[HN Gopher] Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history o...
___________________________________________________________________
Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party
Author : pseudolus
Score : 255 points
Date : 2022-11-20 13:17 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| racktash wrote:
| Ah, simpler times.
|
| The photos really took me back to the early 90's and 00's, when I
| was a kid/teenager, happy to spend _hours_ playing the same
| first-person shooters for hours, on the same maps, over and over
| again, with my nerdy friends from school. I 'd love to go back
| for a day and relive those times.
| hahajk wrote:
| I don't think the lack of LAN support is really that big of a
| deal - you can still go to a friend's house and play together in
| a private game while using game servers. In fact, I'm doing that
| today - bringing my laptop and playing Humankind with friends at
| their house. I think that still counts as a LAN party in spirit.
| RGamma wrote:
| Ahh the careless and hopeful days... Blissfully ignorant that
| paradise wouldn't last.
| dudul wrote:
| "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days
| before you've actually left them."
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| You leave them once you're an adult with a job/kids/etc. Kids
| are having good old days right now. And when they grow up,
| they will look back fondly at them.
|
| The good old days are not about the times, its about not
| having many responsibilities, being able to do whatever the
| hell you want, and being surrounded by friends in a similar
| situation.
| ei8ths wrote:
| fun times, pizza, soda, my mom thinking what a bunch of nerds,
| while we played against each other or sharing mp3s and games into
| the night and next day. When steam came out, we started going to
| internet cafe's, they had better machines (had some friends that
| didnt have much) and didnt cost much to play for a couple hours.
| I miss those times, things were simpler.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| 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.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| They aren't. Twice a year, for a weekend, I go to a LAN party
| that has 20-30 some odd people. People have brought kids, we
| are all adults, it's fun. LAN parties only died out because
| people stopped wanting to run them.
| ianai wrote:
| And in true modern internet hell self-mockery, the page glitches
| out and I get a repeat of the end of it in a seeming scroll
| jacking. Then it glitched again and I'm back at the top of the
| page. Bizarre.
| oblak wrote:
| I kind of miss LAN parties because our version wasn't just about
| gaming. It was about drinking, smoking good shit, having loud
| electronic music and lots of people coming and going all the
| time. I prefer dealing with alpha nerds.
|
| Quake 1/2/3, StarCraft, NFS, Carmageddon, Star Wars Racer and
| lots, and I mean, LOTS of Mortal Kombat 3 (DOS version). We sure
| had some fun
|
| Frankly, I don't have the energy to do any of this all night.
| Getting old sucks but it also injects anti-FOMO serum into your
| blood stream, making you regret missing fun less and less.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Our LAN parties typically started with paintball or quads, then
| switched to games after dark.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Used to host a LAN party on Halloween. Gave teenagers something
| to do except get into trouble!
|
| Would rent a hall at the fairgrounds, set up tables, grill
| outside, big screen. Bring lots of copies of game DVDs!
|
| We'd go all night until dawn. Those were the days.
| lakomen wrote:
| LAN parties in the 90s were an excuse to get drunk and smoke
| weed. We spent more time on setting things up and dealing with
| issues than actual gaming
| grubbs wrote:
| I once held a LAN party in my parents three car garage. In the
| middle of summer lol.
|
| Used Netgear 10/100 switches that we found dumpster diving in a
| tech park type area. My father (career engineer) even helped me
| run Cat 5E to the garage and install a jack.
|
| After the 10th person or so showed up we blew the first circuit
| 15A circuit :) Learned pretty quickly how to fix that issue.
| donatj wrote:
| 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.
| net_ wrote:
| Popular games switching from pub servers to matchmade 5v5/6v6
| bums me out. It feels like it was just done to chase esports
| money, and it's such a worse casual experience. Way more
| stress, way less community.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I think this shift is a direct contributor to increased
| toxicity in multiplayer gaming, honestly. The server
| communities I remember were like your favorite pub where all
| the regulars knew each other and you all just liked hanging
| out. Occasionally new people would drop in, and sometimes
| they'd become part of things but usually they at least
| behaved, and if they didn't they were booted off an IP
| banned.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| 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.
| bob1029 wrote:
| TF2 is amazing these days as well. Lots of crazy, fun stuff
| going on in community servers.
|
| https://www.gametracker.com/search/tf2/
| jccalhoun wrote:
| If you want more pics of LAN parties, the IU Gaming Club has a
| gallery of events going back 20 years!
| https://gaming.indiana.edu/gallery.html The club is still going
| strong and is having a mini-event the first weekend in December.
