#lan parties

[demonsee2]

Halo parties were awesome.

[thedamnwoods]

Epsiode 203: Video Game Opinions & Horrible Stories

Jake & Oz talk about some upcoming video games, remakes & subpar dynasties. Also making an appearance this week, Whiskey!

[dbzfreak2]

Playing Age of Empires 2 at a LAN Party

Me: "Why are sending a lot of ships?" Justin: "They are setting sail for some pussy." I lost my shit

[tiamoose]

LAN parties are so much fun! :D

[spooksuprex]

I honestly think I've spent a bit too much time on the internet, or at least on the... weirder part of it, Mostly saying this because my reaction to see two people in fursuits and a guy dressed as a sexy lumber jack was at most a three second glance and a question for the lumber jack. How that man found shorts that short I will never know.

[midwestlans]

What 2014 has in store...

I know it's been a good long while since you've heard from me, and it's definitely not great news. After months of trying to negotiate a contract with a new hotel, I decided that the risk was simply too high to accept.  Their terms were fair, and they needed to mitigate risk on their end as well, so as of right now we're still on the hunt for a new location as we head in to 2014.

Suffice it to say, I've worked with over a dozen hotels in the Milwaukee area, but also further down south.  Every hotel is the same story, their prices are high because we're competing with wedding revenue and that's simply something .LAN can't compete with.  We're a small, growing event, and besides putting us on hold in 2013, we just don't have the capital to invest in an event with so many questions. I'm reaching out to locations that are not hotels.  These are locations that will offer the bare necessities (power, hvac and internet) where we would be able to have folks stay in surrounding hotels overnight. This is less ideal than being able to wear slippers all weekend and never have to go outside in to the cold, but it's better than no LAN party at all. We're investigating some options at this time and hope to have good news before the first quarter of the year passes.  As always, keep posted here, and we'll have the latest .LAN news to share.

[aquirkysoul]

Girls who game, and why they are awesome.

Hello there! My name is Owen, otherwise known as loopy, a 26 year old human-male-type-person from Sydney Australia. I have been a gamer for my entire life, in fact, I could have been the poster child for the idea of a 'real gamer.'

I was introduced to video games when my parents bought me a Nintendo Entertainment System when I was in Kindergarten. I then discovered a shareware copy of Doom on my grandparents PC (IDDQD, IDKFA) and from then on I was hooked. I learned most of my ancient history from the original Age of Empires, I used to chuck sick days so I could sneak off to my friends house and play Warcraft 2. I played competitively in tournaments in games ranging from Counterstrike to Dota, used to attend and host three or four day LAN parties. I even worked on a TV show about video games for a year and a half.

That being said, when I went through high school I was mocked for my nerdy habits. My friends and I would get teased for playing video games in the computer room at lunch, or for discussing our favourite Pokémon, or for discussing zombie apocalypse contingency scenarios. Not surprisingly, it was hard to take. These things were all so awesome, and not being able to share them with other people just drove me further into imaginary worlds.

Have I got my 'geek cred' out of the way yet? Yes? Awesome. Because all of the above is fairly meaningless.

I met my first gamer girl when I was eighteen. I knew of others that existed, but I was having enough trouble talking to my classmates to ever bother with seeking more people to be awkward around. Her name was Leah, she worked in the local internet gaming café and could kick anyone's ass in FPS games when she wasn't out clubbing. She was an awesome girl. I never really befriended her (mainly due to above awkwardness), but she had a huge impact on my life. I was introduced to new styles of music, shown a really awesome style of dancing, she even offered me a job at a clothing store one time when I was broke. As I said, she was pretty rad.

I started going out more, and realized something. There were so many girls around that shared the same interests as me! Girls who would quite happily sit there and talk for hours about Harry Potter trivia, owned copies of Ocarina of Time, or were fans of Studio Ghibli movies. Nowadays I've got female friends who drag me along to MtG midnight releases, wake me up for midnight conversations on how much the Star Wars prequels sucked, and host Youtube channels about comic books.

You see, gaming is not just about those hours you spent as a kid learning to speed run SMB with your eyes closed, its about coming together to join in a love for something. Gaming is also about watching your friend realize what "would you kindly" means for the first time. Whether your particular poison is competition, imagination, strategy or creativity, our hobby has something for everyone.

You don't get imaginary nerd points for discovering something first, you just become obnoxious.

