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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?"
Just give them a EULA to sign saying you aren't responsible for anything that you do to them, works great for Microsoft.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
That way you can cover most of your costs, potentially even insurance.
A blog like any other.
dont try and make a profit :P
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...
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.
eclecti.cc
Get down with your bad self!
Has insurance (or lack thereof) come back to haunt anyone in the past?
No. Lack of insurance has never been a problem for anyone. Ever.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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'.
/Strangely, local game shops have been very hesitant to allow us to place flyers there./
This is because they fear that the rampant piracy that happens at almost gaming LAN will hurt their business. They're probably right too.
Don't do what the poor buncha' college kids did in my town a while back. The motel where they booked the room wouldn't let them plug into their AC outlets for some reason. They had a generator, but hadn't planned the load well or gotten it setup before people arrived. I finally asked for my $ back and split after the third time the power to my lan box was cut : (
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.
Choose Finance as a Tag Skill, and by level 6 (42,500 XP) your insurance costs will be negligible.
Insurance is only expensive if you didn't need it.
i've found wolfenstein:enemy territory to be the absolute best lan first person shooter... and what's better is that it's totally free. you can download it off www.splashdamage.com
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.
Maybe sell T-shirts - have some onsite, and set up a CafePress store to sell more of them in case you run out?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Simply because it *is* so old-school
<stares at screen>
"old-school"? Counterstrike?!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
So I pretty much only play Xbox Halo these days. Sometimes we have a War/StarCraft party, but more and more often I only play Xbox. I like the fact that you share screens since it means that you can see where your teammates are, and it is more social.
I have also noticed that it is easier to get girls to play on a console than a PC, YMMV, but there is something to be said for having a mixed gender party.
Anatomy of a lan party:
Lots of penises.
BølerLAN is held by me and some of my friends two times a year. Around 60-70 people are coming each time.
:P (for the record, codebreaker had 200 people in one game).
The event is being held at the local school. We are also lucky that the district council is sort of sponsoring us with manpower that is used for security and running a nice non-profit stand with various food and candy.
The killer event is the Quake 3 Special Event. It is a concept that i borrowed from CodeBreaker. Two rounds of deathmatch that lasts 20 minutes each. 38 of 60 people joined the game, and we had much more fun than with Ut2k4 1on1
Dvorak on Doomtech
Girls?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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).
:P
:)
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
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?
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.
Matt
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.
Lots of people would like the LAN party idea if they simply only knew what it was. Many of my buddies (long time computer guys) are just now learning what games like Evercrack or Counterstrike are and what a real multiplayer experience is. The best damn way to promote these things is do demos and to get flyers taped to games at the stores that sell the multiplayer games you are offering. Charge a small entry fee and split it down the middle with the store that got you the referral. This doesn't have to be much mind you, just enough to cover some network cabling/power bars and network cable/hubs. You don't care if you break even on this one, but the event will never happen if you don't buddy with someone to make it happen and let someone know about it. If you don't charge anything for it, people will think you are not worth the time because you don't even put a price on it. If rations and equipment are covered all you will be worried about is how many people you frag. As it should be!
In running a few little events myself the "ramp up time" does matter. You will get many more people with a years notice than you would with six months, and if you are talking 3 months or less lead time I wouldn't even bother. It simply takes time for people to tell their buddies about the event and for people to see your web links and ads. For these smaller events you need lots of time for them to really work. It's the difference between your event breaking even/profiting and you losing money. Even if you don't want to profit on it a serious gaming event costs money to put together, and the people coming know it costs you something so don't feel bad about sharing the costs with them.
-Mind
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!
I don't think females have a thing for Anonymous Cowards, either. :)
Perhaps if you organise a tournament as opposed to a LAN then you'd be able to use that type of structure. Divisions for leets down to noobs - or maybe some handicap system. Prizes for the winners big screens for the final matches so everyone can watch. If you build up the atmosphere it's bound to make people want to come back and try again next year - and bring their friends. Perhaps you could also have a website with statistics and results, forums or polls for what games people want to play. Or have a survey for the people who come (what can we do better, etc).
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.
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.
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/
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
Seymour Skinner: Parent that waives the right to sue says 'what'?
Parent statemen could't be further from the truth. At all the LAN parties I've run for example, there wasn't one single instance of software piracy.
We were too busy copying Mp3s and movies...
THANKS, FOLKS! I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
... 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.
I've helped out a bit with some medium sized lans, and the organization that I participated in eventually merged with the Pittsburgh Lan Coalition, whose most recent lans have been rather large (100+ people).
One occurance of note is that at the first larger lan party they held power became a big issue. They had rented out a large area in a hotel and had gotten detailed specifications on power availability, but it ended up not being accurate. The hotel split the cost of generators in order to allow the event to occur. One guy ended up with a burnt motherboard from the flucations, unfortunately.
Another thing to consider is security. At larger events when people's nerves are shot from way too much CS (combined with sleep deprivation), bad situations can develop. Luckily, that hasn't been too big of a problem. However, there has been one occurance of theft. Pittco managed to secure a number of sponsors who donated video cards, games, and other equipment to be given out as prizes. At the most recent lan one person was moving his prize, a set of speakers, out to his car. He went back in to get his computer and when he came back his speakers were nowhere to be found. So perhaps having somebody not only to act as a bouncer but also as an overseer during the takedown phase would be a good idea.
