St. Louis Science Center LAN - September 24th, 2005

[Illuminati]

In order to expand on the audience, I have to agree with Audio about choosing 1.6 over Source. For the next LAN, you may want to post polls in other large gamer-related forums to find out which is the true higher demand. If the "more people demanded 1.6" stat came from Warfactory's own forum, you may want to consider expanding the horizon of the event to new gamers you try to recruit from forums much like this one. But you have to specifically ask the question: "Which tourney would you be more interested in participating, CS 1.6 or CS:Source?" Then you will get your feedback.

I'm not necessarily saying you made the wrong decision to stick with CS 1.6 (although I'm not sure it was the correct one either), because you don't want to loose the "Warfactory Regulars", but eventually you will have to change to CS:Source or you risk loosing sponsors (or never getting them) and not getting any bigger attendence due to outdated games. And when you make the change to CS:Source, you can't go back to 1.6 just because the regulars whined.

my .02.

[-mogwai]

good post

[-mogwai]

i don't think i'm gonna go. $20 is too high for a lan, in my opinion (by the way, the last laclede's lan lanparty was only $12 and was a total success). hopefully, the next one will have more in-demand game tourneys and won't cost as much... i'm going broke damn you, gas prices!

While we'd love to do a free LAN, the bills have to get paid somehow. The unfortunate reality to ANY small to medium LAN group is that you have to reach a certain critical-mass before sponsors will heavily invest in you. That threshhold is ~200+ people. Warfactory is poised to break that barrier within a year or so, but needs support of the community to get there.

If you check out LANParty.com you'll see that groups that are similar to Warfactory have generally equivalent admission. AsylumLAN is like $25. The Springfield Gamers Association is $15. Stompfest is $25. LANExtreme is $20.

Overall, prices for LANs are across the board. Laclede's LAN has a good deal on their location, but they've always intended on having smaller, more fun events (unless things have changed recently). They'll be a little cheaper because they can afford to be.

Beyond everything, I think you've mis-perceived the overall ROI for this event. Included in your $20 is a long day of gaming, food and drink, and participation in three tournaments, all of which have (more or less) cash return on win. There's a substantial amount of overhead at this venue, but as we have ~50 people paid and 120+ signed up, demand is obvious. If your concern is tournaments, you're probably still miffed about the decision to side with CS 1.6 over Source, but that was the result of a lot of delibaration and gamer demand.

Also, this event is in the St. Louis Science Center. Much of our overall cost comes from location. Fortunately, we've been establishing new business relationships that you should see reflected in pricing for future events.

I didn't mean to write a tome here, but LAN Parties are expensive to run. It's true that QuakeCon and other VERY LARGE LANs can be free, but you have to think that marketers use these events as key delivery avenues for their products and then, you're responsible for getting a hotel room and (possibly) a flight! Heck, I think every small LAN I've gone to at friend's homes have cost me at least $20 anyway after I pitch in for pizza, buy soda/beer, etc.

yeah, but you said that the $20 was for expansion of warfactory. i think that's dumb (but, then again, i'm not a warfactory admin... so my opinion means crap). not only that, but the grand prize for the tourneys are a $30 gain in the form of a store credits.

don't take this the wrong way... i'm not trying to bash the lan and whatnot. i'm just trying to give you a different point of view.

[killdashnine]

Regarding the CS 1.6 v CS:Source conflict, I'll have to say that we went through a very painful discussion that extended well beyond our site. We did a lot of research on the subject and in all, I found it pretty surprising that there's such a furious conflict between people playing (more or less) the same darn game. We made the call on the information available hoping that by our next event CSers would make the switch and eliminate the argument altogether.

Anyway, running LAN Parties is a thankless job where we learn something new from each event. Everyone involved with Warfactory has invested a lot of time and effort which I'm personally thankful for ... I think that anyone attending is going to see a definite improvement over the last events we've held. The Science Center is a cool place to LAN any way you cut it!

I'd certainly be all ears to hear more from the Legit Reviews team regarding suggestions for future events.

[-mogwai]

haha yeah... the funny thing was that i wasn't fighting with people, but they were fighting with me.... it got so out of hand that there's a kid named zack (with the screenname whoazack) who keeps trying to threaten me and saying that he's going to kick my ass at the next lan hahaha

well, actually, HE'S not gonna kick my ass... he says that his ghetto friends are going to kick my ass. i thought he was joking at first, but it turned out he was dead serious. i couldn't help but laugh. i've got the entire conversation logged. this was like two nights ago hahaha! over a frigging game! haha... what a tard.

i tried reasoning with him and tried burying the entire thing with him... i even offered to meet up with him and treat him to dinner just to talk about stuff and end the stupid thing once and for all. he ended up just continuing on with this idea that he was going to kick my ass in the parking lot with his boys haha. man... what a stable dude.