Whenever I mention the word “Lan” to my normal friends I almost always hear the word right back in question form. Well ladies and mostly gentlemen, I present to you, the Lan Party.

The Lan Party: A gathering of computer gamers for one main reason: to play in close proximity.

Video games are almost always viewed as this kid:

The kid sitting in his room with his console playing by himself. Well for computer gamers, this is partially true.. we are sitting by ourselves but most of the time we are playing online with others. A lan party is perfect to meeting those who you regularly play with online and gives you the ability to talk smack to them in person instead of over voice chat.

Back in the day, console gamers, in order to play multi-player had to actually go over to that persons house and play. Computer gamers have never had this luxury however. Ever since I can remember we have always had multiplayer over the phone lines or some form of long distance communication. A lan gives us the best of both worlds: Proximity and the greatness of computer gaming.

I am not going to say computer gaming is better than its console brothers (it is) but computer titles have always lacked the ability to sit with others and just play. The lan party however fills this need.

So your interest now? What do you need to set one up?

Heres a list of common things needed to host one:

• People.Without this factor, your lan will most certainly fail.
• Power.Make sure you have enough power to handle the ammount of people you will have.
• Place.A location big enough to house equipment and people. I recommend 8 foot tables and 3 to a table for maximum comfort.
• Networking Equipment. You will need a switch/router/network hub to get everyone connected.

If your hosting, a cool idea that is always nice to have is a projector and sound equipment. Late at night when people start getting tired and not wanting to game as much you can throw on some movies and let everyone just kick back and enjoy it.

Notice the projection on the wall of the counter-strike match going on?

What as a individual do you need?

• Your computer, working.You don’t know how many times we have had someone bring their computer to only find it doesn’t work or there are problems with it.
• Networking Cable (Cat5). This stuff lets you plug your computer into the network so you can play on a LAN (local area network)
• Power Strip. Don’t forget this one.. people always do. You usually will only get one plug on the outlet and your monitor and pc almost always take two.
• Headphones. Don’t be that dick who thinks bringing your speakers is cool. We don’t want to hear your music or game-play.

Setting up:

The person setting up the lan will need to organize tables for maximum comfort. Place a heavy duty extension chord for every table, put a power-strip on that and have three computers use each of them. Three is safe and your fuse shouldn’t blow.

Place the network equipment at the ends of each table, and have a main hub next to you and plug the game servers directly to the main and have everyone else be on the others.

Bring people who know what they are doing. We had a nice guy by the name of Leo. He always brought at least 15 computers all for people who didn’t have computers to play on. This brings in a whole new group of people to the lan atmosphere!

 Thanks leo!

                      Leo’s arsenal of computers installing video-games!

Once you have your first lan, you can continue to grow larger and larger

Lan parties always hold good memories for me. Make sure to document them. One popular thing I like to do at my lans is to have a webcam that takes and saves a picture every few minutes. This always gave me hilarious results:

                                         Even though gaming is supposed to be the primary focus of a lan, it rarely is. Don’t be surprised if you end up doing something will make you laugh for years to come.

Credit to http://landemonium.net for some of the pictures above.