LAN Parties. Remember them?

[JohnS]

On the one hand, it doesn't seem that long ago, yet on the other hand...it seems like congregating with friends to have a LAN party playing games playing Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942 or simply Quake 3 is a time that belongs to another era! (Which, it is!) Do you remember those times? Was there a computer game that you spent hours and hours trying to master?

A nostalgic look back at when the Internet still felt joyful

By Steffi Cao, CNN Thu March 14, 2024

 

 

An array of electronics, cables, soda cans — and shades; the quintessential LAN party set-up as pictured in a gamer's basement space in Lee's Summit, Montana in 2002. Kiel Oleson/Electronox/Courtesy Thames & Hudson

At the turn of the millennium, web-based technology was in a state of chrysalis. Google was just one of several mainstream search engines, not yet a monopolistic empire. Dial-up internet (and its iconic dial tone) was still a thing in many American homes. File-sharing services like Napster and LimeWire were just beginning to take off. MP3 players and advances in 3D graphics represented brand-new technology.

And in sweaty dorm rooms and sparse basements across the world, people brought their desktop monitors together to set up a local area network (LAN) and play multiplayer games — “Half-Life,” “Counter-Strike,” “Starsiege: Tribes,” “StarCraft,” “WarCraft” or “Unreal Tournament,” to name just a few. These were informal but high-stakes gatherings, then known as LAN parties, whether winning a box of energy drinks or just the joy of emerging victorious.

The parties could last several days and nights, with gamers crowded together among heavy computers and fast food boxes, crashing underneath their desks in sleeping bags and taking breaks to pull pranks on each other or watch movies.

Gamers prepared for the long-haul, bringing sleeping bags and blankets to a 2000 tournament in Brisbane, Australia. David Harrison/Courtesy Thames & Hudson

Since then, much has changed. For one, the gaming world has evolved from a user-driven subculture to a multi-billion dollar industry that is less about getting together in person and more about a wider web of e-sports competitions, the lucrative intersection of gaming and content creation and a prominent corporate fingerprint on gameplay, design and monetization.

Particularly for Gen Z gamers, a generation that grew up almost completely in the smartphone era, 25 years ago may feel like a different reality. But for millennials and Gen Xers, the boxy monitors and pixelated graphics will be familiar reminders of a not-so-distant technological past.

It’s this nostalgia that prompted writer and podcaster Merritt K to document the era’s gaming culture in her new photobook “LAN Party.” After floating the idea on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, she received an immediate — and visceral — response from old-school gamers all too keen to share memories and photos from LAN parties and gaming conventions across the world.

“I know that none of these are my friends and I,” wrote one X user in response to the images in K’s call-out post, “but because the photos feel so familiar I find myself looking for us all. This is pretty much how most weekends in 2000-2004 looked for us.”

“Despite the fact that, in a literal sense, I am not in any of these photos, high school me is in every one of these photos,” another wrote.

Many people who had never experienced the era of LAN parties also responded with excitement. “I think everyone has some kind of nostalgia for a period before they were alive,” K told CNN. “I had people who are 20 years old, who were tweeting and being like, ‘I was born in the wrong decade.’”

1440 gamers took part in the "Drome 9: Infinite Interfacing" tournament in Hengelo, The Netherlands, in February 2002. Anne de Waal/Courtesy Thames & Hudson

A collage of motherboards features as wall decor in a gamer's room in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Jeff Tillett/Clan/Courtesy Thames & Hudson

Throughout the pages of “LAN Party,” there is an all-too evocative sense of fernweh — fond, wistful memories for a pastime in times past. It’s strange to remember that the internet was once a place you went to spend time with other real people; a tethered space, not a cling-film-like reality enveloping the corporeal world from your own pocket.

“That time — the late ’90s, early 2000s — was pre-social media,” K said. “It’s the era of blogs and forums. No one really had 24/7 access. So even though we were starting to get high-speed internet, it was still a place that you went, rather than just another part of your life. And this feeling of connecting to people in other parts of the world was cool. It wasn’t something that was taken for granted yet.”

