Palit Sponsors Stopmfest

For those of you who did not experience Stompfest- www.stompfest.com, you missed out on one very cool LAN Party. With over 200 people packed into the ball room at the Knights of Columbus, the guys from Team Palit and David Makin, the Stompfest staff and a ton of prizes to be handed out, there was no way anyone was going to walk away without having fun. And did I mention that it was FREE? Free pizza, free admission, and free fun were on the menu for Stompfest 2008.

The atmosphere was classic Midwest hospitality and friendship as much as it was competition. People came in from incredible distances to hang out for the weekend. One gamer, AsphyxiA, thanks to a little help from his friends who all drove down from Michigan together, was able to win three graphics cards. But to show you the nature of this group of gamers he shared his loot with his crew. “Somehow I won 3 cards... from CS:S, TF2, and Rock Paper Scissors. I was able to hook up all my buddies. I replaced my friend's crappy graphics card when I won the RPS event because he lent me his really nice computer and it was a nice gesture on his behalf. Without his computer I would have never won any event. I gave the TF2 one to a RL friend of mine who didn't win a card = / and I kept the one from CS:S because it was overclocked *drool*. Shadizzy kept callin me Stompfest Santa the entire way back. *sigh*”

Some of the craziest shenanigans happened in the middle of the night. Almost everyone remembers the shoe toss, all but the diehards who wouldn’t leave their systems that is. Just imagine about 100 shoes piled in the middle of the sand volleyball court and the people trying to get them sorted out and back on to win a graphics card. One participant put it this way in the forums “Shoe Toss = Chaotic Fun/Pain.” Now picture trying to get the sand out from between your toes and shoes the rest of the LAN.

Overall it was a success for all involved. Stompfest 2009 is in the process of being planned and if you are looking for a good time, Indianapolis is in the middle of the Midwest. You should definitely get to the next event. Thanks to Palit- http://www.palit.biz, Danger Den- http://www.dangerden.com, and all the other sponsors for an awesome event.

Simply put, the goal of PalitLAN is to collect and post information about LAN parties to both provide a resource for the community and provide an internal resource for Palit and other manufacturers to sponsor small LAN parties.

The #1 goal is to provide a community resource. Just like a small LAN (<100 attendees and usually more like 30) we plan to start from scratch and let everyone who participates control what goes on here. So as you look around and think, hmmm, there’s not much stuff here, FIX IT! For now we invite everyone to post their ideas and content in the forums. We are continuing to develop the rest of the site but if we don’t have the content to populate the new features it’s going to look a little empty.

Things we have in the development queue include individual web pages for events (think MySpace but for a LAN party), event registration, clan pages, improved calendar and event registration pages. We’re also working on some party building tools. You’ll be able to lay out your room graphically and add tables, chairs, network and power. That will allow attendees to select their seat and register right through this site.

Event pages will include their own forums and more detail about the party and plenty of space for them to build their own content. A media library for holding short videos and tons of photos is also in the works. A Wiki framework will function as the help system and include information for both hosting and attending LANs, running tournaments and other LAN related topics.

Late this year we plan to have the full-on registration system done. Attendees can register their name and PC components including serial numbers and photos of their equipment. If the LAN has used the Party Builder function a user will be able to click the register now button, go directly to seat selection and enter their credit card info to pay if there’s an entry fee.

When they get to the LAN, the event staff can go to their online event page, check that person in and print their badge and release form. The tourney system will track all participants and track player stats across multiple LANs. Check-in and check-out will be much faster and easier since attendees can already have their equipment entered. The whole idea is to help the event staff to focus on putting on a fun event rather than spending all their time on administrative stuff.

Another aspect of small LANs is getting sponsored. There are very few sponsors willing to send products to very small events. There are quite literally hundreds of small events all over the country and while Palit won’t be able to sponsor all of them, we have an interesting plan to come close.

LAN parties are broken down into groups according to size, 10-25, 26-50, 51-75 and 76-100. We do not sponsor LAN parties through PalitLAN with more than 100 attendees. The number of cards and amount swag we have each month varies. So if, for example, we have 10 video cards in April to use as prizes, they will be divided as evenly as possible across those size ranges. The idea is to get some video cards into the hands of people at a 15-man LAN party as well as the larger 75-man events.