Another security related concern is that you should really be aware of who all is attending, and to have contact information for all persons involved. This is useful in case something bad should happen (perhaps someone destroys another person's computer and then leaves), and also in other possible situations (during one lan a nearby convenience store was robbed at gunpoint, and the police wanted to get contact info for everybody at the facility just in case).
I'm not sure what happened about insurance -- perhaps the hotel included that with the room rental. I really don't know, but you could probably post on their forums and get a response. I do know that prior to merging into Pittco we had to give up having lans at our established facility because of liability concerns. But that facility wasn't exactly a hotel or convention type area, either.
The biggest draw seems to be the tournaments, especially for CS. It's unfortunate that some people leave the event after their clan loses. And being that HL2 will only have CS:Source for its multiplayer aspect, I don't doubt that CS will continue to be a driving force in lan parties. You'd do well to decently manage a tournament for CS, and people will find ways to distract themselves while waiting. I haven't seen many people play RTS's, and if they do it's usually Starcraft. Setting up a TV or projector with DDR also helps to provide some atmosphere, and makes for a fun tournament, too!
It doesn't hurt to have some creative uses for the prizes, too. At the first large lan party we had there was a video card left over (a Radeon 9700, I believe) and it was decided that it would be given to the person with the worst video card. A poor guy with a Geforce 2 MX ended up leaving with a nice upgrade.
For communication, setting up a Teamspeak server and an IRC server seems to work well. The last two large lans haven't had internet access, which wasn't really a big deal for people. most people use it to download pr0n and warez, anyways. Oh yeah -- secure your servers. You'll always end up with one script kiddie who wants to port scan and cause trouble.
For hardware, be sure to test out servers beforehand and ensure that they can adequately handle the load. Good networking equipment is a must. Keep one server as a file server and load it up with all the latest patches that people may need. Some people like to bring laptops and would like to have wireless, but I don't see the point in having more than one computer at a lan party.
Keep the pizza coming. You'll be surprised how much is consumed (and try to keep it warm with an appropriate device, if possible). Drinks like Bawls and Mt. Dew are often well appre
> Compare the tone of my post with the moderation. I was joking, not trying to be insightful....
;)
A joke can contain insights.
And no karma is given for "Funny" mods, so you should be thankful
The unofficial
It takes the agreement of several juries (conviction, sentencing, multiple automatic appeals) before a death sentence can be carried out. When that number of people agree that the convicted person must die based on the evidence presented to them, the personal preferences of the Governor or President are irrelevant.
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!
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
nerd nerd / /
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add more users, and sometime connect hubs to other hubs.
http://mediagoblin.org/
$20 is a great price! :)
Here in the UK, as is the case with most things, we get robbed blind for LAN parties with most events costing in excess of £70 (~$175 AUD)
An informative post responding to a post that noted that they got insightful modding when they tried to joke, gets modded funny?
Wow! Imagine the karma I'd get if I started to troll or, I dunno... post offtopic? O:)
Normally I just attend public LAN Parties -- like at CyberLAN Atlanta -- but when it comes down to having one at my house or a friend's, it does take an awful long time to set up. Not to say that it's not worth it all though, but sometimes running Cat5 all across the house can be the most obnoxious thing you'll ever do. Once the dust has settled and you have everything set up though, you'll find out that the LAN party is probably one of the most fun things to do. So you just really have to think about if you're in the "give a lot, receive a lot more" mood, because when it comes down to it, LAN Parties are worth every single second it takes to set up. Rather you're blasting through friends in some Quake 3 or just sniping them in Rogue Spear, online computer games are what makes the world happy -- or me at least. So from time to time... I just have to sit back with a case of caffeine (rather that be BAWLs, Jolt, or something else) and frag the world away.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Simply make every participant sign a release of responsibility form.
What if you turned the LAN party into a fundraiser for a certain charity? You open up a lot of free advertising for an event when it's for charity. You can get local businesses to donate free dinner awards, gift certificates, etc... and allow you to post ads in their stores. You could definately get the local paper(s) to do a local-interest story a few days before the event. And you can probably get a local radio station to do a remote from the site on the day of the event. Depending on other news events, you might also get a local TV station to do a local-interest bit.
"Well that's nice, but what if we want to make money?" I re-read the original "ask /." in addition to this follow-up and I didn't get the impression the group had formed a for-profit entity or had a goal of making lots of money. But if you did want to make money, it may require a delayed-gratification approach. Setup your for-profit entity as a sponsor of the non-profit fundraising event. Donate all proceeds from the event as advertised, but use the venue and crowds to get the word out about your LAN-party company.
Add some other distractions to keep gamers' non-gaming [spouses|friends|SOs] occupied. Have a raffle for prizes donated by local businesses, have a giant moonwalk for the kids, invite Joe's Tech Shack to setup a small demo booth of his new whiteboxes. Come up with cool ad slogans...
Blast AIDs with flash-grenades!
Strafe the legs off of breast cancer!
Come frag-ass for charity!
Well, maybe some of this is getting out of hand, but you get the idea.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
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!