Heh, of all arguably-valid definitions of "LAN Party" I think this one is as far away from mine as you can get.

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. :)

This is a pretty amazing setup! I think in 2025 I would definitely prefer something like this. However, I think back in "the day" part of what made LAN parties fun was that everyone's PC was so individualized. I remember all of my high school friends and I coming of age and building our PCs. I helped a lot of my friends build their PCs and we all chose different things (such as the amount of RGB LEDs, which I thought were tacky...). I remember a friend of a friend had a water cooling system and I was so excited about checking it out. Also, things like the desktop wallpaper you chose, etc, contributed to this. There was something very magical about it all. Lugging our PCs to each others houses was a real labor of love.

That website was a very fun read :) what a cool place and so awesome to have so many friends to play with.

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.

The Promised LAN is a bit of a WAN party, but I would say that "LAN party" can certainly be assumed to include virtual LANs.

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.

Haha, have to drop the link to the recent Linus Tech Tips video on your house!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Y0MVUgjOw

Funnily enough the (only) LAN parties I ever experienced "back in the day" were pretty similar to yours:

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?

To me, one of the defining features of a LAN party is a single broadcast domain. I thought that is what this was, at first, but it is actually an L3 overlay network with DNS and BGP and the whole nine yards. Somewhat a stretch for a LAN. :D

I agree with that: to me a LAN Party is about having the players physically in the same place.

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".

In 1999 or so, there was a exclusive demo of Unreal Tournament you could download and play if you had a 3dFX video card. However, someone found out if you created a text file called "glide2.dll" in the game binary directory, you could run the demo in a software rendered mode.

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.

Big fan of both your LAN houses! One thing I noticed is that you don't seem to have any art/pictures/decorations on any of your walls. Is that an intentional choice?

If you aren’t using IPX/SPX, it isn’t a real LAN party.

Or there’s true Scotsman all the way down to the turtle.

I think your definition/setup is the wrongest as it does not capture the spirit. You have a cyber café.

It's more like a "VPN party".

Sibling comments here have suggested "WAN party", but that sounds more like one that anyone on the public Internet can join.

Looks like a nice setup, but ideally the room should be like 25% of that size. Being almost uncomfortably close to each other is a feature :).

Hybrid LANs are also pretty good. During the Christmas-New Year break, old school friends would often have a LAN party with ZeroTier or similar set up, so people who couldn't make it could still drop in and out. You'd get a great LAN party vibe from the room full of PCs and ethernet cables everywhere, but you'd also get much higher player counts. Everyone wins.

Hah! OP feels more like a WAN party :P

Interesting! I grew up before network cards was a thing in home computers (Commodore 64 and Amiga), but a group of my friends organized what we called «meetings» which I would characterize as your traditional LAN party. I remember at some point that we hooked up two Amigas over a fairly long parallel cable and were able to send data across. Cannot recall if we actually were able to copy larger files between them though. Fun times!

Jesus fuck.

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.

Do y'all get mosquitos on the roof? My back patio is screened in and some are still sneaking through. Would love to know the wired-ethernet-certainty type of approach to dealing with this.

My definition was close to yours, but the guest computers were bad. Like, an iMac G3 in the year 2012 or some Hackintosh'd ewaste PC.

Cool I also live in Austin and I heard of your LAN party house many times, curious though, how often do you LAN?

Wow, that place must have cost millions to build.

* offer comes with some money-binding requirements

People move far away but still want to participate in LAN parties.

Only 1 (one) cat picture. This is wrong... :-)

your definition is LAN Party with BYOB but not BYOD

WAN party maybe ?

> My LAN party: All my friends come over to my house and use the computers that I have already set up for them.

I had many computers but not that many. Most friends would bring their own PCs.

Countless hours on Half-Life maps and mods, pre Counter-Strike. Then the Counter-Strike beta came out and that became our (full) life!

We'd also play Warcraft II on our LAN.

Now... Warcraft II wasn't meant to be played over the Internet, so when there was no actual LAN party, we'd simulate a LAN protocol using Kali:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_(software)

That allowed us to play Warcraft II with strangers on the Internet.

Wild times!

P.S: my very best LAN that said was a coax cable going through the window directly to my neighbours' house. Brothers in each house made for nice Warcraft II games.