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Anatomy of a LAN Party?
malfaetor writes "My colleagues and I are interested in improving on an annual public LAN Party that we first held last year. Before the event, I asked Slashdot, and received some terrific suggestions. The event ended up being quite a bit of fun, and we had very few technical issues. However, there were some non-technical improvements that could be made. We did not break even financially, and ended up having to divide the loss among the seven of us. The biggest financial killer for us was insurance, at nearly $500 for the event. What have other LAN party organizers done about insurance and legal issues? Has insurance (or lack thereof) come back to haunt anyone in the past?"
"We've also had trouble deciding which network games would be the most popular. Our group has tried to focus on games that are the most familiar (or at least the smallest learning curve), and that most individuals already have installed. What games have been the most popular at LAN parties you have attended in the past six months? We know many individuals with consoles, but are unsure if promoting the console gamers would be a large draw. Have consoles been a common sight at the LAN Parties you have attended? If so, have you had any problems related to having to juggle both console and PC players?
Advertising was also an issue. We ran a grassroots advertising campaign because radio and TV advertising were too costly to be considered. However, we were concerned that the flyers we created and the postings we had on certain websites were not reaching enough local gamers. Strangely, local game shops have been very hesitant to allow us to place flyers there. What creative ways have other groups used in the past to get the word out?
Our webmaster has done a great job so far in getting sponsors. Sponsors have been very good to us, but other events that have been around longer seem to have quite a bit more swag to give away to the attendees. Is the real trick to getting sponsors to have longevity, Get Big, or have the organizers donate a whole bunch more money toward the cause to purchase these prizes themselves? Do local sponsors tend to give more than big national sponsors? Does anyone have any tips or tricks for approaching sponsors?
Lastly, has anything changed in the LAN Party scene in the past year? Has anybody seen or been involved in any noticeable trends, or have experiences worth mentioning?"
Advertising was also an issue. We ran a grassroots advertising campaign because radio and TV advertising were too costly to be considered. However, we were concerned that the flyers we created and the postings we had on certain websites were not reaching enough local gamers. Strangely, local game shops have been very hesitant to allow us to place flyers there. What creative ways have other groups used in the past to get the word out?
Our webmaster has done a great job so far in getting sponsors. Sponsors have been very good to us, but other events that have been around longer seem to have quite a bit more swag to give away to the attendees. Is the real trick to getting sponsors to have longevity, Get Big, or have the organizers donate a whole bunch more money toward the cause to purchase these prizes themselves? Do local sponsors tend to give more than big national sponsors? Does anyone have any tips or tricks for approaching sponsors?
Lastly, has anything changed in the LAN Party scene in the past year? Has anybody seen or been involved in any noticeable trends, or have experiences worth mentioning?"
I don't know if it would work for all, but
it's worth looking into:
Linux Australia buys a "big ins. policy"
Your branch wants to hold an event
It notifies the LA of type, place, date & times
LA notifies the ins. co. of same
Branch's event is covered by organisation's ins.
Again, I'm not directly involved in details,
but just heard the above scenario described
at its latest conference in January.
It's the kind of thing that could help to both
save small groups $'s -and- strengthen network-
ing among compatible groups... there's incentive
to keep in touch (at least a bit)
You milage may vary...
I recently had a LAN party and it went GREAT! We had 11 people at the height and it lasted about 16 hours (About 7 PM to 11 AM). I charged everyone $10 to cover soda and pizza and broke out fairly even. We played a few games, here's my suggestions:
UT2k4 Onslaught mode - Its an awesome FPS game and Onslaught adds a depth to the game that strategy gamers will find appealing.
Rise of Nations - We played this near the end when we had 8, since that's the max for the game, and it is a great game, simple to learn, hard to master.
Counter-Strike - Simply because it *is* so old-school, even if it's not that great of a game.
My LAN party was, assumingly, smaller than yours, but you just need to scale accordingly.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Mostly we use WiFi laptops and have like two PS2s and 2 Gamecubes set up.
Bear in mind, we usually play Starcraft, Old School style.
