I don't think the lack of LAN support is really that big of a deal - you can still go to a friend's house and play together in a private game while using game servers. In fact, I'm doing that today - bringing my laptop and playing Humankind with friends at their house. I think that still counts as a LAN party in spirit.
Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
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Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#22Ahh the careless and hopeful days... Blissfully ignorant that paradise wouldn't last.
Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#23I think the comment that it was harder to be an asshole because someone would just ask you to leave (physically! With your equipment!) is quite relevant. It’s way too easy to be a jerk online now. There was a real magic to LANs at one time, and these photos certainly bring back memories. University and college dorms were pretty fun too, I imagine their LANs are quite locked down now and only serve as an isp to the in…
> I think the comment that it was harder to be an asshole because someone would just ask you to leave (physically! With your equipment!) is quite relevant. It’s way too easy to be a jerk online now.
Maybe the big difference is that you would do a LAN party with friends, whereas you would play online mostly with unknown people.
Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#24I have so many great memories from the 90s attending small copy parties in Sweden - it's what we called them back then, before they became known as LAN parties.
Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#25Gaming companies contributed to the death of LAN parties too. They killed the "split-screen" gameplay that would support 2-4 players on the same machine. They wanted each player to require their own copy of the game. They killed LAN support, forcing you to play on their servers. Culturally we saw a shift towards social isolation. People are more comfortable talking over a mic.
Split screen was never a part of lan parties. The reason why lan parties stopped was because it was hard to move a tower around. Even during that period it was much easier to go to a lanshop and play there either as in lan or on the proto cloud servers they had. Many fond memories of early battle.net and much fewer of steam.
Agree with your 1st statement, I dont think split screen had anything to do with LAN parties. There was no network with split screen.
However I don't think LAN died because of tower size. Maybe towers got a tad bigger at some point, but monitors got way thinner. I've done a few LAN parties on laptop even. I think they just died because it was easier to play over global network, and subsequently LAN mode disappear from games.
Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#26Gaming companies contributed to the death of LAN parties too. They killed the "split-screen" gameplay that would support 2-4 players on the same machine. They wanted each player to require their own copy of the game. They killed LAN support, forcing you to play on their servers. Culturally we saw a shift towards social isolation. People are more comfortable talking over a mic.
Split screen was never a part of lan parties. The reason why lan parties stopped was because it was hard to move a tower around. Even during that period it was much easier to go to a lanshop and play there either as in lan or on the proto cloud servers they had. Many fond memories of early battle.net and much fewer of steam.
The Internet killed the LAN party
Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#27Ahh the careless and hopeful days... Blissfully ignorant that paradise wouldn't last.
"I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them."
Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#28Wow. I actually had to double-check if those are really not pictures from our LANs. I guess there really was a stereotypical look :D
lol same. having done this only a few times, i was shocked to see that this is how it looked everywhere else too
Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#29So much nostalgia. Does anyone remember the Frozen cd piracy sets that used to float around at LAN parties? They were awesome man.
Re: Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Split screen was never a part of lan parties. The reason why lan parties stopped was because it was hard to move a tower around. Even during that period it was much easier to go to a lanshop and play there either as in lan or on the proto cloud servers they had. Many fond memories of early battle.net and much fewer of steam.
The Internet killed the LAN party
In addition to the argument that "I can just play online with my friends", I'd also add that many games started to require internet in order to play. Around that same time, many host venues did not have enough bandwidth to support everyone playing online reliably at once.