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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

#91

Post by nbenitezl »

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…

I like Re-Volt. I've tried to play Re-Volt on the SteamDeck but I've been unable to get the controls right, the default configuration does not work.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#92

Post by hasoleju »

These pictures are a flashback to my youth. Back in the time the limiting factor of how many friends could join the LAN Party where the switches. I remember the time a friend of mine bought a 12 port switch. That opened up a whole new level of gaming. With 12 friends now being cramed in a room.

An of course. Every LAN Party went on for the whole night.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#93

Post by pyinstallwoes »

rickdeckard wrote: post #72

I think it shouldn't be left out that the audience of LAN-parties were not people who just played games . It was a "PC-community", people really focused on their PC. Its hardware, its OS, how to squeeze as much power as possible out of it. The perfect CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT for each game, which hardware to use/buy next etc. And THEN they played games. But they also hung out with like-minded people, exchanged alo…

Yeah, at the same LAN parties we'd also talk about installing Slackware or some new obscure Gentoo stage 1 install.

But man, when you used to have to buy Half-Life to play Counter-Strike. Those were the days. Heck, member' when CS had no recoil? Those were the days.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#94

Post by KJBweb »

nbenitezl wrote: post #91
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…

I like Re-Volt. I've tried to play Re-Volt on the SteamDeck but I've been unable to get the controls right, the default configuration does not work.

Theres a community controller layout you can apply under controller settings which works great.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#96

Post by sshine »

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #58
lmm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gym hall with some strangers from “The Internet”. Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both. Parents were sane back then, it's today that they've gone crazy. They watch too much news and keep their kids caged up, and end up doing far m…

The massive irony here is that the internet itself has become a much more dangerous place for kids than itself or going outside ever was. Particularly when it comes to mental health, parents don’t let their kids go out but the same parents put no parental controls or at the very least, screen time limits on their devices.

> the internet itself has become a much more dangerous place for kids

There used to be a joke about the Internet:

Where men are men, women are men, and kids are FBI agents.

It seems that this is no longer true, and with the massive influx of kids, that itself has increased risk.

It wouldn't make much sense to be a child predator on the Internet in 1998. There just weren't that many kids.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#97

Post by sshine »

distances wrote: post #79
Jare wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both. Back then, I can't imagine parents letting their daughters do that either. The kind of freedom to roam at 12yo that you describe was what allowed me access to people and computers we didn't have the money for; but I've always been very conscious that my sisters would have never been given that kind of opportunity.

My sisters definitely did have the same kind of freedom I did. Say, my little sister took her first intercontinental flight (with two plane changes I think) alone around age 14.

I took my first 300 km train ride alone at the age of 7.

My parents told me the name of the destination train station, and that my grandmother would be waiting on arrival.

The train staff knew I was travelling alone and checked up on me a few times and gave me free drinks.

Two years later the train stopped being a direct path, so I had to switch trains halfway.

I remember all the little unknowns made me very anxious that I'd get lost somewhere.

For example, they changed the second departure platform so it didn't match the one on my ticket. And the departure platform was located elsewhere on the train station, not in direct connection with the national lines.

When coming back, I remember they'd announce my city as the next stop, and then I'd see these other city names fly by. I remember thinking "They must have forgot to stop!" because I didn't understand that those city names were suburbs of the capital city that I lived in, and that the national train went directly to the train station.

30 years later I still remember all of these. It all worked out fine.

This was before mobile phones.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#98

Post by matheusmoreira »

Really miss playing Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike and various MMORPGs with friends. Some of my fondest memories were made in LAN parties. Sadly it hasn't been easy to organize one as an adult. Nobody seems to have free time anymore. I'm also worried the magic won't be there anymore if I succeed.

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#99

Post by gorbypark »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #52

> Titles like 1998’s Half-Life ... Other first-person shooters (FPS) like Counter-Strike (itself originally a mod for Half-Life) ... the typically low network speeds of the period meant that these games, unlike slower-paced and less graphically intensive strategy games, were nearly unplayable over an internet connection. In this moment, in which communications technology was being outpaced by graphical power, the LAN…

Not quite the same, but I used to play Duke Nukes 3D (iirc) with my friend over a direct modem link (like my modem would call his, no ISP involved). I don't remember the exact details, but playing over the proper internet was more or less unplayable with our 33.6 modems, but the direct connection worked pretty well!

Re: The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party

#100

Post by freilanzer »

Aeolun wrote: post #88
distances wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sisters definitely did have the same kind of freedom I did. Say, my little sister took her first intercontinental flight (with two plane changes I think) alone around age 14.

I mean, that sounds a bit stressful for her, but eminently possible. Can't say I'd have liked the idea when I was 14, but I was capable of it.

I still don't particularly like the idea.
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