I don't know what the most popular games are.. but I can guess at a few, and a poll might help you decide...
Best recent LAN party game experience:
StarCraft
Warcraft
Halo
Half-Life
CounterStrike
BF 1942
Other RTS (post reply)
Other FPS (post reply)
Other (post reply)
Not all of us started playing CS in version 1.3. I started playing way back when in Beta 7, 3-4 years ago years ago.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
This is completely incorrect. People can and do sign away rights every day. If they didn't, no one would ever be able to settle a lawsuit or plea bargain in a criminal trial.
I am a lawyer, and my opinion is that you are confusing the concept of the general ability to either consent to someting that would otherwise be illegal and/or release someone in advance of any legal liability with the countervailing concept that the law will not allow you to consent to some types of legal wrongs.
The classic example is battery. Battery is the unconsented-to harmful or inappropriate touching of another. Sporting contest participants are held to have consented to certain types of touching even though that touching may do physical harm (e.g., being tackled in a football game). However, the law will not allow you to consent to a touching that is likely or certain to cause death.
In my humble legal opinion, a properly drafted, clearly worded release would be completely appropriate for a LAN party.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
DON'T SKIP INSURANCE.
Insurance is only expensive if you don't need it.
For $500 you avoid being on the hook, potentially for the rest of your LIFE, if something bad happened at your LAN party. You'd be insane not to get insurance!
Unless your business is to pay fortunes in medical/legal/pain and suffering bills, pass that risk to someone else who is used to taking the risk. Do you have the $50,000 to even defend yourself against a (possibly bogus) claim? If you are worried about $500, probably not! Does the insurance company? Probably so. You'd be insane not to take out insurance!
Do bad things ever happen? Yes they do!
Someone hurts themselves. Someone hurts someone else. Somone get's electrocuted by your wiring even though it is their own fault. Somone is on drugs and dies at your party. You'd be insane not to take out insurance.
Now if something bad did happen at your party, and someone needed expensive medical attention, don't you WANT to encourage them to get it? Don't you WANT to know that they will be taken care of by your insurance. This isn't just thinking about yourself, it is also thinking about them. You'd be insane to skip insurance!
Now, the per-event cost for a one event type thing every year is going to be high relative to what it would cost to add on event insurance to an existing type of policy. You might check if a local company would sponsor the event and add the liability coverage to their policy (it will be cheaper). If you have a friend who is an insurance broker you might try asking them as well, though at $500 we are not talking much here at all, so an insurage agent making $10 commission is not going to spend much time with you.
I don't play games online, and don't know insurance, but hope the 2 cents helps. Kudos for taking out insurance the first time around.
Many multiplayer games aren't backwards compatible after a patch is applied. One word of advice, for whatever games you will host, make sure someone has a hard-copy of all the patches/updates. You don't want your night dependent on a broadband connection to retrieve them; it will always fail once your buddy Moore shows up.
I haven't played it at a LAN party, but Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a good game. Plus, since it's free, anyone can install it if they're bored with their current game. Also, it has a few mods, such as ETPro which is a competition mod and fixes a lot of bugs, and ETTV, so if you have a "café" area, you could set up a TV / Computer so people could watch the game while they take a break. (Assuming they do.)
(\(\
(=_=) Bani!
(")")
I help out at a regular (every 6-7weeks) 450 person LAN. Getting all the servers (games, web and ftp with latest patches/tools) ready before the event makes it much easier on everyone.
There are also a number of programs/tools that can help you run a LAN such as "LAN-in-a-box" (the LAN I attend uses a similar web-based system but I can't remember its name... they both allow you to run competitions easily) and HLSW (remote console program for a wide variety of games - doubles as a server browser).
A big whiteboard can also come in handy for organising competitions and getting information to the LANners. A PA system is helpful if you can't yell loud enough.
Currently popular games at this LAN:
Call of Duty (and I expect the expansion CoD: United Offensive - but its still new)
UT2K4 (Or any other Unreal Tournament)
Quake/Quake3
Starcraft/Warcraft (+ different warcraft styles TD/dota etc)
Age of Mythology
RTCW: Enemy Territory (Excellent *free* as in beer game)
Counter-Strike (Still OK in the wee hours with nothing else to do)
I'd suggest setting up your servers with as many different games as possible and change between them as requested/needed. When you change the servers around let people know a different server has just started so they can join and get things going.
I fully agree with WebLion. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is an awesome game. And it's free as in beer, but much of the source code has been opened up, so there are a lot of mods being developed. There were MANY disappointed attendees at QuakeCon who wanted official QuakeCon ET competitions.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
How many schools have sent home permission slips granting free reign to the school to do with the child as they please anyway? I know I never brought one home from school.
There are LAN parties, and LAN tourneys. A LAN party should really just be a group of buddies getting together for some good ol' RTS'ing or fragging.
A tourney on the other hand, has an entrance fee, prizes, and is generally a lot bigger with a rented location. Most I've been to included prizes, and were prepared months in advance.
A few of the prizes were in the $200-300 range for the top players, other ones included higher-end CPU fans , a desk lamp, mouse pads, PSU's and various other geeky things. Local companies - mostly computer shops, etc - were named in the brochures as sponsors, and donated most of the prizes.
Now, I'm not suggesting everyone go out and try to hunt down sponsors, since then supply would dry up. But if you're willing to put the effort down for a real party, then it can turn out quite nicely. In fact, the first one I ever went to had big name sponsors (and this in a not-so-big city) from major gaming companies donating games for recognition. Remember, it doesn't take much effort to put a sponsor's name up on a poster, and there is something of automatic recognition involved when the sponsor's games are played.
We would have seperate rooms (or clusters in an open environment) with about a doz games installed on each machine: Some of the games we used at one time or another:
Everyone was *expected* to pitch in $20 per day for expenses. We used McD's for breakfast, Dominos for lunch and Dinner. These days, we have much better food selections available here. I suggest some better variety, but sitck with finger food that does not make a mess. Keyboards can be hard to clean when slobs use them.
Our sessions would go as long as 3 days (Friday afternoon to Sunday evening. We would draw between a dozen and 60 people, mostly based upon the size of the room(s) we had available to us. All spots were reservation (pay in advance, no refund) or walkin at $50 per day if space was available.
For getting the word out, we would use the cheap/free papers in the area, and the computer stores (offered free advertising at our gig if they advertised our gig at their place). We would go to all the Grocery stores and place 8.5x11 flyers up. They would last a few days - use tearoffs on the bottom to let people get the phone number to contact you easily. Local colleges are a great place to spread the word. We have an Ivy Tech and an IUPU here, so we put flyers on their boards as well (the local computer groups did for us to make it proper). If you are not to shy, putting a sign on the car (just like for sale) works wonders, believe it or not.
For insurance, never had it. Maybe a bad idea nd maybe not. I do not know. We never needed it. We had all people sign a waiver to be part of it. No kids under 18 without a guardian or responsible adult - legally adult, not acutally 8-).
Worst thing that happened, one of the players kids (about 10) hurt his ankle while running around (expressly forbidden in the rules the parent signed). A few keyboards were toasted with soda and other things. Lost one computer. Person who toastes it paid for it at least.
Beyond that, everything was always smooth. We learned about the 4th time to provide an area for Significant Others to sit and do something (TV was good).
We always made a profit. We allowed several companies locally to advertise at the bigger ones (the ones that were not private ivitation only). Compnies liked it for exposure, and the players got coupons from the companies, so most of them liked it.
Hope that helps. And good luck. LAN Parties get old fast when your career takes off and you have children.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
- Each sponsor will need an umbrella policy -- which is something you add on to an existing homeowners & car insurance policy pair.
- Each sponsor needs to be a homeowner and have homeowners insurance with some company.
- Each sponsor needs to own a car and have car insurance with the same company as that sponsor's homeowners policy.
- Each sponsor must not have had more than one traffic ticket in the past five years.
- Each sponsor must have no criminal record.
- The LAN Party should be a hobby and not-for-profit.
