Where?

If you are already gaming with friends online and want to have a LAN together in the same room; a dining room, basement, or garage are the perfect places to host a LAN. When my friends and I first started gaming, we would set up in living rooms. But as our group got more into LANing we had to make the move to get folding tables and setup in the basement. Most start out in their parents’ house but if you are a late bloomer to the LAN world and happen to be married with kids and a house, you are ahead of the game. Parents though seem to have no problem with this more sophisticated sleep over, at least in my case. Our get-togethers always lasted the weekend, rarely a day event.

As we grew older and started college, more and more gamers came on to the LAN phenomenon. My group of gamers at that time had expanded to about 10+ gamers in my parents’ basement. Note to all, the more people you have, the more mess will be made. I hated cleaning up after friends and pretty much had to force them to take showers because the male funk would build up…yuck. We played a lot of the same games and I started to get the urge to game with new gamers. I met up with another local group that I never heard of and together, I had the biggest LAN in any of our houses ever. 26 gamers invaded my house. We quickly outgrew our space.

If this has happened, look around your locale. Hotels, conference centers, churches, American Legion post, anywhere that has big empty spaces. Most of these places are looking for people to use their empty space when they are not as additional revenue. Unless you have a hook up, you probably will have to donate your time to church or pay to use a business’ space. Hotels are usually the regular choice for LANs. That is because they usually have an internet connection to leech off of. Prices vary depending on where you live so do some war driving and look around your town.