Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party

Post by godzillabrennus » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

Farbklex wrote: post #84

giantg2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gaming 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." Even consoles suck with this now. It seems like none of the big games support more than 2 players.

Exactly. I wanted a coop split screen shooter for the PS 5. I checked out 4 games. None had coop splitt screen. 2 were alway online which would require me to get a PS Plus subscription. Games were: Back 4 Blood, Call of Duty Vanguard, Rainbow Six Extraction, Alien Fire Team Elite. I still invite friends for Xbox 360 LANs. Just connect two consoles and play with 8 players. It is super fun and the hardware is dirt chea…

Post by godzillabrennus » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

krolden wrote: post #68

TravHatesMe wrote: post #8

Gaming 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.

I'm happy about the death of split screen gaming. It was just an awful experience. Especially when your friends were screenlookers

Post by bob1029 » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #98

donatj wrote: post #96

I really miss user-run servers. Back in the Quake 3 days I had a couple favorite servers and there were always the same couple groups of people around, known characters. You don’t get that sense of camaraderie from random matching. This is somewhat Quake 3 specific but I also really miss user generated maps that would just automatically download. Played some really interesting maps back in the day.

This is why I like CS:Source a lot still. User run servers but they have updated the graphics enough it doesn’t feel too dated compared with newer titles.

Post by ei8ths » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

Post by MichaelCollins » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

adav wrote: post #60

agrippanux wrote: post #52

Sophomore year in college (‘97) was the height of LAN parties for me. Our dorm building wasn’t wired for internet yet so about 12 of us got together and took it upon ourselves to create our own network. We cajoled the NetOps dept at UCSD to give us old repeaters and bought a ton of BNC wire to connect everyone. Of course the facilities dept didn’t like rogue wiring running all over the massive dorm complex so they wo…

Just think how many health and safety forms that a college facilities team would have to go through to cut a mystery (possibly live) cable these days.