| polynox wrote:
| Surprised not to see mention of some of the massive LAN parties
| that were/are combined with tournaments. Some larger on the
| tournament side (DreamHack) and some larger on the party side
| (LPANE Nor'Easter).
|
| https://hothardware.com/reviews/lpane-noreaster-2005-lan-par...
| daneel_w wrote:
| I have so many great memories from the 90s attending small copy
| parties in Sweden - it's what we called them back then, before
| they became known as LAN parties.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| My 18-year-old son still packs up his big ass computer and
| monitor and spends the weekend gaming at his friends house. They
| don't call it a LAN party but at the end of the day they are
| still having a lot of fun and socializing with people in real
| life.
| grubbs wrote:
| That's great! Glad to hear it's still happening. Some of the
| best memories of HS and college :)
| nippoo wrote:
| Is it just me or does the last section - "what killed the LAN
| party" keep appearing infinitely many times? I read it at least
| three times before realising I'd already read it, ha.
| botverse wrote:
| Yup
| GrayShade wrote:
| No, also happens to me (Firefox, Android).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Same, on iOS Safari with Wipr content blocker.
| michaelwda wrote:
| Opportunity for them to show a few more ads while we keep
| attempting to scroll?
| shynrou wrote:
| When you want to have infinite scroll, but have no new content
| to show. :'D
| codeslave13 wrote:
| Hah. Me too on mobile. I was reading it probably for the fourth
| or fifth time before it hit. Just started my coffee so wasnt
| awake
| Sakos wrote:
| They just REALLY want you to know that LAN parties are dead.
| krolden wrote:
| Yes that threw me for a loop for a sec
| fetzu wrote:
| It is just incredible looking at these pictures: I keep on
| searching for known faces to see if a picture of one of our LANs
| ended up in there. So much nostalgia. I have gone from being an
| avid gamer (first at LANs, then over broadband in the early
| 2000's) to gaming barely a couple of hours a month.. but these
| memories just make me want to ring up the whole crew again, rent
| some cabin in the middle of nowhere and go insane in AoE, CS and
| Wolfenstein all over again!
| blowski wrote:
| I was renting a house in 2000 with three people who weren't there
| most weekends. As such, all my friends came round for LAN
| parties, bringing their PCs and monitors on the Tube. We mostly
| played Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, and Unreal
| Tournament, drinking unhealthy amounts of sugary drinks and
| eating pizza.
|
| It was a weird niche of time in which this was both possible and
| likely, so much that I don't know anyone else in person that did
| it.
|
| One summer, we organised a massive LAN party held at a race-
| course. It wasn't as much fun because it lost all the intimacy.
| throwaway284534 wrote:
| This was a great article, though I felt it was incomplete without
| the inclusion of the infamous "guy taped to ceiling" photo.
|
| A picture's worth a thousand ping...
|
| https://thenerdstash.com/lan-party/
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I read the title and thought the article was going to be about
| that exacty photo :)
| Sakos wrote:
| > 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.
| dudul wrote:
| 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.
| bergheim wrote:
| Why says they are done? Next weekend me and 3 friends are
| doing our annual LAN-party. We are all older, but it is still
| so much fun. Super excited!
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Take pictures!
| Run_DOS_Run wrote:
| 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. ;)
| CSDude wrote:
| Until 2012-2013, we met at Internet Cafe to play LAN games with
| my high school friends. It was not common to carry your PCs in
| our culture but a lot of folk went to cafes to play Age of
| empires, counter strike, middle earth, generals. Then came non-
| LAN games. And we started to not meet. I still miss those days
| with almost zero latency.
| xhrpost wrote:
| This is mostly my opinion but I think an overlooked reason for
| the death of the LAN party was the shift to console gaming during
| this time. This was a dark time in the PC gaming world. Console
| use was rising exponentially with some dev shops completely
| dropping PC support in order to focus solely on consoles. It took
| in my rough estimation, over a decade for things to balance out a
| bit and PCs once again be prioritized for game development.
| choeger wrote:
| We once had a LAN party in a barn. In October. I vividly remember
| the cold - it was the night of the first snow. But that very cold
| must have stabilized our hardware - we never had so few crashes.
| ZeWaren wrote:
| My dorm in 2006 didn't have any wired network (nor wifi).
|
| So what we did is we wired one ourselves through the walls of
| every room, running ethernet cables from one balcony to the
| other. Every 6 room, we'd install a cheap fast-ethernet switch.
