For the past four days, Louisville, Kentucky has been the central focus for over 1,000 gamers in the United States at Million Man LAN. This year's event was co-sponsored by the World Series of Video Games sponsored by Intel, NVIDIA, CBS Sports, Patriot Memory, and a whole lot of others. This year's Million Man LAN was as special as any of the other five. It included hours upon hours of gaming, both competitive and non-competitive, amusing contests and all of the most random events you could ever expect at a LAN Party. At the end of this four day event, we were gratified to have attended another great LAN Party!.
There were many memorable events and tournaments, such as Duct Tape Wars, a Jousting Tournament, Paper Airplane Contest, and the infamous egg drop. This year the egg drop won the award for greatest amusement when one team's creation (of duct tape) to protect their egg consisted of a shaft and two spheres. If any one reading this has a video, please e-mail me or any of our staff here at LAN Addict so we may properly convey this!
Here at LAN Addict, we conjured up a last minute interview with Troy Schwartz, aka Burden, the head honcho, the organizer, brain, and master chief of Million Man LAN and LAN War. We focused our questions on how to help LAN Party Hosts and also provide some interesting insights into all that is LAN War!
Morgan:
What was your first multiplayer game?
Burden:
Warcraft 2, zug zug
Morgan:
What is your biggest challenge?
Burden:
The new stuff, the things we haven't done before. The network, power, setup for 1,000 gamers is cake. It's the new things like the integration of the Pro Gamers with WSVG and integrating with their production process. They're really good at presentation and promotional marketing events, they really get the gamer crowd. The BYOC is solid, there were no issues with it.
Morgan:
How did you get started in LAN Parties?
Burden:
Three of my friends were doing parties in their basements. They came to me and asked if I wanted to help make it bigger. After about a year, they realized how much effort it was and retired, and I asked if I could keep doing it. I started in April 1998 and now have held 34 events, with a total of 15,860 butts in seats (not including this event)!
Morgan:
What success tips could you give LAN Party hosts?
Burden:
The best thing I would suggest is to choose your staff very carefully and make sure your staff has the personality and professionalism to do their job. In other words, there are too many guys that can run a network or whatever but will scream at the participants after two events. No one wants to deal with that guy. The other thing we do really well is we plan, plan, plan. Every cable, every drop, every table, lighting, power, network, internet, food, etc... We test and plan everything.
Morgan:
Suggestions for LAN Parties - How to get them (them=sponsorships?).
Burden:
Sponsorships changed over the years. When they were new, sponsors gave out tons of swag. Then there were lots of LAN Parties, and a lot of them were not to the expectations of the sponsors. Don't spend your time worrying about sponsors, but the effort should be spent on making a quality event. The sponsors will come if you build a good event, bring the right switches, power, the website, making sure it's fun for the gamers. Make sure they have fun and they can't help to not tell their friends about your event. Sponsors will come.
Morgan:
What have you found to have the largest impact on the quality and size of your LAN Parties?
Burden:
Again the staff and planning. Without proper planning the event doesn't run properly and without the staff the event doesn't continue. If you overwork your guys, you can't keep them from year to year. Lan War has always been about fun, and that's what you need to keep in mind for staff. Some LAN Parties' staff work their guys to death, here we don't do that. Do some work, then go game for 8 to 10 hours straight.
Morgan:
What games are you currently playing?
Burden:
I don't get to play any games anymore. I'm looking forward to Starcraft 2 but with wife, kids, regular job, LAN War, and a charity we run; I don't have much time to play games. This is probably one of my blessings which never got me into a specific game, it's allowed me to be impartial on what games are played on at my events.
Morgan:
Do you have any suggestions for LAN Party hosts or attendees you would like to add?
Burden:
Thanks to Intel, CBS Sports, NVIDIA, Patriot Memory. Without you guys Million Man LAN 6 and WSVG could not have happened.
The Pictures!
A few observations and hopes for a better LAN War include a greater concerted effort of improving the Open Gaming, and by that I mean attempting to involve more gamers on a casual gaming basis. Through Million Man LAN it seemed as if it took a bit of effort to get a game server running with gamers involved. Most gamers were playing Counter-Strike (1.6 or Source), or World of Warcraft. Just as Burden said earlier, who are we to limit what games people played. However, I would have liked to have seen more servers filled with gamers rather than half empty.
One of the lesser annoyances was how hard the announcements were to hear. This was mostly caused by an echo effect heard in the hall, however, over the music videos, and gunfire from all sorts of games it made it rather hard to hear and understand all announcements. I did miss the charismatic nature that LPANE's Nor`Easter carried during the entire LAN Party with a good mixture of comedy and purposeful announcements.
Overall the Million Man LAN 6 was a great event, power was rock solid, the network ran perfectly, internet access was slow for general use and for gaming eventually was tuned to allow for any online gaming needed. A large concern of mine, the chair, must have been considered during the planning as they were very comfortable (considering for a LAN Party) and after 4 days, we still wanted to sit in those chairs! With these considerations, I would announce Million Man LAN 6 as a success for those who actively attempted to have fun, while I can see how for those who were less proactive and social may have felt left out.
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