Laclede’s LAN returned once again to the Boeing Hall in the Saint Louis Science Center for another successful event! The Science Center is a We polished off a lot of Monster Energy and made a few trips to the Science Café, all while playing PC games to support our charities. Thanks to all of you who were able to make it out to a later-in-the-year-than-normal LAN (and thanks to all of the mothers for their understanding about the Mother’s Day LAN ).
For our 25th event, Laclede’s LAN returned to Saint Louis University’s Wool Ballroom in the Busch Student Center for another weekend of LED-lit, Monster-fueled, Twitch-streamed gaming! After cancelling two events due to public health concerns, it was great to be back in SLU’s space, and we’d like to specifically thank the SLU School for Professional Studies for helping make this event possible (and helping us secure golf carts to shorten the walk when parking had to change at the last minute)! We also got an internet upgrade for this event…
After a two-year break due to the pandemic, Laclede’s LAN returned with a new room in a new venue, the Saint Louis Science Center!
Although the current health crisis has put a temporary halt to our in-person LAN events, we’ve been on the lookout for ways to continue networking with other groups and promote STEM education in St. Louis during our hiatus. We were graciously invited to participate in one of the the St. Louis Science Center’s First Friday Events, and we were more than happy to join!
Another successful LAN under the belt, and another visit from Microsoft with a great VR area featuring Beat Saber! They also brought a plethora of gaming laptops and X-Box One’s for gamers to play and compete with one another on and did open-to-the-public tournaments in Gears of War 5 and Fortnite Duos. Loddy tried out Loddy Lounge (which only ended up being slightly less than 95% Team Fortress 2); Andy set up a casual game schedule with all kinds of titles and helped fill the servers and get people gamin’. A huge thank you to everyone who helped volunteer to setup and tear down at this event. Special thanks to Madrina’s and the Microsoft Store for being great local partners. Also-special thanks to LANFest and all of our national sponsors.
We aren’t big fans of major outages at our events (go figure), so notable tech stack upgrades from this LAN include an improved network stack that allowed for redundancy, power amperage monitoring that helped prevent unexpected power outages, and better control of projected video and audio levels for each section. This all resulted in improved staff mental health. As always, we appreciated Microsoft coming back with their high-end gaming laptops and XBoxes, holding another open-to-the-public Fortnite tournament. Additional partners included: BackRoute and their Smash Bros Tournament, custom PC contest by Fast Metal Labs, and In Win Development showing off some slick new cases. Staff snacks included Goldfish, Oreos, and granola bars. Nutrients were avoided.
The LAN party started a bit rough when the internet for the whole building dropped (turns out a lot of PC games are online these days), but luckily BraveSirRobbin (Tim Dollarhide) stepped in with Flash Tournaments to sate the competitive thirsts of the gaming masses!
Guess who’s back? Back again? Microsoft’s back, and their laptops are high-end. They also carted over a few XBox Ones and held an open-to-the-public Fortnite tournament. Thanks again to BackRoute, and for the custom PC contest by Vir1lity PC Customs.
Ahoy, matey! A new game from Rare off the port bow – Microsoft brought Sea of Thieves running on ten high-end gaming laptops and a few X-Box Ones. Additional partners included Twitch STL, BackRoute, Moonbase Market, and an HTC Vive virtual reality demo area (sectioned off by Caution tape in real reality) hosted by Black Magix. Additionally, we held numerous tournaments, random flash tournaments, casual gaming events, and featured live streaming throughout the event from multiple Twitch streamers. We also drank a ridiculous amount of energy drinks and caffiene, but that wasn’t a tournament. We just do that regardless.
Laclede’s LAN Fall 2017 was once again held in the Wool Ballroom in the Busch Student Center at Saint Louis University. The LAN housed over 200 gamers (including staff) with gameplay starting at 8:30am on Saturday and ending at 3:30pm on Sunday.
Laclede’s LAN featured numerous tournaments, random flash tournaments, casual gaming events, and a few surprises such as a Microsoft Xbox Cuphead contest!
We had a great time – see you at the next LAN!
All night long! This LAN was our first overnight event since our reboot in 2014! Laclede’s LAN featured competitive tournaments, random flash tournaments, casual gaming, a custom PC build contest, an HTC Vive virtual reality demo area, and extra prize giveaways from…