OCmodshop is interviewing Jason Harper, one of the owners of LanParty Northwest: one of the largest LAN party organizations in the Pacific Northwest. They regularly host smaller LAN parties (called Garage LANs, or gLANs), and semi-annually host large 400-MAN events which has drawn press from MTV2, Tom’s Hardware and local Seattle newspapers. OCmodshop is proud to welcome Jason Harper…
Jason, How did you get started hosting LAN parties?
Here’s the story… we started out because there I’ve been an avid gamer as far as I can remember. I remember my dad in his 30s playing Atari and throwing Atari fondue parties, and I’d be upstairs crying my eyes out because I wasn’t allowed to participate because I was too young. I couldn’t stop there: I started playing with that Atari…
Yeah, Atari 2600. So, having games in my life I ended up going to college and I went to the Art Institute of Seattle to make video games, so I got a degree in Computer Animation and Multimedia. I never ventured out to get the actual job in the industry, so instead of working in the industry was to start a company that had to do with games.
On the way back we were talking that we could do something similar on our own, except we would make ours twenty-four hours. So, the first garage LAN (gLAN) was created then. I bought a domain, lanpartynw.com and we (LPNW) decided to announce our parties. Our first lan party was February of 2002.
The initial costs: I bought a 16-port switch, I had a 4 port hub, a few network cables and we borrowed tables from friends and from work. So overall costs were a few hundred dollars, if that. At the beginning, we had 10 people sign up, and out of that we had 2 actually show up. Those two were surprised to find out that LanPartyNW was not a brick & mortar store yet it was a garage. That was their first (and last) lan party they both came to.
When did it start to pick up again?
The very next lan was scheduled for March 2002. We had 24 people sign up for a 30-man garage lan, and all 24 showed up, which blew us away. Fooman, the Grinch, BeverageNinja, Bashildy, Kale.. they were our first ones, and they kept coming back. So that was our first use of the term LPNW Veteran. I decided the third event that any gamer came to would be labeled a LPNW Veteran. We had plaques made out of stainless steel and that would motivate them to return.
How many of the originals are still coming?
Haha, one or two I guess.
Bashildy moved off to California and got a job with EA games, so he’s working as a slave. He’s working 80+ hours a week last time I talked with him without any sign of an end. We also have a few Micorosft & Nintendo employees come to the parties.
How did the large LANs start?
We started looking at past rosters of our original garage LANs. Being that we could only hold 30 people in the garage, and that was really packing ‘em in. I noticed a trend of 60+ people trying to sign up for a 30 man LAN. I talked to Dan, and we agreed that we needed to do a big one. So we started the signups for a 100 man lan, and secured some contracts with the Holiday Inn, and they had never heard of such a thing. They had never heard of a customer who wanted to rent their facilities for a 24-hour event. I had to twist their arms for an event that lasted 24-hours past their normal 2:00am cutoff (This 100 Man LAN turned into a 200 MAN LAN due to the signups). I can remember seeing footage from that first 200-man LAN. I know it had become a big deal because someone was walking around with a video camera interviewing gamers as they were waiting in line, and they even interviewed you.
I noticed at the gLANs (40 people or so) I do get a chance to game, but usually after getting people hooked up to the network and after the pizza has been ordered. That last 400 man lan was so busy and chaotic that I was never even able to sit down in my seat, never once plugging into the actual network.
That’s a good question. We basically do it for the community: the garage lans can only hold 40 people and over the last summer we were maxing those out where all seats were pre-paid and showed up. It’s not allowing others who don’t have paypal to get a spot to get a seat in the LAN. So by hosting these larger events we can tie into that larger community. We have over 900 past attendees that we’re trying to cater to who have at some point in time have come through our doors. We’ve kept the database of that, but we do have a fairly large following.
The success that we’ve had in our past 400 man lans and the amount of people showing up drove us into holding another 400 man lan. Although this last 400-man lan in January would have been the first one we would have made any sort of profit on. We were previously only breaking even with the previous 200 and 400 man lans or to buy our equipment.
We’re planning to hold off for right now. Financially we’re still in the hole from that last event and it’s going to take a while to rebound from that.
So the garage lans are more profitable?
Oh, yeah. Definitely. The garage lans have low overhead are definitely scalable in profit. Our first 400 man LAN we ended up getting a pretty good deal on our switches, and ended up saving a few thousand dollars. So, to give back to the gamers we gave everyone a $5 vending voucher, which seemed to backfire on us. $5 times 400 gamers ended up being $2000 we gave back to the community. We allowed them to use that money as food. We secured a vending company by assuring them to get a certain amount in sales. The fact that we saved money on the switches we figured we could siphon that money to the vendor we had promised sales to. That backfired, we had an a lot of upset gamers that would’ve rather had the cash back, which we kinda get stabbed in the back for trying to make a good effort
That is pretty difficult. When I start reading the complaints (on the forums), or even from word of mouth, and sometimes I think “I’ll show them, I’ll just quit doing it”. But there are other gamers out there that appreciate what we do, and know there is a risk involved, and by giving us their support makes us want to continue. Being married 11 years and having two kids; the only time I get to game is at these parties, and I just want to continue that. The larger LANs help the community continue on a larger scale with the gamers that can’t attend the monthly ones.
That’s correct… (laughs). My wife and I had difficulty conceiving our first child and turned to fertility drugs and our second we knew the proper dosage of that drug that we needed and we knew the time zone we needed to do the act, and this happened to fall on a LAN-party weekend.
I thought you had just gotten back from military training..
That’s correct as well. I got back after being away for a few months, it so happens that the LAN weekend was also the prime time for conception, so I talked to Dan and told him that I needed to leave the LAN to take care of things back home and that I’ll be right back. Dan’s like “you have 45 minutes”. Being that it takes 22 minutes to get back to my house, it didn’t really give me much time.
