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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
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 : (
Insurance is only expensive if you didn't need it.
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
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.
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.
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.
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'?
> 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
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