I?ve never been one to feel the need to prove my geeky worth, guess I just wreak of geek to such an extent that everyone just assumes and understands. Then, usually, refuses to even acknowledge me.
I do tend to do things from time to time that raise the geek-bar even further, but these usually seem like good ideas at the time. Going to E3 in order to play a two minute demo of Halo2 (and finding out that they wouldn?t let me when there), would be a valid example.
Well, at the weekend I attended the UK?s largest LAN party ? I25. I guess that counts, too.
The Insomnia Lan series, ran by Multiplay UK, is a strange old beast. Get 800-or-so gamers into one big building, add in a super-fast Internet connection, Dominos pizza on site and a licensed bar, and you get, well, partially organised chaos.
No, more to the point, you get a semi-real life version of those Internet parodies about hardcore gamers in the real world.
Boom headshot.
The four day event is billed as an Extreme Lan, and by the 16th hour of non-stop gaming I certainly began to feel the pain. Four days of gaming, any PC related game ? sleep optional. Put it this way, if this event was held in Korea, they?d need to dig a mass grave.
After sixteen hours of playing just two games ? Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft ? I began to lose grip on reality. Not helping was only ninety minutes of sleep before gaming again for another twenty hours non-stop. Extreme, see.
The weird thing about being in a room with like-minded individuals without having any sleep is that the joke-y l33t speak to begin with becomes almost the norm by the end of the marathon. I believe in the dead of the night I actually started a conversation with someone trying to compare the difference between Half Life 2 ragdoll physics and Real Life physics ? the test? Jumping off a very large height onto a very awkward landing. By the end when it came to the three hour drive home, I had to remind myself to drive RL rather than BF2. And yes, it took a while to be able to stop saying RL rather than Real Life.
I also cracked a joke about tiredness being lag of the real world. Yes, indeed.
As the days blurred together and time marched seemingly forward, I became less and less bendy. My back frequently told me ?No?, while my feet, bizarrely, didn?t like being woken up. As for my eyes, well, never mind about my eyes. By about midnight on the Saturday I was pretty much wrecked, spending seemingly ages staring blindly at the hypnotic gaze of the beautiful Okami picture that makes up my overbright background.
Sunday continued that theme of slowly losing the will to live. Lan gaming, zero ping, hundreds of like-minded people?At the time it felt like Hell dipped in BO. Sleep.
Sleeping in a car (a Fiesta to precise) was somehow less comfortable than it first seemed, while sleeping in the designated ?sleeping area? was particularly bad having brought a sleeping bag that simply refused to be soft (and completely forgetting any sort of pillow). Not helping was the floor, which was seemingly made of diamond or some such unnaturally hard substance. Obviously, that this one room had many other people ? gamers ? in the same situation, was a tad concerning also.
Joy.
Monday didn?t actually happen. I managed to drive home somehow so obviously it did, but that may have been through luck more than judgement. /Shrug.
My most memorable moment was not reaching the semi-finals in the Battlefield 2 competition (with a clan who had never met before the event), but actually my feeling when about to leave. Having packed up my computer (and three others) into the back of my car I looked upon our hall in the grant Newbury Racecourse, only to think: OMG WTF, oh FFS I could have done so much more. Sad Face.
Says it all really.
I26 takes place November 11th in Newbury, www.multiplay.co.uk for more details. Be a geek, or be normal. Worth a pop I'd say.
I do tend to do things from time to time that raise the geek-bar even further, but these usually seem like good ideas at the time. Going to E3 in order to play a two minute demo of Halo2 (and finding out that they wouldn?t let me when there), would be a valid example.
Well, at the weekend I attended the UK?s largest LAN party ? I25. I guess that counts, too.
The Insomnia Lan series, ran by Multiplay UK, is a strange old beast. Get 800-or-so gamers into one big building, add in a super-fast Internet connection, Dominos pizza on site and a licensed bar, and you get, well, partially organised chaos.
No, more to the point, you get a semi-real life version of those Internet parodies about hardcore gamers in the real world.
Boom headshot.
The four day event is billed as an Extreme Lan, and by the 16th hour of non-stop gaming I certainly began to feel the pain. Four days of gaming, any PC related game ? sleep optional. Put it this way, if this event was held in Korea, they?d need to dig a mass grave.
After sixteen hours of playing just two games ? Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft ? I began to lose grip on reality. Not helping was only ninety minutes of sleep before gaming again for another twenty hours non-stop. Extreme, see.
The weird thing about being in a room with like-minded individuals without having any sleep is that the joke-y l33t speak to begin with becomes almost the norm by the end of the marathon. I believe in the dead of the night I actually started a conversation with someone trying to compare the difference between Half Life 2 ragdoll physics and Real Life physics ? the test? Jumping off a very large height onto a very awkward landing. By the end when it came to the three hour drive home, I had to remind myself to drive RL rather than BF2. And yes, it took a while to be able to stop saying RL rather than Real Life.
I also cracked a joke about tiredness being lag of the real world. Yes, indeed.
As the days blurred together and time marched seemingly forward, I became less and less bendy. My back frequently told me ?No?, while my feet, bizarrely, didn?t like being woken up. As for my eyes, well, never mind about my eyes. By about midnight on the Saturday I was pretty much wrecked, spending seemingly ages staring blindly at the hypnotic gaze of the beautiful Okami picture that makes up my overbright background.
Sunday continued that theme of slowly losing the will to live. Lan gaming, zero ping, hundreds of like-minded people?At the time it felt like Hell dipped in BO. Sleep.
Sleeping in a car (a Fiesta to precise) was somehow less comfortable than it first seemed, while sleeping in the designated ?sleeping area? was particularly bad having brought a sleeping bag that simply refused to be soft (and completely forgetting any sort of pillow). Not helping was the floor, which was seemingly made of diamond or some such unnaturally hard substance. Obviously, that this one room had many other people ? gamers ? in the same situation, was a tad concerning also.
Joy.
Monday didn?t actually happen. I managed to drive home somehow so obviously it did, but that may have been through luck more than judgement. /Shrug.
My most memorable moment was not reaching the semi-finals in the Battlefield 2 competition (with a clan who had never met before the event), but actually my feeling when about to leave. Having packed up my computer (and three others) into the back of my car I looked upon our hall in the grant Newbury Racecourse, only to think: OMG WTF, oh FFS I could have done so much more. Sad Face.
Says it all really.
I26 takes place November 11th in Newbury, www.multiplay.co.uk for more details. Be a geek, or be normal. Worth a pop I'd say.
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