Last weekend, I went to Respawn LAN, and it was my first big LAN. I have to say, the thing that struck me most was that if you didn't play an FPS (or some other kind of shooting game like Alititude), then it was really hard to get a game going. Since the Internet connection was reserved for Steam only, HoN was out of the question, so I convinced some people to play DotA. It was a bit of a pain in the ass trying to get people playing DotA - had to make sure everyone has the same version and could get the game running OK. I guess most people didn't expect to be playing and so they hadn't updated War3. Although I can't really complain, since Auto had a game of Starcraft up and running for ages and couldn't even get one opponent. It was fun though, and I got to meet new people - though we never found out who megaTRON was, which was a bit disappointing because he was really good. It took me (as Doom) and Razor two hex sticks and my ult to stop him, but Mpanda was pretty farmed by the end, so we probably would have won anyway.
I bumped into Bill and Yorran (ArO's friends) again. I never know what to do in a situation where you're not sure if the other person remembers you and so you don't want to greet them in the event that they don't remember you and you have that awkward moment where they say, "Oh, right, Anna!" and feign recognition, even though you both know the other person doesn't remember you at all. I guess Bill not recognising me is OK since we haven't seen each other in about a year and a half, but I wasn't sure if Yorran remembered me since I think we met about 3 months ago. I wanted to congratulate him on his job offer, but didn't want to risk the awkward feigned recognition moment. I figured in the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't have changed his life or anything if I had congratulated him, so I decided not to say anything.
Was that bad? What if he was a DotA player? Graham seems to think meeting new people is a good thing, and I feel like I should extend my friendship circle - plus, all the graduate programs seem to place a big focus on the ability to network. I met so many different people in the random DotA games I organised, but never got contact details from any of them. I guess I was a bit afraid that if I asked them for emails or HoN/DotA usernames they might think that I'm hitting on them (going to rage about this topic in a future post). Plus, I think shyness would have been a factor. We shouted out asking who megaTRON was, but nobody responded. =(
I ended up helping out with a few things at Respawn, because ArO wanted to enter the Flatout 2 comp, and because I enjoyed hanging out with him when he couldn't game because he had to do stuff for the LAN. It made me realise that I miss that kind of stuff. Now that uni is over and I'm not on any club committees anymore, I don't really have anything to organise or help out with, and I didn't realise how much I really enjoyed doing it until I couldn't anymore. That being said, I did complain about having to do it when I was doing it, but I think maybe I really do enjoy it more than I realised. I've been thinking about maybe taking up some volunteer work in the meantime, both to give me something to do, and to develop my skills a little more. Not really sure what I'd volunteer to do though. I don't want to wave cans and harass people on the street, or sell raffle tickets.
The atmosphere at Respawn was very sausage-fest-like. Every now and again, someone would yell out, "Penis!" and then it would get echoed around the room for a bit until it died out, or occasionally someone would yell out, "Vagina!" instead. Not many girls were there, I noticed a couple of female players, plus one admin and her mother. There was a female comp, but I wasn't paying attention to who entered since I was playing L4D at the time (ArO said about 6 or 7 entered, but he thinks about 20-30 females were at the LAN). Some guy was watching porn openly on his computer. I was a bit surprised. I don't think I'd be brave enough to do that as there are 449 other people who could see what you're doing - too embarrassing for me!
I had fun at Respawn, but I think I still prefer smaller home LANs, since you know that the people you invite are going to want to play games instead of watching stuff on their computer. Thinking of having a housewarming LAN when I move out, but will have to depend on space. =(
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