We will also include other swag like pens, finger rockets and that sort of thing. There is an open invitation to any other manufacturer to participate in this program that doesn’t directly compete with Palit. There is no cost for them to get into this program other than shipping.

So what is PalitLAN? It’s a work in progress that will eventually become ultimate online resource for anything LAN party. Palit is footing the bill for the development but it will take the input and participation of the LAN party community to really make it work. Palit invites everyone to post in the forums with your ideas, help content, bug reports and anything else you think should be included here.

The PC-Enthusiast Based LAN Party

There are two groups of attendees out there, each with a different vision of what makes a LAN Party. Some see these events as competitions for the professional gamer, and others see an opportunity for a community to connect and engage around common interests. Those attendees with a focus on professional tournaments will generally look to make sure a specific tournament will be at an event before they will even think about attending. The community-focused attendees make their decision to attend based on what activities will be at the LAN and how many people will be there.

Gamers who are focused on the tournament aspect generally like to know what prizes are being given before they come. Several times, I have heard these players gripe that the prizes are not enough, or they balk because cash is not given as the prize. Often, they also have opinions about the rule sets used and are of the mindset that rules from CAL, OGL, OMGBBQL or wherever are the correct ones and therefore should be used everywhere. This generally conflicts with what the “community” focused members would like in their desire for a tournament that is more based on fun and enjoying the game play.

In my experience, I see two types of gamers out there –the “Pro-gamer” and the “PC-Enthusiast”. The “Pro-gamer” is a gamer who plays in tournaments solely to earn prizes. This is different from the focus of the person who plays tournaments for fun, knowing they may not be the best. The “Pro-gamer” tends to focus solely on tournaments at a LAN Party and not the community contests and other fun events. They will often leave after they have lost or have completed playing in the tournament. Five years ago, these gamers were convincing companies like Nvidia, Intel, AMD, ATI, etc. to sponsor them. They had a dream that they could make a living playing in tournaments. (Hey, some can, but not everyone is a Fatal1ty, even he is not doing that well anymore.)

The other type of gamers are the PC-Enthusiasts – these are the gamers who casually play video games in their free time, love to talk about their systems and hardware, and generally go to LANs for the community aspect, meeting up with and making friends as well as the fun of participating in contests. These gamers tend to build and upgrade their systems more than any other segment of the computer market. They have a lot of influence with regard to which computer related products their friends and families will buy.

If you are planning a LAN party for over 50 people, knowing which of the above person you want at your event is very important – it will set the tone of your event, influence your sponsorships, and dictate how you will proceed to plan events.

I run an event called PDXLAN. Prior to the conception of PDXLAN, I had only run 20 person LAN parties at my house, much to my wife’s dismay. We contacted CPL to consult with them and they declined stating “Portland can not sustain a 500 person LAN party”. Our first LAN sold 480 tickets and here we are, 5 years later on our 11th 500+ person Portland event. It was a good thing that first LAN did not have a tournament focus. Instead, PDXLAN went in a very different direction. I have been at big events where only the tournament players won prizes and it felt like the focus was about the tournament players. I realized then, and even more so now, that these events are not LAN Parties, they are professional tournaments with LAN areas to practice in before matches. Once a team is eliminated, they tend to pack up their sponsored hardware and head out. We decided that PDXLAN would never be focused on the pro-gamers. We chose instead to focus our attention on the experience of all the gamers who come, whether they are good at gaming or not. We create events that offer a variety of activities and ways to win prizes. PDXLAN does have tournaments, but the focus is on having fun and enjoying the game play. The prizes for our tournaments are hardware donated by our sponsors and are equivalent to what you may win in a contest or the raffle. The contests are based on a variety of abilities and skills. We promote a community that encourages people to enjoy each other and their common interests. In these respects, PDXLAN is truly a unique event that caters to the PC enthusiast gamer. As LAN parties evolve, it becomes clearer that these types of events draw from a larger segment of the market and attract a wide variety of gamers that are better suited to be sponsored than Pro Gamers.

So were does that leave the future of LAN parties? Check out my next post where I will address the Future of LAN Parties and the PC-Enthusiast.

Until then, catch up with me in the forums, as I would love your response and your thoughts on where the future of LAN Parties is headed.

Article written by:
Matt Conwell, PDXLAN