Winbar’s LAN Nightmares

FFS, I’ve just been trawling the various LAN forums for the UK again, as I often do looking at what is coming up in the area so that we can properly plan ours. And yet again I’m seeing posts for people advertising their LANs before they even have a venue?!

How the hell can you announce dates and even prices of an event before you have somewhere to hold it? Venues that will let you hold overnight LAN events are scarce enough as it is, never mind all the other issues like lighting, ventilation, security, parking and of course an adequate power supply. It’s people ‘organising’ events like this that is slowing down the recognition of LAN gaming more widely and making it really difficult for the better run events to be taken seriously by industry and the wider public.

Here’s another tip to those thinking of setting up a LAN: by all means judge interest in your geographical area with a few forum posts, but don’t be stupid and announce a date and price until you have all of the details sorted, ESPECIALLY getting something confirmed and IN WRITING from a venue, oh and certainly don’t even think of starting to take bookings and money from people until everything is in place otherwise you’ll have some really pissed off people you have to refund and apologise to. That makes life difficult for those of us with vaguely organised and established events. Walk before you run folks and if you aren’t sure then ask for some advice from people who know.

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I wrote this some time ago as a piece of advice for people attending LAN events. Sometimes the whole event experience can be ruined by poor health during the LAN, but a lot of this can be prevented (if you think about it though 100+ unwashed peons crammed into a room eating crap for a weekend, it’s a recipe for some sort of disease to spread). Here’s the article:

Surviving the LAN Party!

In an attempt to minimise casualties of war in our LAN events, we have compiled the following advice to ensure people maximise their enjoyment at the LAN without suffering from the infamous “LAN Death” before the end of the event. Whilst this has been written around CLUK events, some of the principles will apply to lanning in general!

Eating
One of the quickest ways of becoming unwell at a LAN is through eating too much crappy snack food, though this often gets blamed on poor hygiene and bad cooking! Whilst it’s tempting to go and stock up on Pringles and Haribo on your trip to the supermarket on the way in to the event, these are great for snacking through the night, but are by no means classed as a balanced diet! Try buying some fruit and just eating a couple of pieces through the day and night, you’ll feel much better for it!

We would suggest getting yourself at least a decent breakfast and evening meal. At our MMU venue, you will find brunch being served from 11am in the Wesley centre next to the gaming hall; you could also bring along normal breakfast supplies like cereal and use the provided fridge to keep your food in. The breakfast of choice though is to head along the road (about 3 miles) to the nearest Tesco and enjoy one of their fine breakfasts to start the day. If you’re from up north, then get yourself a packet of oatcakes, some cheese, put in the microwave and you’re sorted!

For the evening meal, we try to provide something each night, whether it’s Pizza, BBQ, Curry or whatever else may be on the menu. This just leaves you with lunch to sort – go for a sandwich, pasty or if you really must, some sort of just add water snack like a Pot Noodle (if you’ve got the horn).
CLUK provides a snack shop of crisps; biscuits and chocolate which is open throughout the event, but do make sure you have some meals in between your snacks!

Drinking
Let’s take a look at drinking in its various forms at a LAN.

Alcohol – Well it is a party after all, so as long as you are over 18 then there’s nothing wrong with a drink or two at a LAN. Same precautions as if you were going out normally though, balance out your drinking with water to rehydrate. You’ll often find a range of drinking games taking place through the event, just check the rules before you join in and if any of the event staff think you’ve had enough to drink, then it’s usually a good idea to stop!

Caffeine –Everyone loves to try and stay awake at a LAN, and obviously the caffeinated drinks help you to keep going. Some of the caffeinated drinks on sale are quite strong and very sugary. Just like with the alcohol, keep an eye on how much you drink and alternate the caffeine with soft drinks or water, the staff don’t want to have to fetch you down off the ceiling!

Soft Drinks – Fruit juice and water will really help to keep you feeling healthy and alert at the event. Drinking a good balance of everything above will stop your stomach getting unsettled over the weekend.
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OK so all you have to do is buy a couple of hubs from fleabay, string together a few four ways, charge an entrance fee and you got yourself a LAN party yeah?

You couldn’t get more wrong.

A few of us on Quakenet #CentralanUK have recently been getting quite into Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares re-runs and after looking around at some LAN party efforts we’ve seen over recent years and some joking piss-takes using Chef Ramsay’s lines about some known events, someone suggested doing this. So I’m Jon/Winbar and here is a brutal blog about some of the LANs I’ve been involved with from both a participant and an organiser point of view. It’s going to be no-holds-barred, honest and straight to the point.

Quick bit about me, so you know where I’m coming from with this. I went to my first “proper” LAN in 2001 having played around at home with crossover cables and all that before. Dived straight into the deep-end with a big LAN (MultiplayUK’s i-series) and quite enjoyed it so carried on attending a few more until I decided to give it a go myself. A year later I made plans with a colleague to set up CentralanUK running in the Midlands which has grown in popularity since then as well as continuing to attend events in the UK and beyond. My RL job also includes a lot of event management work and I also have some formal qualifications in events management.
However, that by no means suggests I’m any sort of expert at this, but I do vaguely know what I’m doing. With our events, we do admit when we’re wrong and make efforts to improve things for next time, but that doesn’t mean CentralanUK is exempt from LAN Nightmares, if we fuckup somewhere, you get to read about it right here!

So look out for the next LAN I go to, and if you want to contribute then drop me a note through the blog, I’ll be glad to hear of other people’s experiences.

And if you’re about to run a LAN, our first quick tip: keep it fucking simple and don’t run before you can walk.

Happy Gaming!

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