If you can do all that, then you'll be good up to $1 million (typically).It sounds like you're taking this seriously, so organize accordingly and make it a formal dues-paying club based on a legal partnership or corporation. You have a potentially HUGE liability exposure and you want some kind of legal barrier between you and your partners, members and guests. If it is a legitimate private club, many regulatory issues disappear, but you have to be legitimate, don't just say "we're selling memberships, not entry, at the door."
Find a fixed or regular location (that is one you have an annual lease on yourself or one you agree to rent for one day per month, repeatedly). Light industrial space is cheap as hell, costing less for a month than most rented spaces will cost for a night. Everything becomes cheaper if you operate from a fixed location. Even if you just find a hotel and negotiate for monthly meetings, you'll get a better deal than hunting around every time. Also, people will be more likely to show up repeatedly if they don't need to find you each and every time. If you want predictable results, you have to be predictable.
Negotiate annual or multiple event coverage, not per-day. A fixed location will make this much cheaper as there are fewer variables. $500/day is insane if you're going to be doing this on a regular basis.
Pros:
Their property, their insurance. So long as cables are secured and they approve of the layout you should be fine.
Possibly a lower cost on the facilities. Say it's a small hotel with 300 rooms, it's off season, a time they're normally almost empty and you can book 150 rooms. It's quite likely they'll give you the meeting room space for free or a low per person charge. Add in the profit (for the hotel) on overpriced drinks (soda, coffee, booze, etc.) and the money made on what would normally be an empty room.
If the hotel can make a good profit off the whole thing they'll likely comp a few rooms for the organizers. Keep everyone in line (i.e.: not destroying the place) and the hotel might do a better deal the next year.
Cons:
Their property, their rules. If they run a hard ass place then your lan party is going to be like a high school study hall. If they're willing to look the other way on certain minor issues like late night noise (in the gaming area) or someone having a toke outside then things are good. Expect wrist bands for the players and guests.
No outside food or drinks. Hey, they want to make some money of this event too and drinks are quite profitable. They'll most likely be hard on this one. Try to preset the prices of sodas, beers and a few food items. Remember, they can't say no to your own food/drink in a guest room but they can (and will) forbid it in the gaming area.
They might want you to cover any loses. Get a contract and get it approved by a lawyer. If a bunch of people no show on their rooms and the hotel can't charge them for whatever reason you could be left on the hook. Again, get a contract and a lawyer. A few hundreds bucks spent will be well worth it.
Advice on dealing with the hotel:
Check the place out. Does it look like they handle meetings often? How's the access to the proposed gaming area? Enough parking and can some be reserved? Take lots of photos during the walk through for your record, planning and the web site pushing the event. Again, a room no sold is lost revenue. If they're empty (like Cape Cod in February) they're much more likely to give you a better deal if they have a bunch of rooms sold. Forget any holiday weekends. Try to book when no other meetings are taking place. Multiple meetings might mean less access to the gaming area before and after play. Make sure the contract covers clean up. Reasonable is you removing the wiring you laid and the duct tape you use to cover it. Food, drink, table breakdown, chair stacking and general cleanup; the hotel's problem. Budget a few bucks for tips to the staff you deal with. This might really help you in the end.
Be mature. They're running a business with some tight profit margins. If they can make money on the deal they'll talk to you. If not they'll boot you out within 30 seconds. Welcome to the hotel industry. Sign nothing until your lawyer approves it. While there are some very honest hotels out there, there are also some that will screw you as much as they can. Be careful.
A hotel can be a great place to have a lan party or you're worse nightmare. Be careful but check it out.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
... that should get some more people coming ;)
I'm also involved in running lan parties (<shameless plug> In Adelaide SA </shameless plug>).
I think the biggest draw is word of mouth, but since you're only running them once a year, and not advertising much, you'll have to target your advertising better.
Try targetting groups of geeks, ask to advertise at the IT department of your local schools / colleges.
Perhaps you could have a bring a friend discount.
Maybe you need to lower your price, or improve the perceived value.
