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?"

Comments

Word of Mouth

[PaintyThePirate]

Things may be different where you are, but in my area, the geek community is pretty tightly knit. Generally, word-of-mouth is the best form of advertisent. Tell the local geeks at high schools, colleges, etc. People who would be willing to attend a LAN would hear about it eventually, from other people who would be attending it.

Lan Party Suggestions

[Eberlin]

You may be able to get sponsors for snacks, drinks, etc. If you convince enough people, you may also be able to get the speed stick folks to supply deodorant to the literally unwashed masses. :)

I've never been to a LAN party so my input will not weigh as much as those who have. However, it may be worth listening to in order to attract the demographic.

Have refreshments and clean bathrooms. Make the machines comfortable to use. If people bring their own kit, be sure to have enough people who have the same games installed to make a decent game or two. If possible, try to moderate the games with some sort of ranking system where the n00bs (like myself) don't get 0wn3d too much by those with m4d 5k177z. I say let them play in their own high-ranking games.

As gaming in general has moved away from the socially unacceptable geek culture and towards mainstream, you'll be gathering an ecclectic group of people with different social skills. Be sure to have enough space for divergent cultures to group themselves. Social retards like myself need to hang out with others like me (I know there are others out there, damn it!) while the more pop-culture trash talking "you are teh suxor" group can have their pissing contest elsewhere.

I enjoy FPS games (ET, UT, TFC), but am not too much into the strategy types (warcraft/starcraft) . I'd go to LAN party events (and would gladly pay theme-park-like admission for a day's worth) but am wary that it's not a social environment I'd be comfortable in.

In any case, good luck to you.

They have that. Sell T-Shirts?

[billstewart]

They have an entry fee, which looks like $20 advance / $25 at the door. Assuming they had one last year, which they probably did, it was either too low to break even, or too high so it scared away people, or just right and breaking even's rough in their market (or at least, with their advertising budget.)

Maybe sell T-shirts - have some onsite, and set up a CafePress store to sell more of them in case you run out?

Need to protect yourself against venue damage too

[billstewart]

Ask your local Science Fiction Convention staff. They encounter similar issues, though they usually don't have hardware problems, only people problems.

Even if you make all the attendees sign a permission slip saying that you're not responsible for them or their hardware and that they understand that LAN parties, like bungee-jumping, are an inherently dangerous activity, and that they agree to pay for any damage they do, you still need to protect yourself against attendees doing dangerous or stupid things. Because there's some reasonable probability that they will, and either you won't be able to figure out who it was or they won't have the personal assets or insurance to cover it. Maybe they plug their PC into 240VAC and the blue smoke gets out and sets off the sprinklers, or maybe they plug their Ethernet into the building PBX jacks and fry the PBX (yes, I know RJ45 is designed to discourage problems like that), or maybe their extra-high-power 802.11b card triggers the garage door opener and some outsider steals the snowplow, or your PCs use up too much power and a circuit breaker trips, taking out the coffeepot in the lobby, or who know what other stupid things can happen.

Just get more people..

[putty_thing]

I run a LAN party in the UK thats been getting bigger for afew years (www.thebiggame.org) - we've had public liability insurance (protects against people killing themselves) since our event hit ~60 people attending, but what you're paying is covering us for a whole year (in which we run up to 4 events).

As for consoles, we did allow people to solely bring consoles for a while, but found nobody actually bothered. It seems console gamers don't want to sit and just play games for a whole weekend; however, the consoles make a great break from pc gaming, and are good for quick tournaments. We've usually got an xbox and ps2 connected up to a projector as well as ProjectorGames who have a pretty unique product, I'm not sure if they'll travel out to the US though :P

For advertising, the best is word of mouth, but before we got a bigger following posting at schools/colleges/universities gave us great success - We also got an interview on local radio, as the event can be passed off as a local community type affair.

Sponsors do seem to only look for a proven record and shear numbers of attendees, so make sure you've got a good record of past events on the site. You might want to target local firms to start with, these will benefit from the targeted advertising your LAN will offer, as the small (comparatively) attendance of your LAN could mean a large increase in customers for them.

The main trend with LANs seems to be they're getting more popular, but also, the big ones tend to become really corporate, so maybe the niche is not to sell out? :)

Consoles are the way to go.

[unwiredmatt]

Of all the lan parties I've hosted most of them take 2-4 hours to setup because not everyone has the same games, or their computer is horribly set up. Where with 4 tv's, 4 xboxs and halo it takes half an hour to set up, and about the same to shut down, and can be a lot more fun than counterstrike.

Re:Local game shops

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Or because they, like most other buisnesses, will not post advertisements for events for free?

