I’m not much of an online gamer. That’s not to say I don’t play online games. It’s just that, when I’m alone, I generally gravitate to single player games. On the other hand, I do like a good multiplayer game, and I get to indulge my desire for playing with others on a weekly basis.
The problem is, though, I’m spoiled.
When we were first looking into buying our house back in 1997, we discovered it had a daylight basement. At the time, I was a full time freelance writer (as I am once again.) The basement doesn’t actually appear as floor space in the county assessor’s report – something about below-grade areas not being considered part of the living space. It’s an odd quirk around here, but then most houses in northern California don’t have basements at all.
The basement was partially finished, so when we moved in, we added carpeting and third wire ground to all the basement outlets. I also added a 200A service to the house, replacing the aging 100A box that came with the house.
The basement has two rooms, a large storage area off the larger room, plus a bathroom and a roomy closet where the hot water heater and furnace live. The smaller room became a spare bedroom while the larger room, with its associated storage area, became my office and lab space. Eventually, when my wife began working out of the house full time, the spare bedroom was converted to her office.
If you want to check out more details on the basement lab, check out the blog post on the http://www.improbableinsights.com/2009/08/17/294/ basement lab.
Ever since the network was set up in the lab, we’ve had LAN gaming sessions most weeks; eventually, these multiplayer gaming sessions were dubbed “Friday Night Follies.” The office space itself is pretty large – 18 x 15 feet or 270 square feet. I’ve added workbenches (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/workspaces/11723/ IKEA GALANT tabletops with the T-legs), plus a couple of older rolling PC workbenches from http://www.anthro.com/ Anthro, which were part of a budget line the company no longer makes.
I can – and have – crammed up to ten working systems into this space, though the most we’ve had on the LAN for gamin is eight. Most Friday nights, though, it’s just four of us, though tonight (November Friday the Thirteenth), there will be six.
We’re pretty eclectic, though we tend to favor co-op against the AI to playing PvP. We have a mix of gamers, too. Two of them play MMORPGs (one is an MMORPG fanatic), while the third player is like me: single player when on his own, and multiplayer when he comes over to my place.
We have, on occasion, even played an MMO game or two, including D&D Online, Guild Wars and the flawed, semi-tragic failure that was Hellgate: London. That’s the only time I’ve ever really played MMORPGs – on my LAN, with my friends.
I’m completely spoiled by the experience.
The idea of playing online, talking to other gamers through a headset, dealing with lag and griefers, is simply unappealing. I realize I’m also missing out on some potentially great experiences. It all comes down to simple time budgeting: how much time I have for gaming, versus work, versus family life versus other interests. A lot of the time I might spend in online gaming is instead spent with single player games. Lately, for example, I’ve been completely sucked into Dragon Age: Origins.
So maybe it’s a hit on my geek cred that I’m very rarely found in any online games. But then, I’ve got my own LAN party going most Friday nights. How much more geeky can you get?
Loyd,
I have similar feelings towards on-line gaming. If you have the luxury of being able to hold regular LAN parties who wouldn’t pick that over on-line.
I also wanted to thank you for the MASS EFFECT reference you made a few posts back. Somehow this game slipped by me. I picked it up and am looking forward to completing my 2nd play through of the game.
Best Regards, Jim
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by loydcase, Marland Pittman. Marland Pittman said: RT @loydcase: LAN gaming really is the better experience. For me, at least. http://bit.ly/4ur6jK [...]
Hell yeah. Much prefer LAN gaming in person to online gaming. Sounds like a sweet setup you have there.
Well I fiend of mine in grad school days had a gamers cyber cafe, and after close it was for us to play lan all the way no online, pure plain lan games, every time a diferent one or a favorite one. CS, StarCraft, Mechwarrior, Red Alert. Diablo 2, almost all good stuff. good old times. I whish I had a basement like that loyd, Kudos for that!
When I lived in the dorms while I was in the military, the rooms were set up so that two rooms facing opposite sides of the building shared a common bathroom in between. My friend and I switched rooms with other people until we got attached rooms and we ran our network cable through the bathroom. On the weekends, 2 of our friends would bring their PCs over and join in. We used to play Doom 2 and Descent coop from beginning to end in marathon sessions. We even managed to shove a network cable through the phone conduit to hook up the guy next door, but it wasn’t as good as having everyone in the same room. It was pretty advanced for 1995-96.
Ahh, you young kids don’t appreciate what us old folks were able to do. Back in college around 1984 I lived in a big house and had a buddy down the hall who also owned a TRS-80 (model 1 with 2Mhz Z80).
http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-models-model1.htm
We strung a serial cable about 100 feet and were able to play a game called “Combat” in multiplayer. Of course, long before that we were playing multiplayer games on the “mainframe”. You may need to find someone with grey hair to explain what that is…
Yes, it was pretty lame compared to today, but it’s amazing what you’ll put up with if you don’t have another option…
Scott
I have to agree with Loyd; I find the enjoyment factor much greater with LAN games than MMOs. And most of my gaming time is still single-player. Replaying Fallout 3 now with the Fallout Wanderers’ Edition mod.
I still kind of think Loyd is giving short shrift to MMOs. Playing through an MMO with friends on a LAN or via headphones and Skype on the internet are not really that different. And I think Loyd enjoyed GW and HGL (discounting the bugs and crashes). Most MMOs are good single-player games, too (not much different than Oblivion or Dragon Age), though you do need to group up now and then for instances or raids (there’s your LAN night…).
The similarities between, say, WoW and Borderlands are much greater than the differences, especially if you aren’t into PvP.
And there has never been a story-based multiplayer RPG with the depth and scope of LOTRo.
Griefing is not really a problem that I’ve seen. I mean, the worst griefing I ever had in WoW was a couple level 70s with flying mounts that would circle the spawn camp in a PvP area, and that was only a problem because I was trying to stick my nose in as a low 60 groundling. I think it’s a much bigger problem in pickup games, particularly online shooters.