Strike from Axis (AX – AXS – A), Capitol, Origin (OGN), Stash, Vicious (VCS). He is the musical genius behind ‘Bastian’ and ‘De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig’.
Bastian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mKfOOKBbCc
De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJuKZdHyjo8
June 18, 2015 at 6:18 pm |
Ah yes, of course! Thanks! Bastian is also mentioned on this (oddly named) page: https://chipflip.wordpress.com/plagiarism/
:)
June 19, 2015 at 1:47 pm |
some more:
Crome/SAC is the singer of Thrash Metal band Space Chaser
Dalezy/Triad has releases on Underscan Records and Binkcrsh Records
Necros/FM is playing with Iris and Stromkern
Mellow D/FM has releases on Merck and Blasé
Jeroen Tel (WAVE) has made music for Games
Basehead/FM has made music for Games
Siren/KFMF has made music for Games
June 24, 2015 at 12:05 pm |
More: Juan Linietsky made music as Reduz. He also developed Cheesetracker and Chibitracker. Now on Argentinian Game Industry (Codenix, OKAM Studio)
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/juan-linietsky/3/120/8a8
June 28, 2015 at 12:50 pm |
Thomas Detert (of X-Ample Architectures) had commercial success with a Euro-Dance band “Activate” and then with the band “666”. See: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activate
There is also a music video with Thomas in it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SIbLZ2kCqU (he is the guy in the red shirt)
July 8, 2015 at 12:16 am |
Cool, just stumbled over this. Lots of familiar names ;).
Gerhard Seiler (Photon/Lazer) and myself, Harald Riegler (Energizer/Lazer) formed Sproing. Today it’s one of the larger independent game development studios in Europe (Vienna, Austria).
Bleick Bleicken (McFly/Lazer and other groups) is now Art Director at the Game Developer Deep Silver Fishlabs Hamburg.
Erik Simon (already mentioned above) is a game producer at IME in Hamburg
July 8, 2015 at 12:29 am |
Also, Maxx-Out/Eko (Benjamin Lalisse) founded Paris video game developer Ekosystem.
I believe Major X/ Eko (David Gallardo) co-founded The Paris game studio called Wizarbox. He then went on to Work for Ubisoft in Canada, but I’m not sure what he does today.
July 8, 2015 at 12:34 am |
Dierk Ohlerich (Chaos/Farbrausch; before: Chaos/Sanity) cofounded the studio 49Games in Hamburg. He then went on to work for games company Bigpoint I believe, but I’m not sure what he does today.
July 14, 2015 at 7:42 pm |
JDigital of i2pi (Australian demogroup) is founder and CEO of Simple, a pretty successful almost-bank in the US.
July 14, 2015 at 7:48 pm |
jdigital/i2pi (.au demogroup) is cofounder and CEO of Simple, an American banking startup that grew very fast and was recently bought by BBVA.
July 14, 2015 at 10:22 pm |
Volker Tripp (Jester/Sanity, Germany), famous for elysium.mod, eventually became a lawyer and is defending a free Internet at digitalegesellschaft.de
July 15, 2015 at 1:45 am |
Jedi/Sector-One is quite famous in the InfoSec world: https://00f.net/
November 13, 2015 at 11:22 am |
[…] published the rough blog post draft Famous People who Came From the Scene I received hundreds of suggestions of sceners who moved on to the music charts, the cinema, the […]
November 13, 2015 at 8:14 pm |
guillaume leroux, aka lunatic asylum/quartex made it quite big as musician, going by the same name – lunatic asylum (the meltdown should ring a bell for most).
June 27, 2016 at 1:16 pm |
There are a few ones from Hungary:
* Fanthomas / Unique PC (coder) has founded Clever’s Games and later moved to work at Crytek, currently he’s the CTO of Crytek Hungary
* Brix / Dilemma and nap / Dilemma (coders) was also in Clever’s and working now at Crytek HU
* pohar / HARDREAD (coder) was working at NNG, now coding at Bosch
* tmt / Bi0HaZard (artist, coder) was also a founder at Clever’s Games, later working at Digital Reality, now at NNG
* Poison / Singular Crew (graphic artist) was at Clever’s Games now at Neocore Games
* pozitron / Bi0HaZard (musician) was at Clever’s Games, now working at Leonar3do
* jimmi / TGD (coder) was at NNG and then at Google
* Remage / Fresh (coder) was at NNG, now in game developement
* reptile / Astroidea (coder) was at Digital Reality
* Rendall (artist) was at Clever’s Games, now self employed
* unreal / Faculty (graphic artist) is in game developement
* VaVa / Atomik (coder) was at NNG
* Neutron (3d artist) was at Clever’s Games, later at Crytek, now at Digic
October 11, 2016 at 3:08 pm |
Gargaj / Conspiracy^ÜD works at Perpetuum-Online, a huge online game. BoyC / Conspiracy worked alongside him, though he left to work in NNG (together with TrX/CNS)
Netpoet works in legal, copyright stuff.