|
| Eventually, we managed to connect almost all 300 rooms together
| in a giant single VLAN.
|
| You can still see part of that mess in the history of Google
| Street View: https://goo.gl/maps/AQriNEJViMELQw8MA
|
| That dorm ended up being a giant eternal LAN party. People would
| play games all the time, either from their own individual rooms,
| either after moving their PC using stolen supermarket shopping
| carts to other rooms for more conviviality.
|
| You'd turn on your PC, and some custom scripts would tell you
| which games were currently being played, and the only thing left
| for you was to join the game of your friends, or the game of the
| total strangers from two floors down.
|
| Fun times!
| TravHatesMe wrote:
| 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.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "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.
| Farbklex wrote:
| 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 cheap.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| 360 consoles are so cheap right now... Facebook market has
| them by me for as little as $20 with a controller.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Even many of the 360 games only support 2 locally,
| especially the later ones.
| robryan wrote:
| Probably after they were already dead but also Discord. Online
| communication is so easy and good now. My friends have talked
| about having some LANs again but it is so easy to just play
| online that it never happens.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| 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.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Sure, but that made it all the more worthwhile. You put
| actual effort into it, and were rewarded with a weekend of
| fun.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| There were plenty of us who didn't mind the "grunt work".
| Laziness was not the reason for The demise of LAN parties :)
| jrnichols wrote:
| I also think that the rise of quality gaming consoles helped
| kill off LAN parties. the xbox/etc took over pretty fast.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Xbox System link _was_ a thing, for a time.
|
| Xbox Live and co. was probably the real death knell of LAN.
| giobox wrote:
| System linking IMO came of age even earlier, in the PS2.
| The original PS2 hardware could system link over 4 pin
| FireWire (I-Link in Sony speak or whatever they branded
| it). Late generation ps2 hardware dropped the FireWire
| port.
|
| Connecting two PS2s via FireWire/I link, two multi-taps and
| two big tvs for 8 player time splitters 2 is an all time
| favourite memory of mines.
|
| Memory is fuzzy, but I think Gran Turismo 3 also could do
| this.
| jwie wrote:
| I definitley think it's on the product side that LAN parties
| died. The relationship between the player and the game, and the
| LAN community and the game were way different.
|
| Gradually the companies figured out how to inject themselves
| into the social structure. Your relationships became mediated
| by these products. Rather than a social lubricant they became
| the relationship itself. They monetized that social capital.
|
| You didn't play WoW with your friends anymore; you played WoW
| because that product allowed you access to your friends.
|
| Some superguilds figured out how to hop games and maintain that
| social structure, but only the most organized and intentional.
| Gradually these LAN groups eroded as people got jobs, families,
| etc. Perhaps that was why the MMO declined; those friendship
| structures became compromised by the product, and people also
| developed constraints on their time by things like, spouses,
| children, and careers.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Fully agree. I still regularly organize LAN parties with the
| same crew as back then. 24 years and counting... Family has
| made finding a suitable date much more difficult. But the
| biggest obstacle is finding LAN-capable games.
|
| 10 people joining Dota 2 from the same IP results in instant
| ban for everyone. StarCraft 2 is horribly laggy when 10 PCs
| compete for UDP traffic to the internet server. GTA 5 keeps
| load-balancing us into different lobbies. Most new games just
| cannot handle a LAN party anymore. And yeah, I remember the
| time when I paid for a WoW account despite not playing
| because the WoW guild chat was the quickest way to reach all
| of my real-life friends.
|
| Warcraft 3 fun-maps, Left 4 Dead 2, Flatout 2 are the games
| that reliably work well.
| gdprrrr wrote:
| And then there's Anno 2070 which fails at login (it
| requires an account and an internet connection) for a
| second player in the same home network.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| rakkhi wrote:
| This. I remember lugging even a midi tower but a 17 inch crt
| in my car to my friend's house each week and back. It was so
| much fun when you were there but the logistics were a pain.
| As soon as the Internet was fast enough to allow people to
| play from home and still have a lot of the interaction via
| video and voice that to me was the death of the Lan party not
| so much game support.
| LtWorf wrote:
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I remember Starcraft had installation mode that was
| basically meant for LAN parties so you didn't even needed
| to share the code.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 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.
| dusted wrote:
| For instance, the Diablo CD, it could be installed either
| as "full" or "multiplayer", if you had the multiplayer
| install, you could only join games, but not start a
| single or multiplayer yourself. It was very cool.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| 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.
