Game Events

 

 

 "A (large) group of gamers gathering in one location socializing and playing computer games on a high speed computer network" This would be the shortest way to explain what lanparty's are, but there is more to it when you look closer.

Social aspects

Games

 The kind of games that are played at lanparty's haven't changed all that much in the last 10 years, FPS (First Person Shooter) is the most popular form of games that you will find at lanparty's today, a good second are RPG (Role Playing Game) games followed by RTS (Real Time Strategy) games. The whole idea of lanparties really started with Doom, this first person shooter was one of the first games that had a multiplayer functionality that was not based on split-screen, but on local area networks (Internet was not as widely accepted or available as it is today.)


Other games that were (or still are) popular at lanparty's are:

Starcraft (RTS)
This is one of the games that made the RTS games what they are now. Starcraft is still amazingly popular in the far east but less popular in Europe. The game was very well balanced, most of the time RTS games know much problems in balancing the strength of the different forces, and it is just this balance between forces and players that is the strength of RTS games. In Starcraft you can play 3 different races, multiplayer games involve building and defending your base while gathering resources to build an army large enough to blow your enemies of the map..

Half Life Counterstrike (FPS)
This game is played 5vs5 most of the time, in some exceptions it is played 2vs2 or 1vs1 but the last 2 variations are less common. 2 teams fight each other in medium sized maps, the goal is to kill all members of the other team or place or disarm a bomb. After each round the players get  "money" to buy better weapons and armor. This game is after many years still the game that is most lucrative to play in tournaments, far more prices are available for this game than for the other common langames.



Unreal tournament (FPS)
The success of Unreal Tournament was partially because of the fact that people could build their own additions to the game, UT (Unreal tournament) has several extra online mods available which made the game more versatile. One of the best known mods is "Instagib" where 1 hit is always instant death. This game was a little bit slower than the Quake 3 game but is besides that very much alike in gameplay. At lanparties 1vs1, 5vs5 and deathmatch are the most common game forms, besides killing each other as much as possible there are no other goals.


Command & Conqueror (RTS) (Newer versions)
Starting with Command & Conqueror itself followed by Red Alert, Tibirum Sun, Red Alert 2, Renegade, Generals and Tibirum Wars this is the RTS game that has the most chapters. Although the game had a large fanbase at the beginning this has changed over time. The first editions were played a lot by large groups of people, but after Westwood Studios was taken over by EA the games went downhill, with each release the true fans hope for a game with the quality like Red Alert had, but EA dissapoints them a lot lately. C&C Generals was the last part that was a moderate succes at lanparties.

Trackmania (Racing)
Until this game race games were not very common at lanparties, although they are perfectly suitable for online or lan gaming. Tracmania is more accessible then other race games, it is not really complex but it offers a lot of arcade fun. you can play the game for a few minutes without having to make to much settings and a race takes not much longer than a few minutes. The fact that it is easy to play  but hard to master makes it a very accessible game that suits most of the visitors of lanparties.


Serious Sam (RTS)
There is nothing serious in Serious Sam accept the damage that you can do.. This game was really popular at lanparties a few years ago, the high fun factor and the easiness of play made it perfectly suitable for fun gaming. The multiplayer co-op modes was played the most, killing endless hordes of aliens was a activity that many gamers did nights on end at lanpaties.

 

 In the beginning lanparty's were mostly visited bij "geeks" that had much affection wit computers and networks in their professional life. This was not a strange development, the knowledge needed to build a local area network (LAN) was extensive in the beginning of computer networks, besides, the costs of such an network made this hobby reachable only the real enthusiasts that found it worth spending a fair amount of their money on high end computers and network equipment.

 

 Over time computes and network equipment got more affordable for the general public, resulting in a larger target group for lanparty's / computer gaming. Still, the visitors might have changed, but the hardcore group of gamers / computer / network enthusiasts would stay to be the driving force behind the phenomena lanparty's.

 

 At first networks were build based on 10Mbit coaxial networks, this kind of networks were never very wide spead in the lanparty scene, mostly due to the lack of standardization and the complexity of this type of networks. One other important problem of this kind of networks is the fact that it was not possible to expand the network when it was in use, the functionality of the network strongly depended on the precize connection of the cables and the right use of terminators.

 

 This kind of networks made lan (Local Area Network) gaming far more reachable for the larger public, using UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) and switches and hubs it was getting easier to create larger computer networks, the speed of the networks also increased (although the base speed was still 10Mbit, the bandwith isn't shared with other users like in 10BASE2 networks).

 

 For the common user the only change between 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T is the transfer speed of the connection (I will spare you the details) and the cost of the needed hardware. In the beginning the price of fast ethernet networks (100Mbit networks) was extremely high, this resulted in a slow acceptance of this type of networks in the lanscene. Only few organizations had enough money to invest in this kind of network equipment and this started a big change in the lanparty scene.

 

 Organizations like GameParty.net (in the Netherlands) that had funds to invest in these fast networks started to share (in some cases for a small charge, in other cases completely free) their networks with smaller organisations, in return for this favor it was common to let these smaler organisations use the subscribtion systems for registering their visitors. This resulted in lage community sites with vast amounts of members (65.000 in case of the GameParty.net community), the lanparty scene was moving from a closed group of experts to a more open community wich got more and more accepted by the general public.

 

 At this moment computer networks are getting more and more common, most people have 2 or more computers at home, to share one internet connection with those 2 computers you already have to build a network. The fact that most households have such an network shows that the networks are no technical obstacle for the smaller types of lanparty's, the knowledge about how to build a small network is widely known and very easaly found on the internet.

 

 Also the knowledge about computer systems is growing, as an result of this trend computer gaming was also a growing phenomena and still getting more and more accepted by the general public. Al this resulted in a growing audience for lanpary's the past few years.

 

 Wireless networks were never realy used very much at larger lanpaties (and probably won't be in the near future) mainly because of the fact that wireless networks were never intended to be used in very high density area's with large amounts of users on a small area like lanparties. The amaunt of users causes interference in the signals, slowing them down and making them less reliable and thus not suitable for gaming.

 

 The only network technology suitable to create high end  networks that support 1000 Gigabit users simultaniously is 10 Gigabit network infrastructure. Getronics PinkRoccade The Party 6 in The Netherlands is the first 1000+ lanparty in Europe that we know of that has used this technology. At this moment CodeMasters CampZone 2008 is going on (Also in The Netherlands) and this would be the second event of this size that uses this kind of infrastructure on a pure gaming event.

 

 The 10 Gigabit technology is combined with routers and special servers to minimize the amount of broadcast traffic on the network. The special servers are needed to send the "good" broadcast packets that are used by gamers and game servers around the network. More information about the techniques used is available at GameParty.net.

 

 

 

 

 

 

GameParty.net - Largest lan gaming community of The Netherlands
Codemasters Campzone - Largest outdoor lanparty in the world
Getronics PinkRoccade The Party - Largest indoor lanparty in The Netherlands
Dreamhack - Largest indoor lanparty in the world
Clanbase - Online / Lan Gaming community