But thing’s worked out?
Yeah, things worked out, and she (Jason’s youngest daughter) is walking around right now…
LPNW’s official stance on that is “no piracy”. Not that we “see no evil, hear no evil”. On our forums we take a more strict approach, we don’t want anything in print on the web (about piracy), so we have moderators that are quick to squash any talk of piracy quickly, and change the description (of copies) to “backups”. I, myself, since we have that view, make sure to buy the games. I show those off in pictures and on the web page. I’ve done that since day one. “Piracy” is a good way to test the game out, I suppose, before you buy it. (laughs). A large number of our gamers do buy the retail product.
On the electrical aspect of things, I was a reservist for the Marine Corps for 6 ½ years as an electrical equipment repair specialist. So I went to school for the marines for electrical and I learned the basics of electricity: Ohm’s law and what not to figure out how much amperage you will need with so many systems hooked up to a 120 volt system. Doing that and testing things out over the years. We felt safe with 8 computers for each 20 amp circuit and we’ve had to make modifications recently. We’ve found by pushing the limits that we can have 8 computers on a 20 amp circuit. That was back when 250-300 watt power supplies were the norm, and now 500, 600, and I’ve even seen a Kilowatt power supply in my copy of PC Gamer Magazine. 1,000 Watt power supply! So, we’re going to be changing that model to accommodate for the larger wattage computers. For converting things to the house for use for that type of amperage, I was fortunate enough to purchase a house where the previous owner worked for AT&T and had CAT-5e wired through the whole house. Also he was a woodworker and had a lathe and wood saws and other woodworking machines in his garage, and already had 5-20 amp circuits in the garage. I just had to reconfigure them, add a couple more. When we have a full house with all 43 gamers present, I don’t let my wife use the microwave, the stove, the washer & dryer, or the dishwasher! Haha!
You even added air conditioning to the garage.
We did. Back in 2004 we had a couple of hot months, August and September which reached into the 90s. We attempted to use a swamp cooler to see if that would help with the conditions in the garage, and all that added was humidity… it was one of the most miserable LAN parties we’ve ever had. I think it was 94 degrees outside, and about 110 inside the garage with 90% humidity! Haha. Adding that much humidity to computer systems is not a good idea. We noticed moisture on some people’s computers so we had to promptly shut off the swamp cooler, which is using water and evaporation to supposedly cool, and we actually had water dripping through cardboard with a fan blowing across it to produce the cooler air.
The vending machine worked out when we had that contact with the vending company from one of the 200 man lan # 4, which was the first LAN at the Everett Event Center. I asked them if it was possible we could get their vending machine to utilize on a monthly basis at the Everett Inn where we were holding our 60 man LANs. So each month they would load up their trucks and load up the vending machines full of pop for us to use. The first couple of times was a disaster: we had them fully loaded with soda and would pay the company 26 cents a can, which you could probably get less than that at Costco. They would fill it up completely, and we would offer free drinks for our gamers: just hit a button and the pop would fall out (Cost of soda wrapped up into the price of the LAN). Well after the lan party would be over, they would take a few days to retrieve their machine. In the meantime, other hotel staff and guests figured out that they could get free soda, and the machines were completely wiped out. We were supposed to pay for the soda that we used but were in turn getting charged for the whole thing. We decided at one point that we would go back to doing garage lans so we didn’t have to worry about breaking even on the proper head count to pay for the hotel and I requested one of those vending machines and have that permanently brought into the garage. As long as I keep buying soda and product through them, and they agreed, so we got a $6,000 vending machine and we continue using it. We even have BAWLS inside there… BAWLS even sent me a 7 foot tall BAWLS sticker to apply to the vending machine.
We got larger as we went along. We really didn’t have a game plan. What I would do if I could do it again is to sketch out some sort of short-term goal, and a medium to long-term goal of where you want to see the LAN party go. Make a definite mission statement of what the LAN party is going to do: is it going to be for the community, for profit, or is it just going to be for entertainment on an individual level, and if there is a partnership, to get that in writing; who’s responsible for what, etc. Get all that defined that would probably help out in the long run. A plan-of-attack would also entail if the partnership would dissolve, buying the other one out or what have you… Look into getting a business license and how to report income, how to report loss. I would bet that most of these lan party groups that start up first start out just to have fun and just to do it and then start realizing the legalities and liabilities of doing it. Get a lawyer to write up a waiver form to release liability from the LAN party and what can happen to their cars, their equipment, possible accidents or what have you.
So we’ll start with the first question… Jason, what is your favorite word?
Favorite word? Outstanding!
What is your least favorite word?
First thing that comes to my mind is “fail”.
What turns you on?
Being excited and seeing that carry over to somebody else and see that same excitement in them.
What turns you off?
Boredom… nothing to do.
What is your favorite curse word?
Now, my favorite curse word is “frak”. Ha ha ha ha! It seems so dirty. There’s a series called “Battlestar Galactica”, and all the way back in 1978 when they had their show they couldn’t use the word “eff, you, cee, kay” so they converted to Frak so they use it in exactly the same context. They use it in the new series, as well… they’ll even say “mother-frakker”. They even say “Frak this” or “Frak you”. Frak!
What sound or noise do you love?
Hmmm… I have no idea… Rainfall.
What sound or noise do you hate?
The sound that comes from my alarm in the morning.
What occupation other than you own would you like to attempt?
Hmmm… This just sounds dumb, but like a P.I. or doing spy-work type stuff.
What occupation other than your own would you NOT like to do?
I wouldn’t like to do any kind of customer service by telephone.
If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
Outstanding!