| krolden wrote:
| I'm happy about the death of split screen gaming. It was just
| an awful experience. Especially when your friends were
| screenlookers
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| We were all screen lookers... it's not like any other player
| had more advantage...
|
| The death of split screen keeps me in retro games.
| no_time wrote:
| The fact that fucking AGE OF EMPIRES II/III DE doesn't have LAN
| is ridiculous.
|
| Atleast for AoE III DE there is a server emulator because MS
| servers only do matchmaking.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Yeah that's rubbish.
|
| Not exactly the same but I've had a few LAN parties with 0ad.
| It's still in alpha and lags up during the mega battles , but
| that's been pretty fun too, watching armies crash together is
| slow motion when u finally throw everything at each other.
|
| I'd definitely recommend 0ad for a small 3-4 player LAN
| party.
|
| 0ad.com
| grubbs wrote:
| Attended a LAN party in Manassas, VA back in early 2000s. It
| was literally in a barn with 100+ people. No Internet as it was
| pretty rural. I don't think this would even be possible now
| with no LAN option in modern games.
| [deleted]
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Split screen was never a part of lan parties. The reason why
| lan parties stopped was because it was hard to move a tower
| around.
|
| Even during that period it was much easier to go to a lanshop
| and play there either as in lan or on the proto cloud servers
| they had.
|
| Many fond memories of early battle.net and much fewer of steam.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| > The reason why lan parties stopped was because it was hard
| to move a tower around.
|
| No, no. The effort played itself. As OP said, it was a
| cultural change with companies piggy-backing on it. Split
| screen is not a major reason, no, I don't think so. But
| luggaging towers? That's not the reason.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Until you dropped your screen on the drive way into your
| friends house and heard the magic sound a CRT makes when it
| implodes.
| giantg2 wrote:
| And now you have a story/memory that the new generation
| doesn't. Working for something arguably makes the
| experience more rewarding too.
| krolden wrote:
| This a good sound
| dudul wrote:
| Agree with your 1st statement, I dont think split screen had
| anything to do with LAN parties. There was no network with
| split screen.
|
| However I don't think LAN died because of tower size. Maybe
| towers got a tad bigger at some point, but monitors got way
| thinner. I've done a few LAN parties on laptop even. I think
| they just died because it was easier to play over global
| network, and subsequently LAN mode disappear from games.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| One of the greatest gaming experiences of my life is when I
| and my three younger brothers hooked up two original Xboxes
| with a network crossover cable and played the original Halo
| 2v2 split screen in separate rooms.
|
| Split screen LAN may not have been the norm but it is
| fantastic.
| prawn wrote:
| We had four on a projector in a room, and then another
| couple down the corridor on a TV. Glorious. Lots of
| yelling between rooms.
|
| After each game, the stats screen would motivate all
| sorts of trash talking. 20 years later, we still talk
| about the time someone called out at the friend with the
| lowest shots fired count: "You know the bullets don't
| cost anything, right?"
|
| I can never understand why modern CoD lacks so many great
| post-game stats they could otherwise be showing.
| pests wrote:
| Apparently the new COD doesn't even have a career stats
| page.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| The Internet killed the LAN party
| 22c wrote:
| In addition to the argument that "I can just play online
| with my friends", I'd also add that many games started to
| require internet in order to play. Around that same time,
| many host venues did not have enough bandwidth to support
| everyone playing online reliably at once.
| bestouff wrote:
| I (roughly) hear it on the tune of "video killed the radio
| stars".
|
| Yes I'm old.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| mp3 killed the video star
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPHLSC635CM
| shagie wrote:
| There was a lanshop that had a T1 of their own (this was '99)
| that had their machines (two dozen - there were a dozen in
| each room that had a partition so that people could play
| against each other).
|
| The "clan tag" that they used was [LPB] standing for Low Ping
| Bastards as this was the time when people often were in the
| middling three digit pings - they were regularly in the low
| two digits. Human Head even had a release party of Rune there
| and they hosted one of the servers that was consistently up -
| it was a fairly popular one because it was always up (this is
| back in the days when many game servers were at the other end
| of an ISDN line that the owner would power down when not
| playing) and it had good ping times. It was a shock to some
| to find that not only did they have good ping times, but
| _also_ there were some people with [LPB] that had ping times
| in the single digits. When asked about it the response was
| "I can touch the server."
|
| It was a nice place to hang out and play games. This was also
| in the days before voice chat across the net was practical.
| It was a game changer to have a group of three or four people
| all coordinate a tank in Tribes - or a spotter and a mortar
| working together where they could talk rather than needing to
| pause and type to communicate.
