Hi everyone. Today I finished my latest project which was archving 1584 photos (+2 videos) of LAN parties in Tasmania ranging from 1996 to 2010. Previously these photos were lost to time until I got in contact with the right people. Looking through the photos is a great blast of nostalgia, I hope you get some enjoyment from looking through them too! https://issung.com/posts/lanphotosarchive/
This is really cool. Looks like there isn't a single download where one can get all the images though, which is a shame.
I wonder what could be today's alternative to the environments of LAN parties of early 00s (I never attended to previous ones). Even if one were to recreate the events, I feel lots of the activities of these meetings (meeting the selected few gamers face-to-face, sharing media, and only finally gaming) are somewhat obsolete or not needed anymore. Part of me wishes we still had these but that would mean removing lots…
Board game or comic book shops often do board game nights that are unchanged from the aughts. They capture a lot of that energy.
There’s usually D&D at those stores but it doesn’t scratch the same itch imo.
I wonder what could be today's alternative to the environments of LAN parties of early 00s (I never attended to previous ones). Even if one were to recreate the events, I feel lots of the activities of these meetings (meeting the selected few gamers face-to-face, sharing media, and only finally gaming) are somewhat obsolete or not needed anymore. Part of me wishes we still had these but that would mean removing lots…
Why do you think these activities are obsolete? Meeting the other people face-to-face will always be nice, or not? And also playing together in the same room is much nicer than when you are separated.
I'm quite sure you will still be able to find such events, if you want to try. I know a couple of friends who still do that.
(Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend any of these since a while due to having small kids... But I definitely will join them sooner or later again. Maybe then with my kids.)
There is something special about looking at dated photos, even if they’re relatively banal. The lower fidelity corresponds with the fuzziness of memory, and is powerfully nostalgic if you lived though that time. I wonder if this effect will be lost as we enter an era where every photo is taken in high-definition on a high-quality camera phone, or if the improvement of sensors will continue to make older photos evocative.
I still do LAN parties every once in a while with a group of friends. Meeting in the same room with laptops and bulky desktop PCs to play old 00s games is still a lot of fun!
There is something special about looking at dated photos, even if they’re relatively banal. The lower fidelity corresponds with the fuzziness of memory, and is powerfully nostalgic if you lived though that time. I wonder if this effect will be lost as we enter an era where every photo is taken in high-definition on a high-quality camera phone, or if the improvement of sensors will continue to make older photos evocat…
I wonder what could be today's alternative to the environments of LAN parties of early 00s (I never attended to previous ones). Even if one were to recreate the events, I feel lots of the activities of these meetings (meeting the selected few gamers face-to-face, sharing media, and only finally gaming) are somewhat obsolete or not needed anymore. Part of me wishes we still had these but that would mean removing lots…
My take on all of this stuff: 20 years ago, you were young. That's all there is to it. There is no alternative today, not for you at least, because you are no longer young. Whatever the corresponding phenomenon might actually be, it will make you angry, or disgusted, or repelled, or you will reject the theory that it is even in any way equivalent - or some combination of. Anyway, my advice would be to move on, definitely. Whatever it was, it happened, and you were young, and you were there. Time for somebody else to have their turn.
There is something special about looking at dated photos, even if they’re relatively banal. The lower fidelity corresponds with the fuzziness of memory, and is powerfully nostalgic if you lived though that time. I wonder if this effect will be lost as we enter an era where every photo is taken in high-definition on a high-quality camera phone, or if the improvement of sensors will continue to make older photos evocat…
Will we ever have crystal clear night photography?
We have many more photos from RFLAN in Western Australia which ran 3-4x a year from 2002-2020. They are all on Facebook currently:
https://facebook.com/redflaglan
I miss LAN parties... I miss the custom cases, the fancy drawings, the spilled sugary drinks that stuck to the table, and the open shares where you would copy the whole `Movies` folder on a 100Mbits connection.. I modded my case of course, and it was crappy. I'd integrated a glass window on the side, so people could (would!) look at my custom water cooling setup. And of course, the glass (held by hot glue), would fal…
I never understood the appeal of all the gaudy gamer PC aesthetics, just as a piece of furniture you keep at home it looks ridiculous. But thinking of it in the context of lugging your PC to a LAN party, now I'm picturing a fork of Fast and Furious but instead of all the tricked out cars revving their engines with their hoods popped, its a row of gamer PCs running DirectX benchmarks, and the length people go to make…
> I never understood the appeal of all the gaudy gamer PC aesthetics, just as a piece of furniture you keep at home it looks ridiculous.
I don’t get it either but I appreciate that we are not all the same. I enjoyed marvelling at someone bringing a huge rig, oversized ultra wide screen monitor and loud custom keyboard + LED headphones that resembled a light show.