The LAN party Scene

[wwspike]

I have noticed a disturbing trend lately. I've seen a drastic decline in the amount of LAN parties. Just a few years ago there was 4 or 5 fairly large LAN's. Including GXL, Weekend Wars, NJ Gamers and NJ Lan Party. Slowly but surely they have all been on a decline.
We at Weekend Wars went on a hiatus for a while to regroup and now are looking to try and make a comeback, but we want to ask and see if there is still a demand for the LAN gaming scene. So I'm asking the PC gaming community for your opinion. Do you want another Weekend Wars??? And if so what can we do to enhance the experience for all of you.
Please let us know, we want to try and do something that would be fun for all! If you have any questions just email me at spike1845@gmail.com

[NILL]

I think the main problem was you planned it on a mother's day week end. And personally I'm just not interested in the current fps that are out. I'd be more interested in a UT game then whatever Call of Battlefield is out now.

Maybe Hawken or the new MechWarrior games that are coming out.

http://www.playhawken.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MechWarrior_Online

[wwspike]

So what can we do to bring back the LAN party scene. I still go to NJ Gamers every month and there are about 8-10 people with me there. We all have fun but I will agree that it is time for a new round of games. I enjoy Battlefield 3 but they messed it all up but limiting the amount of people through 1 I.P. address. Just trying to think of things that would help keep the LAN party scene alive. I always enjoy the conversation and socialization that happens. It's a fun part of the LAN, and an essential part of life.

[NILL]

Did they really do that? Limit the number of players from a single ip address? What were they afraid of?

[Tipperzack]

I wish we could get a group of people to form and run some lans in the area but no one has the time or money to go to lans any more.
What could it take to get people to host lans again?

[NILL]

What could it take to get people to host lans again?

If you want a LAN Party you could organize and host a event.

Otherwise if everybody else is in lets just plan on going to a FNF. I should have my copy of Iron Sky by then and we can set up the projector and watch it between games. Assuming Greg still has access to the projector.

If everything goes according to plan I'll host a event this winter, but I'll need some help with the LAN gear. Servers, switches, and that sort of thing. I have chairs, tables, power and the like.

[Tipperzack]

Hey if any one wants to host a Lan and needs help doing it. I'm willing to help
Just need to be contacted.
Your talking about September's FNF?

[bmeister1]

Hey if any one wants to host a Lan and needs help doing it. I'm willing to help
Just need to be contacted.
Your talking about September's FNF?

In response to this forums, I am very much interested in starting my own LAN party. The issue that I ran into was funding for a venue or peoples timing. I cant seem to get a good place to start it for free. Tried calling hotels, churches, fire/ems buildings but the issue is that they told me that they cant do it due to there conflicts. Another thing that I ran into was that the timing is Friday night till Saturday. Most businesses have a conflict with us staying from Friday into Saturday morning. I was thinking about hosting a LAN in my basement or garage as a starter. In response to this quote, yes, I do need a lot of help tipper. When can we get a crew to be willing to meat and plan for a LAN Party in early 2013. Lets make this happen. I got most of the equipment, got a decent server made for some games, now I need to get people and a venue that is willing to help make this happen. Tipper, could we possibly use the Landry mat that your parents own. If anybody has some ideas for a venue that has good internet and power please shed some light into this thread. Worst case scenario, I use a generator and go that route in my house. The group that I want to start is called FragFestGamers. If you got any leads or information you could also email me at FragFestGamers@gmail.com.

[Digger[NJLP]]

Interesting topic, you might find a similar post on the forum from me about 10 years ago.

I am all for hosting and running a large lan and would be willing to donate time and skills to make it happen.
25 years in IT as an Net Admin, MSCE, CCNA, application developer, and now Account Manager for a software company, I have organized trade show events and helped at one or two Ubercon's with Murdock and Tomb and Corpus. I even supported Gt Interactive/ EA networks at two E3 conventions(circa 1993). I'm wondering if Murdock still has the HPLJ 5 I gave him for our NJLP events

Though my biggest issue with any LAN has been quality of time. I'm sure most of our members can agree, 10, 15, 20 years ago we had much more time to work with then we do now. I loved our Lan Partys and there is special place in my heart for the ones in Murdock's apartment. I was willing to host at one point but as I'm pretty far from the core people it never happened.

When we started branching out and attending LP's hosted by other groups, I would get frustrated that I had travelled far, slept on floor, to attend a very lame event. Thats when I see my quality of time going down and I see no reason to invest time and/or money to be frustrated and annoyed. Especially when I can sit at home and do the same thing on the net. Once my son was born my time became even more valuable and less was set aside for lan parties.

So the reason why there are less and less I see as two fold, good quality LAN Parties are hard to find and second is the financials. I'm sure there are people who want to attend but just don't have the funds or the computer horsepower to play the games. But considering that NJ is one of the most dense states in the nation and bit torrent just named Rutgers the BitTorrent University, I'm sure we could host a 250 man lan type thing in a central location. Edison/Ratitan Center where the Uber's have been still seems to be a good spot.

We should talk more about this at Fites.

[bmeister1]

Interesting view on this. I understand that now we have the internet and people do not feel like lugging there equipment around especially me. That's why I got the laptop and its much easier to move around. Another concept is that I saw that more and more hacker spaces are starting up and was maybe drifting into something similar to that. Problem is we need a venue that we could leave our un finished projects that we are still working on and continue to go back and work on it. Just a thought.

[Digger[NJLP]]

Well its a bit deep and long for me, but I see a lot more console partys happening, which means less on PC's.