|
| The thing that killed the lan shop was that the college dorms
| started getting wired with acceptable networks and a good
| chunk of the player base could play on their own machines.
| There was still some "get a dozen people together to play"
| but not enough to pay the bills.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010406031620/http://www.ping-t.
| ..
|
| ---
|
| Regarding LAN parties : https://www.lanreg.org
|
| When I lived in Eau Claire, I knew people who went to
| https://www.lanreg.org/winlan/winlanxi (noting that it was a
| thing last year, but doesn't appear to have been scheduled
| for this year - would have been last month).
| elif wrote:
| That's just not true. All but a handful of the smallest LAN
| parties I attended I the 90's and early 00's included console
| gaming. It was pretty much assumed there would be consoles at
| a LAN.
|
| Halo, which was arguably the first professionally competitive
| game, had it's entire birth at LAN parties as it did not
| support online play at all and had to be done with a LAN.
|
| Smash brothers had a similar Genesis story at LAN parties I
| attended. LAN continues to be the preferred competitive
| environment for every game due to latency.
|
| I'll tell you what killed LAN parties I attend, it was the
| year steam became standard. To get everyone at the LAN to
| play the same game no longer meant passing the CD around, but
| in /socially pressuring your peers to make a digital
| purchase/ That was the death of LAN.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| > That's just not true. All but a handful of the smallest
| LAN parties I attended I the 90's and early 00's included
| console gaming. It was pretty much assumed there would be
| consoles at a LAN.
|
| You should have gone to better parties.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I also played a lot if Halo LAN parties on consoles. I
| don't think I ever had a PC LAN party (probably too young).
| coldpie wrote:
| > To get everyone at the LAN to play the same game no
| longer meant passing the CD around
|
| Pretty sure I spent more time installing games and fighting
| with cracking software than I did playing games at LANs :)
| rakkhi wrote:
| There was always one person at least that needed to
| reinstall windows..
| BananaaRepublik wrote:
| 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.
| mwest wrote:
| Although not the same as a LAN party at a friend's house, I've
| quite enjoyed Insomnia in the UK a few times. Still some great
| LAN party vibes with a group of friends!
|
| https://insomniagamingfestival.com/lan/
| hestefisk wrote:
| So much nostalgia. Does anyone remember the Frozen cd piracy sets
| that used to float around at LAN parties? They were awesome man.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Have not heard of Frozen, was it like Twilight/crazybytes?
| Semaphor wrote:
| Wow. I actually had to double-check if those are really not
| pictures from our LANs. I guess there really was a stereotypical
| look :D
| BirAdam wrote:
| The exception for me is that epic Code Red supply. Me and my
| friends usually drank coffee (not that we turned down soda or
| anything, just wasn't typical).
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| lol same. having done this only a few times, i was shocked to
| see that this is how it looked everywhere else too
| spiritplumber wrote:
| What we did (northern Italy, 1996-2010) was take an old
| storeroom, fill it with old desktops that would get cycled as
| technology got better, and have a permanent setup that capped out
| at 8 computers. The two most popular games were DN3D and
| Starcraft, with NFS2SE being added once we got eight voodoo
| cards. Great times, great memories, I'm still in touch with about
| half the people who showed up :) basically it was like having a
| little arcade, except free. House rules were no smoking (lots of
| smokers in Italy) and you're expected to contribute by buying
| sodas and snacks for the fridge, and donating old parts.
| LooseMarmoset wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| Aldipower wrote:
| At the beginning of the gathering of each LAN party and had to
| say "Hello" or even shaking hands to some one in real life.
| Sometimes the toilet was blocked by another gamer during an
| important match! OMG You could smell pizza, not being yours. Or
| hear screams from the other side of the room. This type of social
| interaction quickly disappeared with the upcoming internet game
| servers.
| leetrout wrote:
| Direct link to the book:
|
| https://vol.co/product/lan-party/campaign/
| naillo wrote:
| LAN parties are definitely not dead lol. They're not "LAN"
| parties anymore though, but there's definitely groups of guys
| (sometimes girls) coming together bringing their computers into
| one room gaming together all over the place still to this day.
| sydney6 wrote:
| I never even heard about piracy on lan-parties.. A friend once
| told me, even if he were to strip the soundtrack from the first
| GTA, that the resulting zip-file would still span over like 60
| 3.5-inch floppy disks and that everything would be to no avail,
| if even a single floppy were to become corrupt. It's not like
| today, were almost everbody has access to an iomega 100 zip
| drive.
