So, whats a LAN party?
A LAN (local area network) party can best be described as a social gathering between computer gamers who want to indulge in multiplayer games – either against one another (mano-e-mano or team against team) or with another group of gamers in another location. Players connect their PCs to one another at these LAN parties – held at someone’s house or at a larger facility — and can range in participants from just two gamers to many hundreds. In fact, the largest LAN party ever held was in 2007, when 10,445 people hooked up at the DreamHack Winter gaming event in Sweden. Some play purely for fun – as entertainment or for bragging rights or to show off a decked out PC rig – while larger competitions could offer cash, prizes and a bit of fame for competing teams. Some gamers prefer to play first-person shooters for LAN parties (such as Counter-Strike or one of the Quake, Unreal or Half-Life games), while others might favour fantasy role-playing games or real-time strategy games. “Because the
