Birthday LAN '08

Yet another year's Birthday LAN party is in the bag. And another record breaking year it was. Much of it was the same as last year. And of course, to follow PMI process, we can't close off the event without having a retrospective.

So what went well?
- Record attendance: 15 gamers and 15 non-gamers for a 30 person turn out and 7 girls for an amazing 1:4 ratio.
- New games were introduced which worked well. Call of Duty 4, World in Conflict and Aliens vs Predator 2 were added to the fray. Old classics like Dawn of War and Trackmania (Forever edition) also kept people entertained.
- The food was much better this year after we outsourced to a different provider (Flavour of Ceylon in Parramatta).
- The inclusion of a web-camera doing time lapsed photos was great as it gave a source of entertainment during the party as well as an riveting video after.
- The private bit torrent tracker BTNT was used for distributing games and this worked excellently to make for an efficient and quick distribution of games.
- The network and power allotment layout worked beautifully with almost no outages (the one outage being at 7am in the morning which appeared to be outside our control).

What didn't go so well?
- Fewer different types games were played. Previous years saw more variety.
- Player Participation per Game (PPG) was more erratic then previous years. Whilst some games like Trackmania and AvP had close to 90% participation, other games splintered with less than 50%.
- I pussyed out on the "No external access" rule which meant some people defaulted to playing Eve Online or WoW or Age of Conan at a LAN. Given a lack of consensus for the next game to play, this is a fairly normal default action for those who are addicted to MMOs.
- A record number of people stayed over (nearly all 15 gamers). This overloaded the sleeping accommodation which meant some people didn't sleep. This contributed to people leaving earlier (2:30pm) on the next day compared to previous years.
- Yet again forgot to FRAPs the battles during the games so I could have highlight reels from the individual games.

Otherwise interesting highlights included:
- Several people doing Tequila shots at 1am in the morning.
- People wracking their brains playing BridgeIt (A civil engineering bridge building simulator) till the whee hours of the morning.
- My set of non-gamer friends sat in our outdoors entertaining area for ages just chatting amongst ourselves despite the fact it was freezing.

Whilst it was a great and fun LAN, from my original set of goals, it was a mixed affair. Which is good, because it gives me something to perfect for next year's LAN. My general approach to these things are to let people run it and just help them with their objective of having fun (even if my brain is telling me to micromanage), My parents as usual brought up making this party the last LAN. And I can understand why. With the catering and electricity and hiring costs alone, it cost well in excess of $600 to run, ignoring the huge amount of time it consumes. I'm generally okay with it because each year it's fun to setup and run, I learn a few things and I get to show my friends a good time to show that I appreciate them. All those things balance the cost to my time and money. So here is to next year's more spectacular gaming event!