| raspyberr wrote:
| I've had 2 1-week long LAN parties in the last 4/5 years and they
| have been some of my favourite things I've ever done in my life.
| LAN parties aren't a thing that can die. If anything it's even
| easier nowadays to get together. Computers can be smaller and
| screens are lighter. Old LAN games are still around which will
| run on really low-spec hardware so it's even easier to
| participate.
| silasb wrote:
| What I miss most about LAN parties was the fun of getting all the
| computers setup. Setting up servers to host things for others to
| downloads, troubleshooting networking, random projects, ...
|
| That void is somewhat filled with DN42.
| tus666 wrote:
| > "Just a bunch of idiots having fun"
|
| This is not how lan players would have talked or thought. "Just a
| bunch of geeks having fun" if anything. Oh, it's Ars.
| sylens wrote:
| What killed the LAN party? In short, Halo 2 and Bungie. Before
| Halo 2, even games on XBox Live followed the same foundations as
| PC games - a bunch of servers listed in a browser that you had to
| pick from to join, then instantly relay the details to your
| friends so they could also join. Bungie developed a matchmaking
| system that made it effortless to play with friends, and it was
| soon used as a bedrock for XBox Live and copied by PC developers
| quickly. Peer to peer worked with everybody using broadband and
| was cheaper than running servers.
|
| That has led us to our present moment where the developer
| controls the life of a multiplayer title from cradle to grave.
| They issue patches you have to apply; they balance weapons, they
| ban players, they charge for cosmetics and loot boxes and season
| passes. It all traces back to giving up control over how we
| connected and played games together.
|
| Nowhere is this more evident than the Battlefield community. The
| majority of that community desperately wants a game that really
| follows up on Battlefield 2, without realizing it will never
| happen because EA as a company is too big to cede that much
| control over its multiplayer titles. They wouldn't be able to
| monetize it if the community controlled as much as they did back
| in the day.
| martindbp wrote:
| For us it was WoW that killed it.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I distinctly remember several of my friends dropping out of
| our LANs due to their WoW addictions. It was sad. Eventually,
| it became about half of the group, and the LAN parties
| stopped.
| MAGZine wrote:
| Multiplayer games with dedicated, community servers were very
| special. If you frequented a server, it wouldnt be long before
| you made friends with the people on the server.
|
| I made many good friends in the battlefield 2 and team fortress
| 2 days through a couple dedicated servers. People to this day
| are SHOCKED at how many friends I have on steam.
|
| It's because we all showed up at the same time to play games
| together, in commune. It was our coffee shop. It was our
| church.
| giantg2 wrote:
| These days, most people don't even use a mic/chat let alone
| friend someone.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "What killed the LAN party? In short, Halo 2 and Bungie."
|
| I still played halo 2 and 3 at Xbox LAN parties. So existing
| groups didn't really go away, but I could see there being less
| of a draw to new groups forming.
| Pyrodogg wrote:
| I'm legit skittish about having to reinstall or update windows
| on my PC because I don't have convenient access to my
| Battlefield 2 discs and there's a good chance an old friend of
| mine will be trying to get me on an AIX match any random
| weekend. I made it to Windows 10 and this machine cannot go to
| 11 anyway so I'm fairly safe for now.
|
| An update to Battlefield 2 with fairly open servers (and an
| ability to mod) would be an amazing game and platform. But yea
| it would have to be coming from somewhere else I have no hopes
| on EA.
| k__ wrote:
| My first LAN (we didn't call them parties) was just with my step
| brother.
|
| He brought his PC and we took 2 of 3 days to set up the network
| and the help of a local sysadmin.
|
| I went to many over the years, and it's somehow funny that LANs
| globally looked like ours even without widespread internet.
|
| I had small one with 3-6 friends. We used BNC for quite some time
| and always missed a terminator.
|
| I also attended big ones with 150-600 people. They were a great
| source of games and videos, when you didn't have internet.
|
| I did some LANs with friends later, when everyone had laptops.
| Was much easier. Than the big CRTs back in the day.
| lzooz wrote:
| https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Gigap... -
| On screen, the WON version of Team Fortress. That brings memories
| :)
| r-s wrote:
| So does the "PHP4" book on the shelf.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Minor nitpick: that's Team Fortress Classic (Half-Life mod),
| not the original Team Fortress.
| Sakos wrote:
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Opponent_Network
|
| Man, that CS image gives me such nostalgia.
| agrippanux wrote:
| 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 would cut down the wires,
| which started a months long escalating battle of more cleverly
| concealing them. Eventually we found the paint company the school
| used, ordered the same color/finish, masterfully camouflaged any
| exposed wires, and the network never went down again.
|
| So many nights of Diablo, Quake, Red Alert, Doom and the genuine
| excitement across the network when connecting a new dorm
| apartment are memories seared into my brain.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Of course Facilities would remove foreign cabling that crosses
| firewalls or floors, this is how fire gets across building
| compartments. It's more baffling that they didn't reach out to
| the hackers and help them lay cable that conforms to code.
| Sometimes you run into EH&S types who prefer to "enforce"
| standards instead of "uphold" them, and that should be a red
| flag and a signal to run into the other direction. (Ask how I
| know.)
| spiritplumber wrote:
| In uni we were unhappy with the 10Mbps wiring that was in the
| engineering lab building and took it upon ourselves to
| replace it with cat5, which was what was current at the time.
|
| We did the job over a weekend, informed IT the following
| Wednesday, they said "thanks but no thanks", then we
| clarified that it had already been done and was already
| running. Never got an answer but they left it alone.
|
| We also replaced our wifi access points with the ones from
| the law library when they got the nicer ones, but that was
| entirely covert :)
| unnouinceput wrote:
| 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.
| adav wrote:
| 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.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Isn't that what those AC-detecting pens are for?
| xattt wrote:
| My university had adopted a no-wifi policy for about a decade,
| based on flawed research on safety of wireless communications
| by the individual who was the university president at the time.
| Fortunately, the whole university benefited from being wired
| with 100 and 1000 MBit anywhere you went.
|
| There was a lot of Civ games played with my group.
| bane wrote:
| It was the late 90s, and I remember going to a LAN party in a
| guy's garage where we all played various games, swapped pirated
| software, and second most importantly of all, an absolutely
| terrible VCD pirated copy of the theatrical release of the
| Matrix that somebody copied off of a PC that came into the
| repair store they worked at.
|
| One guy realized we could hook the whole ensemble up to a dial-
| up ISP connection and he could share his connection out to all
| of us with network gear and we suddenly could access the
| internet...sorta...very slow and highly unreliable.
|
| When we finally got it sort of working, a few of us all joined
| demoscene and gaming IRC channels and tried to sorta build a
| "meta" LAN party across the globe with everybody at their own
| local party all coordinated and joked around in the shared
| chat.
|
| We'd send somebody off every few hours for a pizza run, and it
| being autumn, got pretty chilly by around 2-3am. Lots of
| caffeine, soda, coffee, and most importantly community and fun.
|
| Days like those, where we were connecting to each other on the
| very edges of technology may never really come again sadly.
| dusted wrote:
| Thrown together LANs were the best! I remember one we had at
| an old (cleaned up) barn, it was during the winter, pretty
| cold, so someone had the bright idea of using an industrial
| direct fired gas heater/blower thing in there, we sure got
| cooking :D luckily, place was also so drafty that we didn't
| suffocate :D
| wil421 wrote:
| In 2004 every dorm at my college was wired and we could play in
| our own rooms. They blocked the outside but we would have
| massive Halo brawls all day. I still remember hating a couple
| players and meeting them in person later, oh you were that guy!
| [deleted]
| guenthert wrote:
| > The games, and their economics, certainly drove this shift.
| Company-hosted multiplayer servers helped cut down on piracy,
| opened up new revenue streams, and, certainly, made finding
| opponents on a moment's notice much easier.
|
| Indeed. I was (arguably) too old by the time LAN parties were a
| thing -- my generations' LAN party consisted of a bunch of guys
| huddled around a (single) home computer. But I do recall the
| outcry when SC2 was released w/o support for IPX (which wasn't
| supported anymore by Windows) or other means to play against
| other gamers server-less in a LAN.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The obvious answer is that the Internet killed LAN parties. Now
| we're all on the same network. My kids primarily game online with
| their friends from the real world, not randos, so the dynamic is
| similar. Sometimes it's on xbox with the headset, sometimes on
| the PC, and when necessary they'll use ipads to facetime and have
| that on the desk next to the gaming screen. They're very
| connected to their friends when playing.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I... HATED... all the things that made LAN parties chaotic and
| dirty. I don't have fond memories of piles of garbage or spending
| half our time getting everyone on the same version of a game or
| whatnot.
|
| Eventually we matured and realized that keeping the place clean
| was a good idea. Pre-planning the game list, pre-testing them
| online, etc. and having an actual bedtime (3am) all helped.