As a heterosexual male, I can't understand the hostility women experience in the gaming scene. Gamers have developed an insidious mindset that we live in a closed community, where a girl gamer is something akin to a unicorn. I've seen women get swamped with attention at their first event, guys hitting on them repeatedly. This sucks, as it's quite uncomfortable for them, and causes many to hide their interest. Have you ever watched your friend hit on someone who is clearly not interested? Notice how uncomfortable it gets for everyone?

The best thing I can say as a former 'Nice Guy' is that women, all women, should be treated with respect. Strangely enough, people like being respected! Become friends with them, tell them about that awesome game you discovered! Maybe, over time, learn something about their other interests as well.

Finally, note up there how I said 'become friends?'

That's it. Friends. Your first challenge. Become awesome friends with a girl. There are many advantages to it, if you take some time to think about them. If you'd like me to explain them, feel free to hit up my own askbox, link will be below.

Anyway, back to your scheduled broadcast! Happy gaming.

Owen / loopy

[midwestlans]

The Games we Play!

Well gosh, I promised more blog posts after launching this thing and I've been very good at ignoring it instead. Well, not today! Today I feel like writing a bit about the games I've been playing while also providing an update on .LAN 2014.

I've been going back and forth with a few games, but mainly I've been playing a lot of Smite. Being a third-person view moba, the game really has the roots of an FPS while bringing in the mechanics of a traditional top-down view moba. I personally have never meshed with the moba genre. I can't connect with the game play, the item setup and the multitude of other meta mechanics that constantly evolve in the game. With Smite, things are a bit different.

While the game shares a lot of mechanics, like tower pushing, last hittng and within the last four months, jungling, there are a few things that are significantly different.

1. You can't see behind you. In a top-down view, you can see what is in front of you and behind you as long as you have line of sight. With Smite, because you're looking at the back of your character, you only get to see what is in front of your character, making spacial and map awareness key. Warding is even more important in this game and those who keep an eye on the map tend to have more success in the game.

2. The majority of shots are skill based. There are some exceptions where as long as you are within a proximity of an enemy unit you'll land some damage, but basic attacks and most skills require good aim and prediction skills.

I'm sure I could come up with a few other major differences, but I think those two points are the biggest. It really is what separates Smite from the others. Not only that, but the item system in place is diverse enough to give customization to your god, but not so complex that new players would be totally lost. Once you get the hang of it, you'll find yourself right at home.

God kits are also incredibly fun. They've been able to do a lot more with character skills than with other MOBA titles simply because of the perspective. What that means is that the new gods coming out are really showing some new and interesting mechanics.

I've been playing since August of 2012 and while I definitely follow a period of frustration and excitment over the community, I'm still playing.

I've also picked up Battlefield 4. It's incredibly similar to its predecessor, but it has some nice updates to the engine and gameplay. However the core mechanics remain unchanged. I've had the same split of immensely gratifying experiences to downright rage-inducing gameplay. It's unfortunate that with this new game they haven't been able to resolve some of their more trivial issues, like server crashes causing players to lose any progression in the match. With how much data is computed for this game, you'd think there would be a way to handle the data throughout the match without losing too much progression. Either way, it's a nice change of pace and I'm enjoying myself so far.

You've read this far, I suppose it's about time for an update on .LAN 2014...

We're heading back to our roots. I've been negotiating with the new hotel for about two months now on trying to solidify a date for next year. Right now it looks like it's going to happen sometime in April, so if you're keeping track of these sort of things, be sure to leave either the second weekend or the final weekend open, because it may happen during one of those weekends.

We're also scaling back the size of the event significantly. With the break in 2013 and with new game releases really separating the community from which this event draws, I'm simply not comfortable taking the amount of risk that comes with signing their 5,000 sq ft space. We'd have to bring in a minimum of 65 people on top of staff (which would be over 70 of us) and that was about where we were in 2012 with a lot of momentum behind us. I think we've lost a bit of that, so this year is going to take a step back and focus on what we do best: play games with friends.

With that being said, when we make the announcement for the event, we will not be holding public signups. We'll be keeping the event closed to previous attendees and invitations will be sent out to folks based on their history with the event.

I'm expecting 2014 to land somewhere in the 30-40 person area and we'll be keeping it a bit more casual. The event will coordinate tournaments and things like that, but sponsorship will be light and we'll keep things down to earth. With the more casual approach, the event will be significantly cheaper than you're used to seeing.

That's about all I can disclose for now. Keep an eye on our facebook page or right here for more updates! Expect to see an official announcement before the end of the year!

As always, thank you for being a fan of Midwestlans and I sincerely hope that we can grow .LAN back in to the event I hoped it would be so many years ago.

Cheers, Nick