“It’s this feeling of, 'Oh, I could have wished I could have been there,'” Merritt K, author of "LAN Party," told CNN of the book's ethos — a homecoming moment for gamer culture, perhaps, as it was far from considered aspirational in the '90s and '00s mainstream. Pictured above, competitors at QuakeCon in Dallas, Texas, in 2006. Brett Masse/Courtesy Thames & Hudson

Most of the players in "LAN Party" are groups of white men, with only a few women and people of color featured. Cartons of Mountain Dew and Bawls, energy drinks that have come to be culturally associated with gamers, are a recurring theme — so much so that Mountain Dew released a line of products called “Game Fuel” in 2007. S. Tordoff/Courtesy Thames & Hudson

Growing up as a teenager in this era, you could feel a sense of hope (that perhaps now feels like naivete) about the possibilities of technology, K explained. The book is full of photos featuring people smiling and posing with their desktop monitors, pride and fanfare apparent. At that point in time, many new tech products were designed with ostentatious playfulness in mind — cellphones were often blinged out or swiveled up, cameras came in hot pink shells and tech companies even collaborated with luxury fashion houses.

“It felt like, ‘Wow, the future is coming,’” K said. “It was this exciting time where you felt like you were just charting your own way. I don’t want to romanticize it too much, because obviously it wasn’t perfect, but it was a very, very different experience.”

It was also a new era for photography. Digital cameras — with which most of the photos in “LAN Party” were taken — had just become widely available to the public. As a result, the visuals are grainy, unedited and generally low quality by today’s standards. Documenting everyday life through images was still an anomaly, after all, K said. As such, people in the book’s photos weren’t yet conscious of their best angles, nor does it seem they were necessarily trying to look ‘good’ for the camera.

LAN parties made space for competition and community in both 'real life' and online environments simultaneously. Pictured above, gamers in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2003. Nick Huber/Courtesy Thames & Hudson

“Some people are just making goofy faces, flipping the camera off,” K said. “No one really knows how to be in a selfie yet. When digital cameras show up, it starts to become a much more everyday thing… people are figuring out, ‘How do I look in this picture? What do I do?’”

Of course, many of the photos also portend what was to come. They also contain early footprints of modern gamer culture stereotypes — dank, antisocial and seemingly unhealthy environments. (Despite gaming’s global popularity, today it is sometimes characterized as the domain of young White men, internalizing and disseminating racist, misogynistic or right-wing politics.)

Still, “it was a little more communal,” K said. “If you’re playing games in the same room with someone, it’s a different experience than doing it online. You can only be so much of a jackass to somebody who was sitting three feet away from you, whereas today with online games, toxicity is a huge problem. Being anonymous online can inspire the worst in people.”

Many of the visuals in "LAN Party" are also an artifact of the wider trends happening at that point in time. Posters of hip-hop artist, 90s pin-ups and anime series, bubble furniture and baggy jeans can be spotted in the periphery. Or not, in the case of the sparse photo above, of gaming fans — and indoor fans — in Lee's Summit, Missouri in 2001. Dane Oleson/Electronox/Courtesy Thames & Hudson

Though they have significantly dwindled in frequency, LAN parties do still take place. (They have also maintained their status over the years as cultural iconography; a photo of a man duct-taped to the ceiling — but still playing “Counter-Strike,” mind you — in a dimly-lit room during such a party for example, has become a legendary gamer meme in its own right). K acknowledges a fascination among young people in memorializing the phenomenon, but the parties are today still mostly hosted and attended “IRL” by people who remember what the experience was like the first time around.

“We’ve kind of lost a lot of control, I think over our relationship to technology,” K said. “We have lost a lot of privacy as well. There’s less of a sense of exploration because there just isn’t as much out there.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/style/lan-party-online-gamers-photos/index.html

[JohnS]

My favourites of that era? Far Cry, The Elder Scroll III - Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion and of course, Call of Duty. Great memories!

