If you’re sufficiently old to recollect LAN events of their heyday, you’ll keep in mind how complicated (and wonderful) they had been. If you’re not, you’ve in all probability heard previous folks talk about them reverently, in hushed tones, making them appear virtually legendary.
Whereas folks after all nonetheless maintain them—typically in enormous numbers!—the arrival of on-line multiplayer has just about killed them off as a cultural touchstone. And now that we’re 20 years previous their prime, now’s nearly as good a time as any to take a good, historic take a look at what they had been, how they labored and what they really meant to everybody concerned.
That’s what LAN Occasion, by Merritt Okay, is doing. Printed by the always-excellent Learn Solely Reminiscence Books, it’s going to look at the glory days of the scene, across the flip of the millennium, and can characteristic a ton of photographs documenting these dorky, heady occasions. Right here’s the pitch:
LAN gatherings of the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s advanced from the need for multiplayer players to come back collectively at bodily meet-ups, lugging their cumbersome computer systems or recreation consoles together with them.
Along with documenting the nostalgic period of LAN events, the pictures on this guide are distinctive artefacts of the peculiar cultural and technological second, when gaming was tipping over from area of interest pastime to mainstream obsession. They reveal not simply the house décor and private style kinds on the flip of the millennium however a special world, one which existed earlier than the web took form and we began carrying it round with us in our pockets.
Most of the pictures included in LAN Occasion had been taken utilizing early digital cameras at restricted decision. To make these pictures look their finest in print, we have now employed AI-enhancement software program – an rising know-how that enables the upscaling of low-resolution pictures with spectacular outcomes – to make the primary full-size photobook on this beloved subculture.
As somebody who was there, Gandalf, 3000 years in the past, this sounds unbelievable. Funding for the guide is up on Volume, and you’ll pledge/order your copy right here.