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DreamHack Winter 2002
JJC writes "DreamHack, a huge LAN party, is taking place this weekend in Sweden. Here's some information in English and a daily report from sponsors ASUS. This and this ought to give you an idea of the scale of the thing. Here's the obligatory webcam and their Internet bandwidth graph. It's a massively impressive event, wish I was there! :-)"
Jason.
Hi all, I'm sitting in the picture that's linked in the little article.. and it's cool. I recently moved to sweden from the UK (where we have nothing on this scale). A little info:
/. effect.. we've got a 1Gbit uplink here (although how they got that to an exhibition center is beyond me).
:-).
:] These people know who they are dealing with it seems - very popular. There's also a smattering of hamburger/hot dog/sandwich places around the halls.
1. We haven't noticed any
2. Wintertime is a GOOD TIME for this sort of thing - it's 27C (80F) here just now. The other big swedish LAN (Remedy) is held in the summer, and it's a real sweatfest by comparison.
3. Yes, there is a bit of a discrepancy in gender... there are about 20 girls here, out of the 4500 people here (luckily I happen to be going out with one of them
4. The most popular game here is Counterstrike, the half-life mod. the main tourney is 5v5, 128(!) teams. Q3 is also popular. There's also a history of demos here, and we've seen (and heard)some very cool stuff on the big screen. Microsoft is also here with some Xboxes - and a competition to win them (played on the machines themselves).
5. You can buy Jolt Cola by the 24 pack slab
All in all, I'm having a fine time - and so are most other people. Apart from some horror stories with DOA machines, it's all going splendidly.
You're all welcome to come say hi on IRC - irc.quakenet.org #dreamhack has about 700 of us.
iolaire (Qnet oper, gamer, blah blah)
It may have been a demo party. Once. Today, those art/animation/demo compos are merely a bit of a distraction from the gaming, although some people (obviously) come for the demos rather than for the gaming. Still, they're quite obviously in minority, and I for one don't care. If they want to spend four days in front of their C compilers, let them.
But hey, do tell me, if we're only supposed to be programming, why do we have a 1 GBIT Internet connection? Why is Microsoft here hosting Counter-Strike servers? Obviously, neither is neccessary for exchanging 64 kBit demos. The DH Crew are the ones organizing, so they decide what kind of party DreamHack is, at least officially. From the looks of things, they don't agree with you.
I don't know if we here at DreamHack have the pleasure of having you among us, but if we do, please stand up on your chair and shout your opinion. There are ~4 999 "gamerlamers" around you, it'll be a blast.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
For the curious, there's also a similar event once a year (easter) in Norway. The event is called The Gathering, and had almost 5000 participants last year (not including the massive stab etc etc). For more information visit http://www.gathering.org
--
\ Christian A Strømmen
I'm here, and everything rocks,execept that the whole thing is over in about 4 hours :/
Ring brother, ring for me | Ring the bells of hope and faith
Ring for my damnation | I am at the gallows end
I'm one of the 5000 participants here on Dreamhack and it's a blast. There have been lots of tournaments, and some events that you perhaps wouldn't have expected. For example there has been a Mr Paperbag competition, where participants have been dressing up in nothing more then small paper bags. ATM there's a stand up comedy competition and for a couple of hours ago there was a snowball war arranged outside. There's been all kinds of companies giving away free stuff like t-shirts and games. M$ has even given away a couple of Windows XP cd-roms. =D
It seems like some of the readers here believe its main goal is to make a flash demo for ASUS, and well, I can tell you that that's far from the truth. I would estimate that there are 80%-90% gamers here, and I would be surprised if it turns out that even 1% participates in creating a flash demo for ASUS.
If you take a look around you would probably guess that M$ has a big part in financing this event. There's a game corner where you can try different X-box games for free and M$ has dragged a bid Unisys server down here. There's even been an attempt to make an unofficial world record in max CS gamers hosted by the Unisys server.
A pic of the server can be found here.
O well, back to the fun, there's something going on at the scene again.
So for those who don't know what a Swedish Krona is (SEK), the full price ticket of 600 SEK is a bit over $55. There's a visitor price ticket which is a fourth of the price, valid for a day, unless you're a girl, which makes it valid for the full event. Furthermore, they provide a WLAN, so if you park your car just outside the building, you can probably join in for free with a laptop. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken.
This may be a hint..
0 bordsbygge.jpg
http://www.dreamhack.org/dhw02/foton/021125_mer%2
They are about to cut the network (DH2002 is almost over), so I answer a few of this questions briefly:
:-(
:-)
>how much did you pay to go to this?
500 SEK, about 55 US$
>do you live there or did you travel to go to it?
People live here during the event, but they come from all over Sweden.
>whats the most popular game being played there?
Counter-Strike
Q3A and Warcraft 3 are other popular choices.
>whats on the big screen?
Info, finals from game compos, demoscene stuff and other fun stuff
Ring brother, ring for me | Ring the bells of hope and faith
Ring for my damnation | I am at the gallows end
I was about to call a repost when i realized it has been about a year since i saw this story. Oh yah i saw last year's story on slashdot. You can check out pics from last year at Dreamhack 2001. That overview pic is one of the coolest things i have ever seen.
Also i could repost all the stuff that got modded to +5 in the last story and karma whore like mad or you can just read it here.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I can only welcome the idea, it seems the demoscene is once again on the edge of a major change in the public they are reaching.
There was a time when scene-ing was a BBS-only thing, and parties were small obscure events happening in garages and local youth centers. Since the internet, demo parties have, together with LAN parties (and usually it's the same event anyway), grown to visitor numbers beyond the domestic range. For organisers it's getting more and more difficult to support such a load without sacrificing some of the I-know-you atmosphere that used to be present on these cosy events. Since a few years, demos (and lan parties) have been striving to entertain the general public, not just the underground scene. I think this is a good thing, but I also miss the sense of obscurity that stemmed from the hack and crack era, of which it was initially a subculture.
For more news and references on these parties and the content they put out, see Scene.org
ciao,
a0a
With great power comes great electricity bills.