I have never amounted to much :))
October 11, 2016 at 5:35 pm |
Haha, not true, I’ll put you in here the next time I update it :)
July 19, 2017 at 11:38 am
nah, didn’t achieve insane fame. i work in online marketing / product management, UX sometimes. still making music, commercially and also as a hobby. but that’s pretty much it, no big news here :)
October 31, 2016 at 5:09 pm |
Famous radio-personality in Norway, Steinar Sagen, reportedly made music on the Amiga under “some silly nickname”, according to himself on the radio show “Radioresepsjonen”.
November 3, 2016 at 10:18 pm |
Oh man those were the days, I miss it so very much.
June 1, 2017 at 8:50 am |
Tristan Lorach seems fit to the list
https://twitter.com/lorachnroll “Computergraphics Engineer at NVIDIA”
October 17, 2018 at 2:25 pm |
Raistlin/Genesis*Project went on to make Destruction Derby, several Test Drive games, Vin Diesel’s Wheelman.. then create his own game studio, Pitbull Studio, sold it to Epic Games – and then made a new studio, Coconut Lizard.
November 28, 2018 at 9:11 pm |
Maybe should mention Brett Paterson aka Firelight who created (of course) firemod aka fmod and then the associated business Firelight Technologies. It’s one of the standard choices for audio libraries and toolsets in game development.
November 28, 2018 at 9:24 pm |
Ah yes, thanks for that!
November 30, 2018 at 5:12 pm |
I think Tokyo Dawn Records has demoscene origins and since branching into VST plugin development (Tokyo Dawn Labs) is pretty well liked in audio production circles. And not sure how famous that is, but Kenet does gaming gfx (Ubisoft, Black Sheep).
January 6, 2019 at 11:51 am |
Puryx (Christian Rønde) is a lead software engineer at Kiloo, makers of Subway Surfers, Unison (Nicklas Schmidt) is a trained classical composer (from the conservatory of St. Petersburg) who scored several films and tv series http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2150083/, Melomaniac (Simon Ravn) also scored films http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1645922/ …
January 6, 2019 at 11:53 am |
And IO derives from Crionics (with an I), not Cryonics. And you could probably put Silents DK in there as well.
January 6, 2019 at 11:56 am |
Raphael Gesqua aka Audiomonster is probably also worth a mention: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1431570/
January 6, 2019 at 12:37 pm |
Pearl/Passion (Martin Glaz Serup) is an acclaimed author in Denmark. https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Glaz_Serup
January 6, 2019 at 7:49 pm |
“Futuremark was formed out of the scene groups Future Crew and Mature Furk.”
I think that is not entirely correct. Maturefurk is a wordplay on Futuremark, and it was basically a demogroup formed by employees of Futuremark.
Futuremark was originally a spinoff of Remedy, which in turn was founded by Future Crew and other sceners, as already mentioned.
If I’m not mistaken, at least some of the people involved in the Maturefurk group were also in Mellow Chips.
January 6, 2019 at 9:12 pm |
As you mentioned a couple of demosceners who have tried to venture into politics: Adok/Hugi is trying to become a candidate for the European Parliament 2019. For more information, see this blog: https://cdvolko-politik.blogspot.com/
May 5, 2019 at 4:20 pm |
* Reko Ukko (Reko/Instant Ejakulation, Finland, graphic artist) worked on some major games, and is one of co-founders of Seriously Digital Entertainment; whose best known for creating Best Fiends.
* Samuli Viikinen (Prager/Fascination^Pulse, Finland, graphic artist) worked for Remedy and co-founded Recoil Games Ltd. Now works at Seriously as a VP in level design.
October 28, 2019 at 9:31 pm |
* Arttu Silvast (Gspot/Bandwagon, Finland, musician) has worked in various jobs (producer, journalist, music editor, community manager) for companies such as Yle, Nokia, and Sanoma. As of 2015, he has returned to making music.
https://www.arttusilvast.com/
January 19, 2023 at 1:54 am |
https://csdb.dk/scener/?id=6641