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The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)

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Re: The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)

#71

Post by Semaphor »

ActorNightly wrote: post #57
madrox wrote: post #47

This really doesn't capture the core element of early 2000s LAN parties. You spent hours debugging basic networking issues. There was that one guy who was less interested in gaming than convincing you to use his DHCP server on his OpenBSD machine. Everyone copying everyone else's mp3 folders on network drives. Passing around CDs to install games and the crack for it, since no game was ever owned by all. Fun fact: you…

Im going to sound like the ultimate hipster, but the best thing about LAN parties back in the day was that video games were still very much a "geek" thing, so it attracted a certain type of person, which was fun to be around. I learned so much from people LAN parties - basic networking, IRC, torrenting, modding Half Life, little bit of music production. Video games were made for people like that, and you could tell.…

Our biggest LAN was at our School’s gym (we had 2 or 3 smaller ones before that inside the normal building, and of course a few even smaller private ones) in 2004, I think we had ~80 people playing over 2 days, the more normal ones going home to sleep (or just being there for a single day), the full nerds having sleeping bags. It was more nerds, but we had all kinds of people (and even an oversized casemodding sponsor that probably didn’t make any money with their stand).

Fun times. But I don’t think I’d still survive a LAN like that, nowadays. Too little sleep, too much on-screen gaming, too much action, too many energy drinks. Later this year a few of the people from back then will rent a holiday house in Denmark for our modern, yet more relaxed version: A week of boardgaming ;)

Re: The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)

#72

Post by myself248 »

madrox wrote: post #47

This really doesn't capture the core element of early 2000s LAN parties. You spent hours debugging basic networking issues. There was that one guy who was less interested in gaming than convincing you to use his DHCP server on his OpenBSD machine. Everyone copying everyone else's mp3 folders on network drives. Passing around CDs to install games and the crack for it, since no game was ever owned by all. Fun fact: you…

> You spent hours debugging basic networking issues.

And that was FUN, as long as you were enjoying the tinkering and not stressing about missing a game.

> Everyone copying everyone else's mp3 folders on network drives.

I think this is an under-remembered aspect, or at least, under-told. LAN parties were filesharing parties too, sometimes that more than gaming. (Which caused no end of strife with the gaming folks, until we learned to segment the network to keep the filesharing congestion from lagging the gaming packets.)

The heyday of mp3 also coincided with the explosion of coffee-shop wifi, in the days before client isolation. Grab a latte, browse Network Neighborhood...

Re: The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)

#73

Post by Semaphor »

embedding-shape wrote: post #52
pbmonster wrote: post #38

> The defining element of a LAN party, however, is the social factor. Playing a game with others in the same physical space, sometimes huddled side-by-side on the same large table, is an intimate affair. Cries of joy and frustration fill the air. That's really the major thing that made LAN parties so special. Being in the same room is so, so different than online gaming together and hanging out on discord. It also fo…

> because you're stuck together for the night. You can't just sit out a game/map if you don't like it, you can't just hop on a different voice channel and play another game with other people. Probably depends on the size, but even our tiny LANs we had some groups preferring some games, other's preferring others, and plenty of other activities others were doing throughout the LAN. The group that managed the LAN I was…

Same here, even for smaller LANs people sometimes sat games out, sometimes watching, sometimes doing something else.

Re: The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)

#74

Post by TrackerFF »

The last enjoyable LAN party I went to took place in the summer of 2004.

The next year, most of the guys that would frequent these parties were completely engrossed in World of Warcraft. They just weren't interested in playing any LAN games, or any of the socialization. Many of them were in WoW guilds with people that lived in completely different time zones, so they weren't even there when the few of us others tried to play something.

At least to me, that was a watershed moment. To me the magic was gone, and I more or less lost interest in multiplayer gaming for years.

To me LAN wasn't just about gaming, but also shooting the breeze, talk abut techy or gaming stuff. When two thirds of the people were glued to their screens 24/7 grinding WoW, a lot of that died.

EDIT: Not saying that WoW single handedly killed LAN, but I feel like it was final nail in the coffin.

Re: The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)

#77

Post by vfalbor »

I think LAN parties made sense in a context where internet speeds weren't what they are today, where pirated software and games were distributed in these environments, and where you could get together in groups to play CS, Starcraft, or Age of Empires. But nowadays, with internet access and resources so widespread, and peer-to-peer networks offering countless more than eMule, they've lost their original purpose. Perhaps a pivotal shift for these events is needed, focusing more on building social networks than on the simple idea of eating pizza and sleeping on inflatable mattresses on the floor.

Re: The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)

#79

Post by bombcar »

Semaphor wrote: post #73
embedding-shape wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you're stuck together for the night. You can't just sit out a game/map if you don't like it, you can't just hop on a different voice channel and play another game with other people. Probably depends on the size, but even our tiny LANs we had some groups preferring some games, other's preferring others, and plenty of other activities others were doing throughout the LAN. The group that managed the LAN I was…

Same here, even for smaller LANs people sometimes sat games out, sometimes watching, sometimes doing something else.

There's two LAN parties - the small group of friends (4 to 10, say) where you'd mostly be playing the same game, but as it progressed people would drop off or split up (we ended up with one small group playing a Heroes III comp-stomp on hotseat, another watching someone playing HalfLife).

Then there's the larger parties that are closer to gaming conventions, which have so many people that you basically have to have multiple gaming sessions, if not multiple games.

Re: The Forgotten Art of the LAN Party (2023)

#80

Post by bombcar »

TrackerFF wrote: post #74

The last enjoyable LAN party I went to took place in the summer of 2004. The next year, most of the guys that would frequent these parties were completely engrossed in World of Warcraft. They just weren't interested in playing any LAN games, or any of the socialization. Many of them were in WoW guilds with people that lived in completely different time zones, so they weren't even there when the few of us others tried…

WoW was a big part of it but times were changing without it - and in-person WoW raids showed up now and then (40 man raids with 40 people in one room is a site to see).

The real killer is that many WoW players did NOT play with "local friends" for very long; once you got into raiding you likely joined a guild that was spread across the country or world.

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