| adlpz wrote:
| I very much respect your view but i couldn't resist commenting
| on... how insane all that sounds to me. Chaos was, for me, _the
| essence_ of an epic, memorable LAN party.
|
| It's fun to see how different people can be.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I went to a LAN party on Microsoft campus in 1997, which was held
| in one of the bigger conference rooms. Amount of networking
| equipment that the hosting microsofties brought in was truly
| staggering, at least to me at this time. We played a lot of
| Quakeworld and other adjacent games with low, low pings I've not
| seen before, having played largely on dial-up. Fun times.
|
| I recently hosted what is essentially a LAN party with my two
| teenagers inviting their friends to play various games. There was
| ~10 kids crammed into my TV room, organically switching between
| multi-person arcade controller games around our big gaming PC
| (glad I have like 16 USB ports in this sucker to connect them
| all), Elden Ring'ing with their various PCs, and then I don't
| know what. They had a lot of fun. Smelled just like the LAN party
| from 1997, too!
| thebrain wrote:
| My friends and I have had a LAN party every year for the last 20+
| years. Usually around Christmas or early the following year.
|
| Since the pandemic hit we moved them to be online over Discord
| and I'd say that they've been just as fun as the in person ones.
| There are obviously pros and cons but given we're all much older
| now and many people have moved away I doubt we'll ever have an in
| person LAN again.
| Gunax wrote:
| I think they missed a main factor: lag compensation inproved
| greatly.
|
| The old Quake style games often had very naive networking.
| Whereas now, I seldom notice the network even exists.
|
| It's not that lag has changed much--contrary to the article,
| broadband is less important in games. It's latency that matters,
| not bandwidth. Team fortress 1 can run on 16kbps.
|
| And latency is still the same as I had 20 uears ago, 50-150ms.
|
| But the benefit of LAN was that it was the only way to experience
| latency free gameplay. And it really did make a big difference.
| In comparison, internet play always felt weird after experiencing
| LAN.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Most of the online games today seem even worse for connection
| than before. I hear that only Fortnight, CSGO, and Valorant are
| using good servers.
| DefineOutside wrote:
| Even in all online FPS games, due to the client predicting
| movement - there's still peeker's advantage due to your
| player being slightly behind on other's screens, so you see
| enemies before they see you.
|
| This doesn't matter for the majority of players but that's
| why high skilled CSGO and other shooters must still use LAN
| for high level play. There's no entirely defeating peeker's
| advantage and other artifacts from latency.
|
| Valorant, league of legends, and CSGO have their own CDN to
| try to help with connections. Can't really comment on other
| game's netcodes because they vary so much. For example, BF1
| devs removed lag compensation entirely. League has no lag
| compensation since it's not a shooter. CSGO lag compensates a
| fixed amount so consistent ping is more important than fixed
| ping.
| jimmydean12 wrote:
| I think the comment that it was harder to be an asshole because
| someone would just ask you to leave (physically! With your
| equipment!) is quite relevant. It's way too easy to be a jerk
| online now.
|
| There was a real magic to LANs at one time, and these photos
| certainly bring back memories. University and college dorms were
| pretty fun too, I imagine their LANs are quite locked down now
| and only serve as an isp to the internet, but you used to be able
| to find eachother on the campus LAN fairly easily once upon a
| time, and there was a lot of associated fun and magic, from
| intranet messaging to gaming to file sharing
| squaredot wrote:
| > I think the comment that it was harder to be an asshole
| because someone would just ask you to leave (physically! With
| your equipment!) is quite relevant. It's way too easy to be a
| jerk online now.
|
| Maybe the big difference is that you would do a LAN party with
| friends, whereas you would play online mostly with unknown
| people.
| jimmydean12 wrote:
| That's true! Certainly I was invited to LAN parties where I
| knew a few people and was getting to know 2 or 4 others,
| perhaps there was even the opposite effect to being a jerk, I
| wanted to have a better relationship with the others ?
| codaphiliac wrote:
| I literally drilled a hole in the wall underneath the kitchen
| sink to pass a wire to 2 friends living in the opposite
| appartement. On campus, you could see wires hanging from window
| to window outside dorm buildings. Nice times
| jimmydean12 wrote:
| My cousin had a friend next door and ran Ethernet out his
| basement window and over to the neighbours basement window.
| They shared a cable internet connection eventually and made
| their parents pretty happy about the savings $
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-20 23:01 UTC)