[whizzter]

I don't think that the time investment (per-se) is the biggest issue for the demoscene, 64k is the most time consuming category in many ways but also becoming a niche _again_ today.

It'd be easy to write an essay on it, but pirates games and cracktros not being as visible in the days of cheap games, copy/lan parties as focal points of computer usage in the 80s/90s, lan party consolidation and separation of demoscene from lan parties, _lack_ of funding for commercial graphics programming (games) before y2k in Scandinavia compared to available talent, inflexibility of early 3d accelerators were all factors in making the demoscene a thing and later it's decline.