Collective Gaming?

[JC]

I've noticed an interesting and growing type of video gaming that my little bro does. Back in the day, when I was younger, I used to get together with friends and play games. But because we had the NES, it was two gamers playing at a time, or a constant switching of the controller to "take turns." Nowadays, these young ones are playing on consoles that interconnect, so it's always about 16 of them playing against each other at once, primarily Halo 2. I'm curious if anyone does this -- and I'm not talking about internet gaming BS. I'm curious what people like about it. Does it have a name (I called it "collective gaming")?

[Jedi Master Baiter]

Yeah, LAN party.

[JC]

Oh yeah -- that's it. I remember a dude in college who would host LAN parties. Do they mostly occur in living rooms? I'm just playing off my experience with my little bro. I'm so clueless here.

[Flash1087]

They occur in a variety of areas, I've had friends who have rented entire event halls out (think like a DAV hall or something) to fill with computers to get gigantic Counter-Strike tournaments going. I've been to a few LAN parties in my day, mostly Xbox and PC. They're good fun, but you run into more than your fair share of bad losers and winners at them.

[JC]

Cool. My bro has them in living rooms at friends' home. But I've heard of people renting places to hold them. It sounds like they're better when you know just about everyone at one, which would minimize the "losers and winners" problem you mentioned -- though friends can be bitches about that kind of stuff, too.

[Flash1087]

Sometimes it's worse when you know them, then you have to hear about it later. 

[JC]

I guess that would be true if you didn't kick ass during gameplay.