QuakeCon Keeps the LAN Party Going

It's 99 degrees outside in Dallas, and the sun hammers down on the parking lot of the Hilton Anatole with a force that causes some rear-view mirrors to drop sadly from windshields. Inside, though, there's defiance against the brutal Texas summer.

It's the three-day Bring-Your-Own-Computer (BYOC) event at QuakeCon, where roughly 2,700 players haul their PCs and the occasional console to play in the direct company of their peers. It's dark, so dark that the only light comes from glowing monitors, crazily modded PC cases, and the Christmas lights some players string over their stations. It's cold inside to protect the equipment, particularly near the front doors, and players huddle over keyboards in coats that would be suicidal just a few feet outside.

One day in, Texas is having its revenge. Hints of body odor waft up from the rows of players, many of whom have been here overnight. Every five minutes or so, like a wave through a baseball stadium, a chorus of whoops makes its way from the front of the massive chamber to the back.

QuakeCon, held last weekend from July 23 through July 26, was in the midst of celebrating its 20th anniversary, but I might have missed that if I hadn't been aware of it ahead of time. Sure, there are shirts with nifty variations on the "Q" logo with the number 20 and the anniversary's announcement received hearty applause during id Software's creative director Tim Willits' speech at the opening ceremony, but aside from that, most fanfare faded into the background mere hours in. For all a newcomer might have known, this could have been the fourth or fifth show.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the spirit of the Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) event at the heart of QuakeCon has never really changed. When the event started out in 1996, there were just 30 regular players who'd brought their PCs to a Best Western in nearby Garland, Texas and hooked them up to play Quake and Doom together. By the weekend, that number had grown to 100, as more and more players grew interested in the thought of meeting longtime opponents face-to-face. The gathering so impressed Doom and Quake developer id Software, in fact, that many members of the Quake team showed up to chat with the players.

And now two decades on, that remains the core appeal. Networking for gaming was still something of a novelty back in 1996, but these days many of us struggle to get away from networks. We're able to play games with our friends with devices we carry in our pockets, and we're theoretically never more than a couple of seconds away from chats with them, sometimes even via video. According to Nicole Zonsius, a New Yorker who's been volunteering for QuakeCon for 17 years, the new environment has shifted some of the meaning of the event.

"The nature of LAN games has changed so dramatically in the last two decades that we're not really on a true LAN anymore in the BYOC room," Zonsius says. "So people are still playing games out on the Internet as they would normally. I mean, even the Quake Live [tournament] servers aren't physically in this space."

It's not even strictly a PC party anymore, according to QuakeCon volunteer security chief "Polecat," who, at roughly 6'4", looks more like a bear. He's been making sure people don't run off with the myriad rigs in the BYOC room since 2000, and he can settle most arguments just by walking up to the offending parties. Polecat notes that there hasn't really been a shift in the balance of old and new players over the years, but there's been a definite shift in interest.

"So many of the young guys are console guys only, and the level of tech knowledge has gone down with the generations," he says.

At the same time, Polecat notes that the need to hook up all of the hundreds of participating computers involved in the BYOC is about as good of an introduction to IT as you can get. As long as people play PC games, he says, you're going to need someone who can hook up a server. He likens the event and the people who participate in it to a tribe. "You've got your elders, your young'uns, and your middle ones, and the whole circle of knowledge gets passed around here."

The number of elders is growing as the original devotees grow older, according to Tim Willits, whom I caught up with on Friday. He jokes that he likes this development because it means they have more money to spend on id games, but he's also quick to point out that the cycle continues precisely because QuakeCon veterans often bring their kids along. "It really proves that gamers are social creatures," Willits says. "We can talk to each other in game anywhere in the world with anyone. But come in here, and we can pack that room in under 20 minutes."

Indeed, in a world where online interactions is so common, much of the contemporary appeal of QuakeCon is that the lack of anonymity removes almost all of the unbridled hostility online gaming is becoming known for.

"We don't have many people getting in fights, we don't have police showing up all the time, and no one has ever ripped off someone else's computer," Willits says. "Keyboards and mice sometimes disappear, but an entire rig? I have no memory of that happening."

For her part, Zonsius is a little more direct. "The degree of assholeness is great and strong on the Internet and it's easy to kind of escape into nothing," she says. "Here, if you're an asshole, we pretty much just throw you the fuck out and it's kind of addressed on the spot. You can't bring some etiquette, you don't have a place here."

The personal element, Polecat says, is often enough to resolve the matter on its own.

"They'll start doing something, and then they'll see the actions and the the body language of the other person, and then they'll change and start cutting jokes," he says. "Suddenly, they're friends."

Luckily the bad stuff rarely happens. To a person, the players I spoke with in BYOC chamber all claimed they'd never seen anything too bad, although Tiffany, a BYOC player from San Antonio I spoke with, relates that someone in her 30-person group came back from a break to find his wireless Xbox controller stolen on the first day.

"I'm not saying he was asking for it, but you should always think about those things no matter where you go and how nice or how great the event is," she says.

"I trust everybody in here right now," says Corey Mueller of Rockwall, Texas, sweeping his hand toward the hundreds of screens glowing in the dark. Mueller has been coming to QuakeCon for three years now, and his one bit of trouble in all that time was so benign as to be laughable.

"My first year at QuakeCon, I left my computer unlocked, and they changed my background," Mueller says. "And I was like, that's all my fault. I should be more careful and lock it before I go to bed. But other than that, it was a funny joke."

The BYOC chamber might be the heart of QuakeCon, but these days the event's also used to announce news about games from id Software or parent company ZeniMax Media. This year, attendees heard announcements for Fallout 4, Doom, and The Elder Scrolls Online, but down here in the BYOC floor, no one seems to care. Down here, it's all about discussing each other's PC rigs. It's a fitting scenario for a Texas event, as I can't help but smiling at the thought that other folks are probably just outside the city discussing their trucks with equal gusto. Distractions might pop up, but it always comes back to the people.

"QuakeCon is the only grassroots convention," Willits says. "The rest are business. We're volunteer run. Sure, Bethesda manages some stuff, but the rest are volunteers. We have some brilliant people who have real jobs where they manage hundreds of people, and they come here once a year. It's still really a community focused thing."

Still, there are hints that even thousands of players getting together and enjoying their hobby in its purest social form isn't enough to attract third parties to the business potential involved. Corey Mueller notes that the exhibit hall (which stands right outside the main doors to the BYOC event) is rather empty this year, and I hear similar grumbles from other players as I walk through the uncomfortably open spaces of the exhibit hall itself. Even QuakeCon's own appeal is in danger, as DreamHack, the Swedish-grown hold of the title of the world's largest LAN party, is scheduled to come to nearby Austin for the first time in May of 2016.

There's a sense on the floor, though, that DreamHack is a little too big for its britches. Even with 2,700 players, QuakeCon still feels like a relatively close-knit community where you can make friends yet not get lost in the crowd. There's a sense of history and purpose here—one that has endured through shifts in technology and circumstances. QuakeCon may no longer be offline, but it reminds us like few other shows that we lose something when we lose the human element of sharing the same space, even when it smells.