The Dos and Don'ts of LAN Gaming A Cautionary Tale

You see an army, a pro sees breakfast.

Growing up, I seemed like the lonely kid who spent all his time hunched over a keyboard. My family worried that I was antisocial and lonely, when in truth I had 174 population points worth of friends obeying my every whim and more on the way: friends who'd literally die for me. Ah, the joys of a childhood spent with games. Satisfying as it was to battle the computer, the real Holy Grail was to play with my friends, an experience denied to me at the time. In my later years I played a few multiplayer games online, but legend had it that there was nothing quite like a LAN party, where you get together somewhere with your friends and spend all night clobbering one another virtually. And just recently I got to take part in such an adventure.
So how'd it go?
Well, first thing we did was gear up. We bought ourselves a few LAN cables, one for each of us so that made four. We also needed a hub (AKA 'switch'), but Zarif had one lying around at his place and we decided it was worthy. First mistake. The hub was old, battered, and had a speed of 1 Mbps which is perfect if you're a fan of John Woo movies and like bullets to travel in slow-mo. Tip: if instead you like things to happen when you tell them to happen be prepared to pony up some money and get a 5 or 10 Mbps hub. You could buy, for example, the TP-LINK SF1005D at around 800 taka. We however ended up not buying one because Shaer Reaz is a cheapskate.
The second mistake one of us made was not bringing a laptop charger. (You should be taking notes, this may sound like simple stuff but if it can happen to us it can happen to you.) And then it turned out that there wasn't a single game that we all had on our PCs at the same time. We then began to send games back and forth on pen drives, a process that eventually took us, say, 4 hours? Tip: always decide in advance what you're going to play and make sure everyone has the same version installed.
So! 3 AM and we had ourselves a fair few games. “So what do we play, guys,” asked Rumman. We had Age of Empires 2, Rise of Nations, Red Alert 2, Smokin' Guns… and only a few hours left until dawn. Shaer, leaning back with his feet up, keyboard on his lap, staring into the massive widescreen TV he uses as a monitor, announced that we'd play Rise of Nations. A game only two of us knew how to play. Shaer, then proceeded to set up a game tailored exclusively to his very specific playstyle, and was in consequence the only one who had fun with it. Rumman then took matters into his own hands and soon we found ourselves staring at the Red Alert 2 loading screen. He then spent the next hour and a half destroying everything we loved, laughing all the while. Tip: don't listen to the guy wanting to play the game only he's good at.
It took us roughly six hours of pain, tears and raging until at last we found a game we could all play. Tip: always play Age of Empires II.
You should also have ample provisions: we stocked up on snacks and drinks to fuel our bloodlust through the long winter night. And once you vaguely see the sun beginning to rise and are tired of the constant fighting, why not give peace a chance and head to Star Kabab for a nice post-gaming breakfast?