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The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#11

Post by j45 »

sshine wrote: post #5

I remember showing up at my first LAN party, ~20 years younger than my online friends. They just couldn’t believe I was actually 13. They were really nice. One woman had a son my age that I went to a music festival with when I was 20. Another got me my first job as a programmer. Somehow I just don’t see that kind of stuff happening nowadays; sending your kid off to some unknown destination with his PC to sleep in a g…

The interesting thing that you point out to me is the indirect mentoring / support from someone ahead of you in tech you received simply based on mutual interests.

Sadly there's a lot of segments where juniors want to learn much on their own, often re-learning lessons of the past that could have been put towards more meaningful progress for them in hindsight.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#12

Post by pathartl »

I'm part of a group that still holds 3-4 LAN parties a year with ~16-24 seats. We play mostly older stuff and it's still as fun as it was back then.

Gaming has changed dramatically, but it's not like that old stuff disappeared. Sure, some games don't hold up well in the slightest, but the good ones have. Some favorites are AoE2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Re-Volt, C&C, Natural Selection, Call of Duty, and oh god so much more.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#13

Post by Nextgrid »

pathartl wrote: post #12

I'm part of a group that still holds 3-4 LAN parties a year with ~16-24 seats. We play mostly older stuff and it's still as fun as it was back then. Gaming has changed dramatically, but it's not like that old stuff disappeared. Sure, some games don't hold up well in the slightest, but the good ones have. Some favorites are AoE2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Re-Volt, C&C, Natural Selection, Call of Duty, and oh god so much…

Any love for Crysis (the first one, not the subsequent abominations)?

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#14

Post by ethbr1 »

My last LAN party (20 years ago):

* A few gallons of Code Red = $40

* Having a drive full of the latest cracked games = awesome

* Owning your friends face to face = better than awesome

* Given every game in existence, still playing a 4 hour Risk game because computer dice are bullshit = priceless

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#16

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

When my brother was getting married ~6 years ago, we ended his Bachelor Party with a LAN party.

Sure, we played games we would have normally played at our respective homes (Mostly League of Legends back then), but there's something different about having everyone in one place.

Now, we go to a semi-annual LAN event called PDXLAN [0]. It's an 800+ seat event in Ridgefield, WA (Just outside Portland, OR...it used to be held in Portland, but we out-grew the venue), sponsored by NVIDIA, Intel, MSI, and over a dozen other PC gaming hardware manufacturers. I've been going since 2016 and it's an absolute blast. There are gaming tournaments, but they really try to appeal to casual gamers as much as hardcore competitors. They've been running a Golf With Your Friends tournament at every event for a couple years now, and it's their most participated tournament.

[0] https://www.pdxlan.net/

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#17

Post by enlightens »

I started attending a monthly Halo 3 LAN party last year. It's all flatscreens and current-gen consoles running MCC, and we all have to juggle the schedule around our adult responsibilities now, but it's still such a blast to get together with ~30 people and yell at each other from throughout the house.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#19

Post by unethical_ban »

LANAllNight in Dallas is happening this weekend, it happens twice a year now. 200ish people, good old-school vibe. Minimum red tape.

Quakecon is this July or August in Dallas. Several thousand people. A sight to see, but a lot more bullshit these days, lots of security, metal detectors, etc.

In fact, I'm wearing a Quakecon shirt right now!

LANs even today are so much fun, just to escape reality for 2-3 days and play games, even single-player sometimes while you wait for friends to wake up. I can't stay up til 7am like I used to, no amount of BAWLS will help it.

Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake Live/Quake Champions, Risk of Rain 2, Left 4 Dead 2. Golf With Friends is a fun casual game to unwind with after dinner (pizza) and before hitting the hard stuff.

I predict Helldivers will be popular this year.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#20

Post by unethical_ban »

mikae1 wrote: post #15

I held Quake LAN-party this weekend and it was so damn fun. We played Deathmatch Dimension[1] which is a very recent map pack that's better than anything I played back in the day. We use the Quakespasm Spiked source port. [1] https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/dmd.html

There is a LAN this weekend that may be interested in this... Thanks!
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