Early this past Saturday morning, a group of passionate gamers made the trek over to BongoHive for the first Nerd Otaku LAN Party of 2022. The event was sponsored by Liquid Intelligent Technologies, and our gamers got a chance to try out the incredible speeds offered on the Liquid internet! To say the past two years have disrupted our events and get-togethers would be an understatement! Being forced to remain socially distant instilled an additional longing in our souls for connection, and this LAN Party was long overdue!

Reuniting with fellow nerds allowed us to share our passion for video games and partially sated our desire for companionship, camaraderie, and community. Not only did we reconnect, but we also welcomed new otaku’s into the fold and hopefully showed them that we are an open and inclusive community where there is room for anyone to be themselves.

To be honest, our minds were blown! Many of us needed to update some of our games, and the updates didn’t take hours, it didn’t take minutes, it took SECONDS! Latency to South African gaming servers was a solid 20-25ms with very rare fluctuations into the 30ms. It was a dream to play on their network and it felt like we were playing local lan rather than on a server 1800km away. Some of our gamers tried the connection to EU for Apex Legends and were also impressed by the stable ping which allowed them to feel competitive. We are writing a proper review of our experience on the connection and the event overall which will go live on our website next week, so watch this space!

A LAN Party is similar to a normal party except that it involves hauling your gaming laptop or desktop to space where friends and nerds have gathered to connect their computers together so they can play games to their hearts’ content! LAN Parties were the true birthplace of eSports and often result in our gamers becoming quite competitive as they try to best each other in a selection of their favourite multiplayer games. Although we are competitive, our LAN Parties are casual by design and we welcome new players and often sacrifice our own game time in order to include and guide them into our world.

In the current health environment we are still limited in our opportunities to mingle and socially interact, which meant that our LAN Party was limited in scope and numbers. It is of paramount importance for us to care for our fellow nerds and the health of their friends and families. We had the priviledge to host this event and we want to thank Liquid Intelligent Technologies and BongoHive for their part in making this event possible. Our next LAN Party is on July 16th, so keep and eye on our social media for when registration opens! We hope to see many of your there!