For our LAN parties we charge $20, but we chuck in a BBQ, 3 cokes and a pizza. We don't pay insurance as we are covered by the venue, we also don't pay any rent / hall hire.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 243BVY/qid=1096512783/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl 14/103-8075853-4244637?v=glance&s=books&n=5078 46
I haven't read it, but I read the authors LiveJournal, he's a smart guy who knows his stuff, and if I was even planning a 4 hour lan party for just half a dozen friends I'd go out and buy it on strength of his name alone.
Signing away your right not to be killed would NOT eliminate a wrongful death suit. Such a contract would be illegal and therefore void.
I'm not a big game-player. What do the game developers think of that? Video/DVDs have specific EULA's - something like $20 for a DVD, or $80 for a rental DVD (you'll be making money by renting it). Does the gaming industry have similar practices, or does your friend just buy the games on the high street, install them, and charge Joe Public to play them (with all his infrastructure, etc)? I'm not wanting to question his legal status at all - I'm merely asking a question to which I'd be interested to hear the answer.
... cheaper route. But I've seen the boxes with my own eyes. Twenty-something copies of twenty-something different games will fill a storage room, even if they're the new smaller boxes (:
... so on paper he's not charging to play the games. Standard statement, I am not a lawyer.
... !) and a bunch of games. Again, he owns four copies of all the games that are on the moded XBoxes. I guess he's still in violation, but I think we all agree that what he's violating is a load of BS anyway.
He does own a copy for each machine of each game he has installed. I was shocked, frankly. I expected him to take a
He says he's gone over all the legality stuff. There was something to do with Blizzard, which I can't recall. The other stuff he has some loop hole or something. I think it has to do with selling time to be in his place, but using the computers is free
Another interesting thing he's done is setup four moded XBoxen with big hard drives (and great big 40" televisions
There are a few other replies to this comment that I will retort against here, as to avoid making more comments.
$4 an hour is CHEAP. Arcade games, take DDR for example, cost $1 for one game which seldom lasts longer than 15 minutes. Tada! Back to $4. Next we take 20 to 25 top-of-the-line Windows gaming computers and put them on a lag-free network with all the games you could want, fully patched and moded for every current popular game. Unlimited options, maximum quality. $4 is cheap. There is another game center about half an hour away in another town that charges nearly double that AFTER a large membership fee, which isn't required at my friend's business. And he offers memberships as well which give you unlimited play for one flat rate.
Me on the other hand, I play for free (: A little technical support and physical labor goes a long way. It also helps that I save his ass in 16 player Halo from time to time (:
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
> Free... assuming you have Return to Castle Wolfenstein already.
Duh!! Wrong!!!! ET is completely free, as in beer. The full game is a free download.
In my town we have a shop dedicated to LAN games any day of the week & a large public LAN once a month.
Most of those games are never played at LANs I've been to.
The most popular games are (in order of popularity):
Call of Duty
Battlefield Vietnam
UT2004
BF1942: Desert Combat mod
When some of the students in my degree have a private LAN, we play all the above games (except for call of duty) as well as Star Craft: Brood War & C&C Generals: Zero Hour
I've been a primary participant in running Smackdown in london ontario. Last year we had our best tounout and we were able to easily break even.
:)
Suggestions:
1) Spend 3-4months at minimum planning the event, weekly meetings, etc...
2) Ensure your network and power setup is solid. Power is one of the most important things to consider, the last thing you want is 300 gamers bitching and asking when the power is coming back on in the corner, or near the door, or whatever.
3) Your hall costs, power costs and insurance (A great idea, however if you get an appropriate center ie. A large gathering hall at a hotel.. and make everyone sign a "were not responsible for equipment or you're own stupidity" then that would do it... (I would speak to whom ever is allowing you to host it. ie. hotel manager, warehouse owner... etc..) 4) Big companies in the gaming industry usually can provide some large door prizes (ie. amd, intel, radeon, nvidia, etc..)
5) Local computer stores could be charged to have a booth to sell network cards/cables/fans/anything that a gamer my want, or need because of a hardware failure.
6) If you don't want to charge computer companies for attendance, have one of them provide a large prize (ie. computer case built with components for the gaming geek (top of the line everything).
7) Have extra people to help, and try not to run too many tounrments!!! Be specific with times, odds are you will run late.
