RoomnetLAN May 2007

Every once and a while some friends and I get together to have a LAN party at someones house. For all the non geeks out there a LAN party is a party where everyone brings their computers into one room and connects them over a Local Area Network in order to play video games against eachother, share files, and enjoy eachothers company. Most LAN parties I have attended start Friday night and go till Saturday evening. This is usually a probelm because everyone will stay up to 4 in the morning playing video games then manage to get 4 or 5 hours sleep and then be too tired to play more games on Saturdy.

This one started Saturday morning and ended Saturday evening so that we would actually be awake to play games, which we did get to do. It started with everyone selecting a spot in the room and setting up their computer, easy. Then, as people arrive they need to make sure that they are on the network and that people can access them, also easy. Next there is the deciding of the game to play. Once a game has been choosen half of the people in the room will call out that they do not have said game and request the discs so they have it and also getting the right version, very time consuming. Once everything is setup and ready to go a LAN game is started! But!, there is a problem! One player's computer decides to be stupid and does not connect properly for that particular game. So the other players either leave them in the dust, or play a different game (which half of the room will need to install).

Whilst playing games when they are working properly there is a clear division between pro gamers and not so pro gamers. Over the course of a game pro gamers will undoubtably become more powerful andcollect resources at an alraming rate. Victory is within their grasp. Not so pro gamers will undoubtably struggle to gain power and struggle to make ends meet. Annialating is within their grasp. But for pro gamers and not so pro gamers LAN parties can be enjoyable once all the kinks are worked out. We played Warcraft 3: DotA, Age of Empires 3, and Half Life 2: Deathmatch

Here are a few pictures I took from the LAN party: