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.
Which do you prefer, the small LANs or the big ones?
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.
Do you spend more time managing the party than actually playing?
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.
So you’re not thinking about doing another large event again?
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
It seems that you give so much of your time to the community, and you sometimes get negative feedback. How do you feel about gamer’s complaints?
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.
