
A proper power setup and a reliable network should be items one and two on your to-do list if you want to throw the perfect LAN party. LAN parties, by their nature, are hardware-dependent.

Don’t forget to ask everyone to list their online handles and servers for the various MMOs or other online games they play, as well as their preferred Skype/instant messaging names there’s nothing worse than having to yell that stuff back and forth during a loud LAN party. You should also ask everyone to list their system type (Desktop? Laptop? Liquid-cooled PC megalith?) and OS, which should help you map things out and get you thinking about potential troubleshooting for older operating systems. Plus, they’re free!īefore you send out the final details for your big LAN party, use a Google Form to survey your attendees about what games they own, what they want to play, and what they’re bringing.

Google Forms are a fast and easy way to gather critical intel while planning your LAN party. You might even find yourself playing nothing but one-on-one Warcraft 3 matches in an 11-person room. Some of your friends may be first-person shooter afficionados who fire up an online game of Team Fortress 2 and never leave others may broker deals and exact diplomacy via instant messaging clients running alongside Civilization 5. It doesn’t take long for LAN parties to become organized chaos. What are you going to do when 12 eager, caffeine-fueled gamers pack your living room with PCs? How will you address the squabbles over which games you’re all going to play? The blown power circuits from all the systems you’ve crudely strung together? The slowness of everyone’s Web connection because one of your friends is downloading the latest Game of Thrones episode?


There’s a mythical quality about showing up at a friend’s door, a six-pack of soda in one hand and a monitor in the other, prepped for an all-weekend gaming session with one’s closest buddies.īut you, the aspiring LAN party host, have a more difficult quest to tackle. Remember the good old days of the LAN party? You might not thanks to today’s prevalence of broadband connections, the availability of free voice and video chat services, and the ample multiplayer support found in most modern games, you no longer have to leave your home to frag your friends.īut even though they have multiple reasons to leave LAN parties behind, gamers love their LANs.
