If i had to do a "lan party" these days i'd just connect my Steam Deck to some hdmi beamer and play Jackbox games with a bunch of people.
OS's like Windows can easily share folders and printers, games (particularly older ones) run LAN discovery off of broadcasts, and the lot. Sure, sometimes you can route it, but when I think LAN, I think back to the wireless bridges in a neighborhood LAN between houses we would setup - ARPs and all, in a big messy broadcast domain that worked well enough.
Today I think I'd reach for GRE tunnels to add that functionality if I was them. Otherwise, this is just the Internet with more steps.
1. there was one smallish computer lab tucked under a stairs in the science department in university, in which all of the computers had been "compromised" in some fashion & games installed for student LAN parties. Mainly after hours for those living on campus.
2. In the first tiny little company I ever worked for we'd have them in the office on occasion.
For your "traditional" types - how did people transport their computers? Laptops?
Similarly, I'm not sure how 13 or 14 year old me got a 27" Trinitron TV downstairs by myself. 34 year old me would need an entire bottle of Advil for sure.
I don't live in the US though so perhaps we just missed out on that rite of passage not living somewhere where kids are more likely to have access to a car.
That aside, it sucked performance wise even with a Pentium 3. My main PC and 19in monitors were what we drug around to LANs all over.
There used to be an old movie theater in North Branch MN that was converted to basically a permanent LAN Party where people would just come and go.
Movies and bands would play on the stage on weekends or something, too. Best time of my life.
Like I could understand saying it misses out on the aspect of literally bringing your individual PCs, missing out on the neatness of everyone’s individuality as another commenter pointed out, but I don’t think they’d agree that the in person, gaming in the same place aspect is entirely precluded from “the spirit”
It's hard to capture three dimensional physical art in two dimensions and/or digitallly, even more so when the art is abstract. The context and interaction with the physical environment can also be important.
Not suggesting you go out and buy plants for the gaming rooms (maybe you already have) but wondering if it was a conscious decision not to have any?
We have a lot of plants outside, though.
Or there’s true Scotsman all the way down to the turtle.
That said there is a "behind the scenes" video where we initially toured him through the house which is a lot more conversational, but it's on their pain subscription service.
This line made me chuckle:
> I suggested to Jade: Should we move to Austin? Jade initially said no, because she wanted our kids to benefit from Palo Alto's school district. At the time, it was rated #12 in the nation. But, looking closer at the rankings revealed a surprise: The Eanes school district in Austin was #8. When I showed this to Jade, she changed her mind.
Could tell your wife was Chinese without even seeing the name. Chinese parents will made radical housing decisions for their children, even just to move from #12 to #8, lol. Love this.
Obviously, as you predicted, the first reaction is "how do you afford all of that", which is a silly question, because the answer is "just be in the right place in the right moment".
Now, the second question is how do you get to actually organize a big party? My experience is that in modern times it's very difficult to maintain an extensive social network. First, people live far away from each other, so visiting someone becomes a journey. Second, people have shit to do, and when you invite them for a beer it usually means asking them to give up something else in that time (like taking care of their kids). Third, in the age of hyperindividualism it's difficult to meet people you vibe with, because everyone has their own distinct personality and the era of shared values and hobbies seems to be gone.
I'm even willing to say that a get-together of friends in the same location playing the same online game (perhaps using laptops / handhelds / tablets / smartphones / etc.) still fits the spirit of the LAN party, even though it might technically be over a WAN. (Former LAN game series like Diablo have evolved in this direction, for better or worse, and MMOs were always in this space. It's still a blast to play them with people in the same room.)
The best LAN party is the one that you are part of.
The important thing is only that the players are local.
Sibling comments here have suggested "WAN party", but that sounds more like one that anyone on the public Internet can join.
I don't call it a LAN Party when I plan an evening to play with my remote friends, it's just a "game night".
At the time, I worked for a company with a large training room full of computers. The room had locking doors, and a small, narrow window in only one door. We made a cardboard cutout that fit into that window perfectly, and painted it flat black. If you put it in the inside of the window, it appeared as if the room was empty and dark. We called it the "beat-down screen".
We loaded up the UT demo on every machine in that room, and used to get a bunch of like-minded gamers to come down at the end of the work day and we'd play the three demo maps for hours. We eventually added Half-Life deathmatch (I loved the snark pit map) and Counterstrike. None of those machines had discrete video cards, so we had to run in software rendering mode on all games, at something ridiculous like 320x200, but it was glorious.
Good times.
I used multiple school officials' accounts to log in, push a copy of UT99, filled with custom maps, to a network share. We would then copy that folder to the hard drive of the school computers and play UT99 on them. We had amazing LAN parties where we would find empty computer labs after school and play games for hours.
They had BNC networking in that building at the time. It took "forever" in my mind to copy the game from the network share to the local hard drive. Totally worth it.
In those days they even let us maintain the high school website using Dreamweaver...
I was a sophomore in college in '99-00 and they had just brought in new Power Mac G4 machines with ATI Rage 128 16MB AGP cards. They were faster and better than anything I had used to that point and it also was around when Unreal Tournament was released which was a big deal. I was the administrator of this lab and was supposed to oversee students working on video and audio projects. But instead, we had epic UT tournaments and better yet, I got paid to be there. I also had keys to get into the lab so we would catch a buzz and play for hours.
Absolutely amazing times.
I made a custom boot disk (floppy) that would boot Windows bypassing Fortress. It was pretty easy.
During computer programming class I'd install Worms on the machine and we'd all play.
The instructor was a cool guy and said it was fine as long as we were getting our work done.
On one of the tests he included a question: "Who is the master of the ninja rope?"
Traditional LAN party: Everyone brings their computers to one place to connect via a LAN, where they play games, swap files, demo stuff to each other, etc.
My LAN party: All my friends come over to my house and use the computers that I have already set up for them. Nobody brings their own. The point is to interact face-to-face, with video games as a catalyst. Swapping files and demos doesn't really happen since nobody brought their own computer. (My house: https://lanparty.house)
The Promised LAN Party: The LAN is extended, virtually, across multiple houses, so that the participants can play games, swap files, and demo stuff without actually leaving home. It's arguably no longer "local" but functionally it enables the same activities as a LAN party, other than the face-to-face interaction part.
I wonder who gets told their definition is "wrong" more. :)