I worked behind the register at a gas station and our policy was no signs (I felt evil when I had to tell a woman that she could not post a sign asking for help finding her runaway daughter).

If you wanted to post something, you had to talk to the manager and lease the window space.

And the last LAN I went to resulted in me purchasing 3 new games that I got to try out there and that I liked.

Re:They have that. Sell T-Shirts?

[Cougar_]

I run a LAN party here in Australia every 6 weeks, I have a permanently setup venue, and charge AUD$20 for entry. We usually have 100-120 people come along, sometimes more, sometimes less, but the $20 entry fee covers costs quite adequately. It has taken a while to build to this level however, and having only one event a year would be like trying to start from scratch every time.

Usually we run a 24 hour event, although last week we had our 5th anniversary, so we did a 43 hour event instead for the same price. I find that if you have a good event, people are more than happy to pay the entry fee. Use some of it to pay for a decent door prize, I find that always encourages extra people to come along, as they have the idea that they might actually come out on top with a $100+ piece of computer hardware.

I also offer prizes for games etc. and have built up a good relationship with a few local businesses who let us put up flyers and posters, as well as donating prizes for us. We have sold t-shirts in the past, but the costs of getting them made up means you can't actually make much money on them, people don't actually want to spend as much for a LAN t-shirt as they would for a designer label.

As for insurance, I've now run 35 LANs without ever needing it, but it's that one time you do need it that it matters.

http://www.blamlan.com/

One Method that worked for me...

[Ezmate]

Me and 5-6 friends hosted a monthly LAN Party that lasted 2-3 years (1997-1999) and had a peak attendance of 70 people. Over the event's lifetime, it actually broke even! Here's how we did it:

We started very small: just 8 of us in a guy's house. If we met someone that was a gamer, we invited him to the next month's event. After a few months, the host's wife got a little annoyed at the size of the event. So, we had to move...

We rented out a local Lion's Club for a reasonable price & had an 25 people at the first event. We charged everyone $15 to get in & asked everyone to bring some sort of snack or drink. We even taped heavy black plastic trash bags over the windows so nobody suffered from glare). It was a great success.

Next, we started a small website with a FAQ (adults only, no booze, no drugs, games we play, etc...), a map to where we hosted the event, and a message board to see what games people wanted to play. We also made it clear that we were a Quake2 Lan Party so that we attracted people who were all interested in the same game.

We actually planned out 80% of the event (1PM until 2AM) so that there was usually a scheduled activity right around the corner. Events included the following:

-Started with a few deathmatch servers that people could hop in & out of while configuring their computers. We used some mod that kept things "even" - the more frags you had, the less damage your weapon did (and vice versa)...it got the point where you'd have to rail some newbie 4 times to kill him, but a few shots from him with his pistol would kill you - very fun stuff & extremely even scores)

-A silly tournament of sorts (QPong, Chase the chicken, or the like). Always good for a laugh.

-A group tournament such as CTF, Team Rocket Arena, Ball & Chain (Strongest player teamed up with the weakest player - usually decided by parsing the logs of all the previous tourneys & the warmup servers)

-30 v 30 Rocket Arena (the absolute highlight of the evening - there's nothing like running around on a HUGE map with 15 of your teammates trying to kill all who stood before you. It was always fun if you were the last man on one team...the whole place would errupt in cheers if you actually killed one of the mob hunting for you).

-A 1 v 1 tournament. We usually gave out medals or trophies to the top 3 players (very cheap, but such a nice item to have - just for pride; I think I still have one above my computer). We actually attracted the top players in the Houston area to this event & had several top 50 GPL players show up on many occasions.

Most tournaments were double elimination & there were always a few deathmatch servers to retire to after you were bumped out of the tournament.

People had fun playing, but the real fun always happened near the food table: you got to meet the guy who kept fragging your ass & B.S. with him or brag with your friends about some kick-ass kill.

As we grew, we had to install a new sub-panel at the lion's club to handle all the computers (an organizing member was an electrician & just charged us for parts), we frequently borrowed a switch (one of the guys worked for a networking company & didn't mind us borrowing a high powered switch for the weekend) & we started providing food (we raised the admission to $20/person but provided lunch AND dinner plus more snacks than you could eat - I usually shopped the local sales or Sam's Wholesale club).

Towards the end, we were an official GPL (??) qualifing event, had real sponsors (for door prizes & tourney prizes): Bawls, Logitech, & a local porn shop (one of the players managed an adult video store - his door prizes were very interesting), and had the tiny Lion's Club rocking with 70+ people. We even had to turn people away.

Here are the things that I think made us successful:

1. Start small & grow into the event. This did several things: we never lost a lot