Laclede’s LAN – Trying To Bring A LAN Party Back To St. Louis
The PC gaming community in St. Louis has never been exactly strong, but groups like War Factory and Laclede’s LAN once hosted LAN parties in the metro St. Louis area. Both organizations fizzled out in recent years, but it appears that a small group of folks are trying to bring LAN parties back to St. Louis. Some of those trying to bring LANs back to STL were actually attendees in previous the Laclede’s LAN events and it looks like they have synced up with some of the original members to revive PC gaming in the midwest by bringing a LAN party back to St Louis. Laclede’s LAN hosted thirteen PC-focused LAN parties while they were active in St. Louis. It appears that they have formed a non-profit organization that will do LAN events and also to support educational programs that teach topics like programming and robotics to young kids.
Laclede’s LAN has launched a $14,000 Kickstarter campaign in an effort to raise money for not only the event, but to also get the ball rolling for the new organization. If the campaign is successful there will be a 200 person event on January 3rd, 2015 in what will likely be a facility at the Saint Louis University. There are tournaments in the works for League of Legends, Counter-Strike: GO, Hearthstone and even Minecraft. The date isn’t really ideal since it is the dead of winter in the midwest, just after New Years and just days before the Consumer Electronics Show, but is is already set.
Legit Reviews talked with Nate Cowen, Laclede’s LAN Media Development, and he admitted that the LAN party scene in St. Louis has been relatively stagnant for the last several years. His organization is hoping their return to hosting LAN parties in St. Louis will change that.
“Our approach this time has been to create a Kickstarter campaign that we hope will attract not only attendees and tournament entrants for our events, but also potential donors that want to support our cause of improving technology education in the Greater Saint Louis area,” Cowen said, “The great part about Kickstarter is that supporters will only be charged if our Kickstarter hits our funding goal. This allows us to gauge the interest of both potential attendees and sponsors.”
If successful, about half of the funding will go to power equipment while another 38% will go to networking equipment and first time event costs. It appears that Kickstarter and Amazon will get 10% of the money due to the fees and electronic payment processing of the actual campaign. Right now Laclede’s LAN has 47 backers and has raised $3,234. There are 21 days left to fund the project and the minimum pledge is $1 with Early Bird Seats going for $35.
We wish Lacelde’s LAN the best of luck and we hope they are successful! We’ve attended and hosted hardware workshops at Laclede’s LAN events in the past and they are solid events. Legit Reviews has also offered to help out and put on another hardware workshop with plenty of handouts if they are able to get a 200 person LAN party going again! Edward Crisler, PR Sapphire Technology, also has offered his assistance on bringing a LAN party back to St. Louis, so hopefully this is the start of something good.