8) When it comes to games, one thing that worked good for us was the signup form had about 15 checkboxes with games, q3a, ut2k4, wc3, cs, et, etc... and after we had a 'chunk' of gamers signed up we annonced the official game tounrments, and we also provided a few 'public' game servers for some of the games that weren't being run in official tounrments.
9) RUN IT 24hours, I don't care if its a 2 day lan or 12day lan, if you run it 24hours, you never have to worry about a gamer not having a wonderful time.
10) Have it near hotels & downtown (bars for older gamers).
11) Do not allow drugs/alcohol in the gaming room (duh, but I just thought I'd mention it).
12) A very important one... Have gamers under 18 have a signature from their guardian on the signup sheet at the door.
13) If your concerned about stolen equipment, check everyone in, and check everyone out. If someone leaves with equipment, you should have people on 'security' that will stop anyone caring equipment out. Our rules were "If you take your system out, you're done for the weekend" and "We are not responsible for your system, cd's, mouse, keyboard, etc... You don't want people brining equipment in and out all weekend, that makes it easy for people to steal things.
My $0.02...
Fyi. A lot of the guys from WAG (We are gamers ) were not able to participate this year ( aka. life ) and the event did not occur. However the event was started 6years ago, and ran better every year, starting with 114 people, finish last year with 300people++ and turning people away at the door who didn't pre-register because we were over capacity.
Oh ya and advertising, ONLINE, on gaming servers, on irc, around the city, and if you can somehow get it, a radio blurb. Word of mouth is great, especially if you have 20minions spreading the word everyday ( at college/university/work/etc.. )
No, this is
first off, sorry if this is (-1, Reduntant), but I don't have time to read all the comments. as such, i'll leave my karma bonus disabled.
why not charge at the door to help cover costs? If you guys come out at all in the black, take the money and donate it to the EFF (a registered non-profit), thereby giving everyone a warm fuzzy feeling. You won't lose your ass and nobody will think you're a bunch of money-grubbing whores.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
http://www.fwgg.org/how2lan/start.htm
This lan is kinda dead, but the link above has a lot of great info.
I suggest attending some LANs in your area and talk with the person in charge. Offer to help out! They're usually very personable but very busy! Offer to come the night/day before or whenever they do their setup, help run network lines or setup tables and chairs. Stay after and help tear down. While you're doing that you might be able to pick others' brains, or at least earn a bit of respect from the event head and be able to get a good conversation in. LANs don't just sprout out of nowhere, the people running the event will have been what you are going through.
There is no one way to throw a LAN, so get out there and attend! Help out! You will learn.
Another good link:
www.lanwar.com
This is one of the most successful LAN parties in the country. Burden throws a 560 or 1000+ party several times a year in Louisville, KY and has been for years. I think they're on their 24th or so party. If you really want to see it done right, go there.
Actually my friend is currently in the process of starting up this type of business. Right now he's tied up in finding a place to put the center, but he mentioned to me some of the costs with liscencing the games. This is off the top of my head, so I can't vouche for it's accuracy. Blizzard games go for 1000 a series a year. I assume that's per pc, but I don't know for sure. Valve is 10 per month per pc per game. MS games he gets free through his trade guild. Those are just what I remember off the top of my head.
Yeah, I think I've heard my friend say similar things. He didn't want to do StarCraft for that reason. Too much money for too old of a game.
Space / Location: He actually hunted for a while. Basically, with a specialized business as this is, you can put it just about anywhere. It's not like there's a conveinience factor to it. People that want to play games are going to go where the games are. Much like movie theators. They're usually on the edge of town where real estate is cheap. I would suggest your friend do the same thing. About the only thing I see making a big difference is jr high and high school kids. During school season he has between 20 and 30 kids show up after school (3:35 when they get out at 3:30, they b-line it for the games). He's in a fairly good location for our jr high, about a mile away, and the highschool is only another half mile further than that. Unfortunately he doesn't have much parking, but again, it's mostly kids who either walk-in, get dropped off, or show up in large packs sharing rides (:
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!