Attempt 2. A bit late, but I've reworked, reworded and reanalysed pretty much everything after the first paragraph. I decided to focus entirely on the fate of LANs. The future of competitive gaming didn't really seem to fit, but I did reference Starcraft :P
As the drill goes, hope you guys enjoy it and tell me what ya'll think:
Column Starts Here:
Being the mature near-adult that I am, I have decided to approach the topic of the dying nature of LAN support and the effect it will have upon our local PC gaming community in a manner different to that of previous drafts lesser columnists. To ranting, raging and general QQ, I say “Nay!” and opt instead for a far more objective, rant free analysis of what happens to us now that the evil corporate monkeys at Activision, Infinity Ward, Bobby Kotick and all affiliated companies and bureaucracies have ruined the upright and venerable pastime of PC LANning for gamers EVERYWHERE.
Rant free that is, starting now.
Now, naturally the first issue which springs to mind for us as South African gamers is the future of big LAN events like the NAG LAN at rAge, Organised Chaos (OC) and FRAG, to name but a few. Personally, I don't really think they're under threat at all (for the moment, at least).
But Duncan! You horse of a man, you! How could you possibly be so confident in the future of our cherished and beloved LAN events when the majority of the games we see being released today don't even have LAN support!
A fine question, my dear hypothetical reader. To answer it, we need to take a look at the reasons people attend such events and why in each case they would continue to attend LANs, regardless of whether games being released have LAN support.
First and foremost, we need to realise that people do not attend LANs to play games. If their objective was to wholly and soley play multiplayer games, they would simply stay at home and play online instead. Granted, there will be some who come because they don't have access to online, but the majority of people who do so attend LANs to enjoy the social experience and general vibe that accompanies such an event, and the playing of games acts as a catalyst in this matter. It is because of this social aspect that people enjoy going to LANs so damn much, as opposed to a night of Call of Duty online.
In addition to this, people who play games at LANs have never really been, and still aren't really phased, romanced or even really vaguely interested in newer releases. Rather than schizophrenically switching to favouring a new game every month as they are released, the LAN community plays a rather select number of well-established, wildly popular, successful games which have proven themselves over time. This is why you see people playing Call of Duty 4 and DotA this year, as they did last year, the year before that and the year before that. The year before that Call of Duty 4 hadn't been released yet, and I wasn't attending LANs. People continue to enjoy these games, regardless of their (the games', that is... but people too, I suppose) age.
Given the two above points, I don't see LANs losing any attendance in the next few years, as people will continue to go because they enjoy the social aspect of LANs, and they enjoy the older, yet well-established games which do support LAN, regardless of what newer games are released without LAN.
Even if people don't care for the social aspect of LANs, and will not be able to play newer games which don't include LAN support at LANs, they still have ample reason to go. This reason, expressed in a present participle, is 'leeching'. Leeching, simply put, is the art of acquiring completely non-copyright protected, totally legal reenactments, recreations and reproductions of a wide variety of media and games, in a completely legal and morally upstanding manner, via a Local Area Network.
Now, let's take a look at StarCraft 2. It is the first game to be released devoid of LAN support that LANners and competitive gamers care about (no one gives a flying fart about modern warfare 2. And if they do then they should stop). The reason we need to take a look at it is that even though LANs are going to be able to survive just fine off older games (Dota, CoD4) with LAN support for the next few years, a day will dawn when they are truly obsolete, and without games all the nerds in attendance will realise that they aren't as socially adept as they thought they were and the LAN will fail. Or something along those lines. Point is, people will most likely have tired of DotA and CoD4 in ten years time and unless developers suddenly have a change of heart, it doesn't look like we're going to have any LAN capable games to take their place.
So wait, where does StarCraft 2 come in, again?
Well, StarCraft 2 is, as I said, the first game that casual and competitive gamers alike really care about to come out without LAN support. And, in its nearly 2 years of shelf-time, it has a lesson or two to teach us about the future of gaming online.
It has shown us that LANs may well survive, even if they don't use a Local Area Network. OC has taken the initiative to allow its gamers access to battle.net via an internet connection they (OC) supply. Starcraft 2 competitions such as MLG in America and others in South Korea still happen in a LAN format, they too simply providing an internet connection to allow their gamers access to battle.net.
We need to remember the limitations at work here, specifically in South Africa, though. While the speed and bandwidth of internet available to South Koreans may be comparable to Usain Bolt launched out of a trebuchet with rockets strapped to his ass, South Africa's internet is more reminiscent of an obese old Afrikaans boer suffering from chronic asthma and a heart murmour. Somewhat disturbing metaphors aside, the only reasons events like OC are able to offer their gamers battle.net access is because not all of the attendees are going to use it at once, and StarCraft 2 is relatively light on bandwidth, and even then the connection can be less than optimal. If it were a more bandwidth heavy game, such as an FPS, there would be no hope in hell of giving gamers the same access. Our interwebz simply aren't fast enough. Not to mention that even if they were, if there are connection and/or lag issues (like there were at MLG Dallas, a recent StarCraft 2 tournament), there really isn't that much that the organisers would be able to do, which puts the whole thing on pretty thin ice. If that sounds tedious, chancy, overcomplicated and downright stupid... it is.
Hell, perhaps this whole 'No LAN' thing is just the pubescent phase of our much loved games developers' maturing process.
Somehow, I doubt it.
The best we can do is hope that our internet continues to improve like it has in recent years, for it is only with better, faster, stronger interwebz that we will ultimately be able to continue to uphold the venerable practice of LANning.
Here's hoping...
Column Ends Here
Duncan
Out (Just once, this time)
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