Slashdot Mirror
Dreamhack 2001
flagg writes: "One of the world's largest LAN-partys is taking place in this very moment, Dreamhack 2001 in Jonkoping, Sweden. Take a look on this picture and ask yourself a question: Do I wanna be there?"
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Frankly, I don't. For me, the fun of a LAN party is being there pulling an all-nighter with my buddies, spilling drinks, making a mess, watching pr0n, and laughing it up all over the place...
Going to these hangar Lans with thousands of people just doesn't have that kind of intimacy... it's more geared toward people that just don't have broadband access and wanna get a couple of days of some lag-free gaming in.
...before a LAN isn't a LAN?
Or does "Local Area" refer to bandwidth in some wierd way?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Seems a little too big to be a fun LAN party. You'd seriously have to do the buddy system there. At a LAN party, I woudln't trust leaving my computer for the time it takes to instal NetBus or BackOrifice.
Nor would I trust logging into anything on that network. Probably sniffers all over the place.
I like 'em small, like at a friends apartment(or a party room) where you can just chill, eat food a few feet away, etc.
Since it's a LAN party - not that many I'd guess. They're there because they're 31337 gamerz and use Windows. Not that a bunch of Linux zealots (who mostly are converted Windows people anyway) would know a good Amiga/Atari/C-64 demo if it bit them in the ass anyway. Demo parties are dying, unfortunately.
Fuck Tux.
That looks really boring to me. I loved the LAN parties back in the BBS days (I suppose they're still going on, but that's when I went to them) just at random peoples' houses with 20 friends or so. Computers strewn everywhere, tripping over cables, screaming at each other, spending hours trying to get the network working and occasionally the kid who would bring beer, and all the "bad kids" who would drink.
That was fun to me. Playing games against 1000+ other anonymous people seems like it wouldn't be much different than playing online.
But I don't really play games, anymore, so maybe I'm just lame.
there are about 5000 people here.. and we're all having a good time. here are some pictures from the floor.
It _was_ a demoparty, and I used to go there, but now, to what reason? Last time I was there, there where gamers there, a lot of them, but they at least had demo competitions... I made a 512 bytes mini-intro (just for fun, there where no matching competition) with a friend...
Btw, I'l bite and answer two other messages:
There's no snow at all in Jönköping atm (or in any town in south sweden).
Sweden is a _long_ country, so this it's-dark-all-winter-and-bright-all-summer doesn't apply that much at all to e.g. Jönköping. But anyway, what does it matter when you'r in a building four days in a row, with ponly the light of thopusand monitors to guid you?
DH used to be in another, more northern town (borlänge) before, but even there, there where no snow and quite bright...
Btw, if you want to go to a _real_ demoparty, visit The Gathering in Norway!
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
this picture kinda shows what The Gathering is all about .. It started out as demoparty in '92 and is still running hot. These days all 5k of tickets gets sold out in ~24-48 hours, so there's apparently a huge market for lanparties here in norway, sweden and other close countries :)
.. well, guess what, since this isnt your average lanparty where people are staying in small, overheated rooms (like most "hey, lets gather over at our house"-lanparties), it works out quite nicely. Most people also shower daily (guess some of you havent heard about that. ;))..
.. well, it sorta could be. But that would be boring, wouldnt it? What you usually do is that you go to the party together with your demogroup, your clan or your friends, whatever suits your need. You sit together with the people you already know (5-10-50-100) - and guess what, just on the row behind you, someone you know from IRC is sitting .. and you're meeting them for the first time ever! .. and then, suddenly, the coder of that *awesome* demo just suddenly pops by your row to say 'hi' .. you kinda have to be there to get the spirit :)
..
Some people has been complaining about "the stench has to be awful"
Ok, for those of you that are complaing about things getting too anonymous
DreamHack looks really nice this year, hopefully there'll be a few good contributions to the democompos and we'll see some nice showdowns in counter-strike and Q3
.. and to end it all up; go there!
mats
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.