Free play game organization at LanOC V15

Has any more thought been given to an efficient way to organize free play sessions for games during the LAN? I see two main points here:

A ) Find a system/service that everyone can easily use

The obvious answer here is Steam, especially since it supports group chats, but if you have something that we can use that more people at the LAN will already have installed I'm all ears. Software is easiest but physical means could be considered as well.

B ) Get them to fucking use it

This is the hard part. Going back to Steam, the easiest thing I can think of is to use the LanOC @ the LAN group (or whatever it's called) and hold regular giveaways/contests/other shenanigans in the group chat so that people are motivated to join chat, pay attention to chat, and actually stay there.

It feels like it would improve the LAN experience so much if I could find a way to get people outside of my small group of friends to join some of the less-played games.

I dunno, thoughts/questions/concerns/trolling. Post it here.

Time to set up an IRC chat room and use it for prize giveaways, announcements, food runs, etc. Like the shoutbox, but a little more real time.

Check Steam at the event for a list of LAN servers that will be up. The following list of servers will be up most of the time with the exception if needed for tourney's:

1. CS:GO
2. Garry's Mod
3. TF2
4. Left For Dead 2
5. DOTA2
6. Minecraft

If you want a custom map or mod running on one , let me know and we can see what we can do.

If you have another dedicated game server you would like to see up , let me know and we can check it out and see about running it as well.

TownFunk wrote: Time to set up an IRC chat room and use it for prize giveaways, announcements, food runs, etc. Like the shoutbox, but a little more real time.

I like this idea. +1

Sideout wrote: Check Steam at the event for a list of LAN servers that will be up. The following list of servers will be up most of the time with the exception if needed for tourney's:

1. CS:GO
2. Garry's Mod
3. TF2
4. Left For Dead 2
5. DOTA2
6. Minecraft

If you want a custom map or mod running on one , let me know and we can see what we can do.

If you have another dedicated game server you would like to see up , let me know and we can check it out and see about running it as well.

This is good, but not all games will be visible here and it doesn't help with the main issue which is basically just communication between gamers at the LAN.

I've been very active in TeamSpeak the last few LANs. Nobody really seems to use the chat feature. Again, I think we would need to have giveaways/contests/something to engage people in order for it to be used and paid attention to. Steam or TeamSpeak, and to a lesser extent, IRC seem ideal for this.

Did one Lan we used Mumble?

mumble.sourceforge.net/

Wingcmdr77 wrote: Did one Lan we used Mumble?

mumble.sourceforge.net/

No real functional difference from TeamSpeak for the purposes of this topic, except maybe it sucks more at text chat.

Are there any plans of trying to engage people in a group chat room at this point or no?

I think using the ALP server that Wes mentioned in his last post is the best solution.

It has a shoutbox that you can post up on . It has an open game section that you can post up games.

We can add the server / game you are playing on the server section as well.

It should really be your one stop shop for all info for the event.

That's been the case at every LAN. I haven't found that it works well for spontaneous game creation because people don't pay attention to it regularly.

It would be nice to at least try something new, whatever it is.

Thanks for all your responses.

Maybe throw the Chat up on the projector so even if people are not currently on it or looking at it they can look up and see what is going on. I know my group usually has at least one person paying attention and letting the rest of us know what is happening.

Yeah, I just personally wish we could try something other than ALP just because it's been tried so many times before and simply doesn't seem to work out well for game organization. But whatever you guys think will work.

garfi3ld wrote: Frankly we have tried almost every option and non of them have really worked. The staff and I are still looking at every option. We were actually talking about something very similar to Shrouds idea a few days ago during out staff meeting. In the end we will do everything we can to try to find an option that works but the biggest issue is getting everyone to go along with whatever we end up doing.

Keep posting up ideas, nothing is locked down just yet.

Yup, agreed. Especially with the biggest issue part