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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

#111

Post by LtWorf »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #59
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.

LAN parties used to be the only way to play together because playing over the Internet wasn't practical. Once that changed, it was so much more convenient to just play over the Internet, that the demand for LAN parties dropped quickly. From my memory, companies ending LAN support came long after LAN parties were mostly done for the experience and mostly by people who had done them before.

Games explicitly allowed you to play in like 3-4 using the same CD code.

Now you need all the friends to buy the same (usually expensive) game.

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

#113

Post by xivzgrev »

LtWorf wrote: post #111
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LAN parties used to be the only way to play together because playing over the Internet wasn't practical. Once that changed, it was so much more convenient to just play over the Internet, that the demand for LAN parties dropped quickly. From my memory, companies ending LAN support came long after LAN parties were mostly done for the experience and mostly by people who had done them before.

Games explicitly allowed you to play in like 3-4 using the same CD code. Now you need all the friends to buy the same (usually expensive) game.

Yah I remember some folks had all these pirated game installers, so you’d arrive at the LAN, access a shared folder and install whatever game everyone was playing. Then at some point we’d switch and repeat.

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

#114

Post by boomboomsubban »

LtWorf wrote: post #111
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LAN parties used to be the only way to play together because playing over the Internet wasn't practical. Once that changed, it was so much more convenient to just play over the Internet, that the demand for LAN parties dropped quickly. From my memory, companies ending LAN support came long after LAN parties were mostly done for the experience and mostly by people who had done them before.

Games explicitly allowed you to play in like 3-4 using the same CD code. Now you need all the friends to buy the same (usually expensive) game.

I don't know if they explicitly allowed it, it seems more likely the CD code was only checked locally so there wasn't much the game could do to stop code sharing.

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

#115

Post by LooseMarmoset »

I remember when the Unreal Tournament demo came out - it was supposed to be locked to owners of 3Dfx cards, but if you put an empty file in the game directory called glide2x.dll, it would run in a software-only renderer.

At the time, I worked for a company that had a large-ish computer training room. These weren't high-end machines, but they would run the Unreal demo, early Counterstrike (1.5-ish?), and Quake 1 just fine.

Around 4:30PM, a bunch of guys (30-ish and younger) in the building would gather in this room to play. This was totally unsanctioned by the company, and probably against some business policy there. The doors to the room would lock from the inside, and the two doors to the room had narrow windows. I cut a rectangular piece of cardboard that exactly fit these windows, painted them flat black, and we'd put them in the windows when we played - if people walked by, it looked like the lights were off in the room. We called these cutouts our "beatdown screens".

Those gaming sessions were some of the most fun I've had in a long time. At one point we may have had close to 20 people in the room. In the words of Penny Arcade, we were "Making punk bi*** suck it down".

Relevant PA links:

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/12/20/a-threat-to-am... https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/11/19/with-special-g...

Good times.

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

#116

Post by unnouinceput »

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…

Precisely my experience with Uni dorms as well, with the only exception that our dorm headmasters not only supported us, but they joined in the ad-hoc LAN as well. The massive sharing of files was a godsend. And this was all over the entire students complex, spanning like dozens of streets that formed it.

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

#117

Post by Run_DOS_Run »

dudul wrote: post #13
Sakos wrote: post #5

> crucial, awkward time I mean, I disagree completely about the "awkward" part. Online gaming has nothing on hanging out with a bunch of friends in the same room playing PC games together for a weekend. If you happen to be younger and you've never had a LAN party with friends, you absolutely should try it once. It's a unique experience and it's crazy fun.

Agreed. LAN parties were amazing. I have such fond memories of gathering with 3 to 5 buddies in a basement for an entire weekend. The games were fun but more often than not they were just a background activity for an epic hangout.

LAN parties weren't amazing. They still are amazing. My friends and me still have LAN-parties the whole night on weekends. We play classic games like Warcraft, Starcraft, CS GO and 1.6, but also play "newer" (needs ro run on every machine) games like Borderlands.

My girlfriend also regulary have LAN-parties playing Stardew Valley with her friends all together in a room like in the good old times.

All of us are 20-30 years old. Some take their laptop with them, some their tower + keyboard and mouse. The only difference is that we can play over Wifi (still works better over LAN) and have fast Internet for all these annoying updates.

LAN-parties aren't a relic of the past. They are still totally awesome and no online-game can compete with good friends playing computer games all night. ;)

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

#118

Post by BananaaRepublik »

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 believe there is a resurgence in LAN-like in-person social gaming when competitive multiplayer mobile gaming became a thing. It can take place literally anywhere, a quick few minutes during lunch, before classes.

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

#119

Post by shepherdjerred »

LAN parties don't have to be dead!

I went to at least a few during High School (~7 years ago) where we'd bring our towers to the library and stay after school playing games for a few hours. The librarian was very kind to sacrifice his Friday evening so that we could play video games.

Aside from that, I hosted a LAN party just a couple of months ago and plan to do another. Last time we played League of Legends, the old Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (the iw4x project lets you host local servers), and a couple of others.

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

#120

Post by iso1631 »

_the_inflator wrote: post #48
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 disagree. My monitor's weight was around 20kg and it was a lot of work, to get it together with my large tower into the car. Even though we enjoyed the gatherings, we hated doing the grunt work before and afterwards.

Sure, but that made it all the more worthwhile. You put actual effort into it, and were rewarded with a weekend of fun.
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