Hacker News Reader

Comment by thes1lv3r | Hacker News Reader

I volunteer at a yearly LAN party called The Gathering[1] in Norway, we pull about 5000 participants each year (about 3k of which have desk spaces, the rest are day or week passes without a desk). It's some of the most fun I have each year :3

It's unfortunately lost a lot of the early 2000s charm (which ive only experienced from videos and pictures), but we try our best to keep things local and give the best experience possible for participants :3

[1]: https://tg.no (no English site exists unfortunately)

View on HN

Historic bit: in the late 90s/early 2000s there was a bit of a trend - and quite some tension - of demoscene parties getting taken over by LAN parties. I believe the Gathering used to be a demoscene party, but completely transformed into a gaming LAN party.

There were also those that tried to be both (I believe Assembly is doing both to this day) or those that kept the gaming out (Mekka/Symposium, which no longer exists, but there's been a followup party called Breakpoint, and later another followup called Revision that still exists).

The Gathering used to be a demoscene event! Even hosted the scene.org awards in 2011. Looking at pouet.net, quite a lot of famous demos were released there, such as:

* desert dream by kefrens in 1993

* tint by TBL(!) in 1996

* rupture by ASD in 2009

* numb res by carillon & cyberiad and fairlight

Here is a TV report from the first event in 1992: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SACVynerMhA

Also shoutout to ODD's world domination, which is somewhat of a meme in the Norwegian demoscene community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgnBi6PuA5M

Today, the demoscene still lives in Norway albeit arguably on life support. Those that are still interested usually go to "proper demoparties". Solskogen, the old demoparty, had its last event during COVID. Black Valley is a replacement and it seems to be doing well. I was at Solskogen '17 and it was a great collection of hacker-minded people. There was also plenty of alcohol, I can understand why demosceners - an aging population, would prefer their own party to the alcohol-free The Gathering.

The Gathering currently has a mix of creative and e-sport events. I feel like the end of creative has loomed over our heads for 10 years, at least we definitely felt like a minority when I was crew back in the first half of the 2010s. But it still lives, and people still participate in the competitions!

It's an uncomfortable truth that even TG is failing to pull in participants lately, but LANs don't have the critical role in nerd culture they had in the 2000s. I'm happy it still exists and the board seem to be making some decent attempts at revitalising it for a modern crowd

I attend “The Party” in Aars, Denmark for a few years around 2000. It was at the crossroads of broadband, but got to taste the demoscene vs gamer experience. It was magnificent. There were a real festival atmosphere, and afterwards you’d declare never to attend again - that was, until the tickets were released and you somehow couldn’t help yourself.

Good times.

Stratlan UK is still going. It was a spinoff of Multiplay's i-series. Now independent and ran three times a year. The next one is in July, not ever had a chance to go but always heard the great things. Will one day.

As someone else said in this thread, my bed time is now 11pm so no more all nights for me.

https://stratlan.com/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com