[karp]

Those gigantic monitors bring back memories.. Quake, Warcraft, and Descent.. fun times back when I was a young nerd!

[clickbangdoh]

Man, we setup on my mom's large front porch about 8 of us playing UT 99. The cops got called on us cause we were yelling "sniper!" and other stuff. Good times, I recall the officer being supremely amused and somewhat intrigued.

[Fuzz]

I remember having Xbox LAN parties at my cousin's house. I'd lug my Sony 68cm TV (CRT, not flatscreen) over to his place every Friday night. Those were fun nights. And in uni we'd have Doom comps to see who could last the longest. I held the record for several years.

[cnov]

15 hours ago, clickbangdoh said:

Man, we setup on my mom's large front porch about 8 of us playing UT 99. The cops got called on us cause we were yelling "sniper!" and other stuff. Good times, I recall the officer being supremely amused and somewhat intrigued.

That's hilarious, do you reckon it's the only LAN party to have the police called to attend?

[cnov]

1 hour ago, Fuzz said:

I remember having Xbox LAN parties at my cousin's house. I'd lug my Sony 68cm TV (CRT, not flatscreen) over to his place every Friday night. Those were fun nights. And in uni we'd have Doom comps to see who could last the longest. I held the record for several years.

Fortunately I only had to take my massive CRT TV next door to play Halo with my best mate, that beast was one of those Sony ones that sat on a matching pedestal, 32" of two man lift that required several stops/rests in order to get it just one house over.

Later in life we still had the occasional LAN party, through a modem and with flat screens, but it was still a good crack to have a few beers in the same room and play CoD.

Good times.

 

[Hammer Smokin']

I'm about to fire up a HOMM3 session on this lazy Saturday morning. 

Some of us don't grow up. 

[cnov]

7 hours ago, Hammer Smokin' said:

I'm about to fire up a HOMM3 session on this lazy Saturday morning. 

Some of us don't grow up. 

It's the best way to live. Like a child but with disposable income.

[Hammer Smokin']

Some fine ass 1998 technology right here Folks. 

[Baccy]

Used to play alot Quake back in the day, especially Q3 Arena. I was practically addicted to that game. I was also big into CS. I don't think I ever visited a LAN party though. Looks fun though!

[Hammer Smokin']

Wonder how many people today would know what to do with this screen:

[jhalischuk]

Golden age of the internet. It was amazing pre social media. 

[yossie]

Age of empire! Not a Lan party though. I'm still playing a video game whereby Gandhi nukes!

[loose_axle]

Many hours of Quake 2, Jedi Knight, Counter Strike, Red Alert in my high school holiday years. A lot of street fighter iv in my 20s as well. 

[Domsday]

Yes, Red Alert was my favourite!

[Duxnutz]

I remember everyone spent a good amount of time fixing my POS computer. Was fun though. 

[ha_banos]

Not so much LAN parties for me. Did used to play Eye of the Beholder round my friends house for ages.

Then there were MUDs when I was at uni. And some doom.

I do remember troubleshooting 10base2 connectivity at home though lol

 

[clickbangdoh]

7 hours ago, Duxnutz said:

I remember everyone spent a good amount of time fixing my POS computer. Was fun though. 

One of my friends had a POS computer, took like a hour to get it running, so we forced him to use the call sign "Nothingworks" for the entire time.

[LordAnubis]

I was only ever there for mass downloading movies and tv shows. Would carry hard drives and just wander around asking what people had. Once you filter through the porn you were pretty much wrecked 😂

[BettyHumpder]

Wonderful memories of this era. I was a bit young to afford any of the PC gear, but my friends and I played hours and hours of system link LAN console games in our parents' basements every weekend. Social media and smart phones with good cameras became common near the end of college, so I feel like I was part of the last group of people to enjoy some of that old school gaming fun you see in these photos.

Funny, our parents said the same thing about us spending all our time playing video games that parents are saying about kids and their phones today. We also went through the collective national freak out over violence in video games, attempts to ban games, etc.