5 Reasons I Miss LAN Parties With My IRL Friends
Modern gaming technology and fast internet connections are wonderful, but so too were in-person LAN parties. I spent my youth lugging CRTs and PC towers to friends' houses or whatever space we could borrow for a weekend, and I miss it with all my heart. Here's why it was awesome.
Getting Ready for the Event
An IRL (In Real Life) LAN party is a get-together that happens wherever people can find a space covered with electricity and somewhere to put their computers. In the days before fast internet (or any internet at all), gaming was a solitary thing for most people. At the time, there was nothing like the anticipation of a LAN party coming up.
Checking that you have all your discs, external hard drives, peripherals, cables, game updates was all part of the build-up. The necessary preparation contributed to the excitement and anticipation of an event that required real effort to set up and attend.
This was the geek's equivalent of prepping for a hike or a hunting trip with your friends that you've been looking forward to for weeks. A mini vacation where you got to leave school or work behind for a few days and forget about everything happening in the real world. Except there's zero chance of sunburn!
Making New Friends
LAN parties were the absolute best place to make friends who were into the same things I was, just by virtue of the dedication required to attend a LAN party. Complete strangers could be best buddies by the end of a weekend, after sharing victory, defeat, and extremely unhealthy amounts of pizza without sleep.
More friendships were forged on the battlefields of Diablo II, Warcraft, StarCraft, Quake, Doom, and numerous other absolute classic LAN games than you could fathom. You might have your TikTok and Instagram followers, but would any of them take a thunderbolt spell for you? No, real friends who you'd stay in touch with for the rest of your life were waiting for you at the next LAN party.
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