Chapter 1

Warhawk - Founder of TMC

The history of TMC begins with it's founder, known by his gamer handle "Warhawk". Warhawk grew up in San Jose, at the heart of the Silicon Valley. His father worked at companies like Atari, Memorex, Sun Microsystems, and Nvidia, as well as some companies founded by former Xerox Parc employees like Convergent Technologies, and Metaphor. Growing up being surrounded by technology, it was easy to take it for granted and assume that everywhere was similarly technologicaly advanced.

Even in Warhawk's earliest memories his family always had some type of computer in the house; it was a way of life. The first computer owned by the family was an Atari 800 and featured an external floopy disk drive, an external tape drive and a modem. Playing games on this system were Warhawk's earliest introduction to video games. Many of these games were brought home on copied floppy discs from his father's work at Atari.

Warhawk's father and grandfather were early adopters of dial up bulletin board services like Prodigy and America Online. Emailing was a daily activity and as early as 1990 Warhawk was active in online gaming bullin boards and gaming clubs.

In 1994, the internet became publicly available via services like AOL and Prodigy. At that point it was all very early and rudementary. Compared to the typical bullitin board environment, it was not so much a huge leap forward as it was just the next logical step of what was already going on.

Warhawk would regularly attend computer shows with his father and gfrandfather. These were huge flea market type situations that filled up the entire Cow Palace in SF. A cavernous space with concrete floors, harsh florescent lighting and rows upon rows of vendors standing in front of simple folding tables and selling the latest technology. It was the first place to see demos of things like the Sound Blaster, and graphically intensive video games like Dune 2 and X-Wing.

Several years later Warhawk would have as many as 4 PC's in his room that acted as a makeshift LAN center and would kick off a lifelong obsession with LAN gaming, and would be the catylist for forming TMC.

Chapter 2

The Formation of TMC

As is the case with many clubs and organizations, TMC initially started as a close group of friends -   Warhawk, Manticore, and Wipeout.

All three of them were fans of the game StarCraft, which was one of the few games of the time that could be semi-reliably played online, even with a dialup connection.

On the day of June 22nd, 1999 the three friends were chatting in a chat room on the Battle.net service when the following ridiculous conversation took place:

Wipeout: "In the second Zerg level, how do I take the egg to the beacon?"

Warhawk: "Use the drone, they can carry stuff"

Wipeout: "Oh ok I didn't know they could do that. How do I get to the beacon?"

Manticore: "You just gotta mow a path"

Wipeout: "mow a path?"

Warhawk: "Yes, mow a path"

Wipeout: "How do I do that?"

Warhawk: "With the Zerg Mower of course. Don't be silly"

Wipeout: "huh?"

Warhawk: "Mow mow mow your drone..."

The conversation proceeded to deteriorate from there...

Eventually Wipeout realized that the only way to victory is to mow a bloody path through the hordes of enemies that face you.

On June 23rd, 1999 the The Mowers Clan (TMC) was offically founded. The name being chosen based on the shennanigans of the previous night.

The following day, on June 24th, the first edition of the TMC website was published using the very finest of geocities-esque web design techniques.

It was then that these three intrepid adventureres (armed with only a vague idea of what a Clan even was, or should do) embarked down the glorious (and meticulously mowed) path of glory.

Chapter 3

The Beginning of House LAN Parties

Around the time TMC was formed, multiplayer games that could connect together over a Local Area Network (aka "LAN") were on the rise. Popular games that could be played over a network included the previously mentioned StarCraft, but the faveorite at the time was a new shooter called Half-Life. At this time many people onlt had dialup connections and broadband internet was reletively rare, (even in Silicon Valley, the epicenter of technology). At the time it was not easy, or feasible, to play these multiplayer games over the internet; this gave rise to people hosting what were called "LAN Parties" at their homes for the sole purpose of playing multiplayer games with friends.

LAN parties would soon play a huge role in shaping what TMC would become.

Technically the first LAN Party that Warhawk had attended, was before that term LAN party came into common usage. It was sometime in 1996 when a friend with 4 computers in his house hosted an all night Command & Conquer Red Alert play sesion at his house. It was an incredibly fun time, but the high cost of personal computers and the fact that at the time not many people owned a gaming PC meant that a LAN party was not something that could be done easily. That was when Warhawk set about collecting PC parts with the goal of eventually having 4 computers of his own, so that he could plan LAN games with his friends all the time. By the time TMC had formed in 1999, Warhawk's goal of owning 4 gaming PC's had been acheived. It was then that Warhawk hosted the very first TMC LAN event, which he would name "Digital Destruction."

The first event took place at Warhawk's home on September 4th, 1999. Owning 4 gaming PC's meant that friends that did not own their own PC could come and participate in the event. In addition to Warhawk's 4 PC's he was able to convince a couple other friends to bring over their family PC. We ended up with a total of 6 PC's and our limited knowledge of networking, along with a combination of Windows 95/98 operating systems and a rudimentary network meant that we spent a lot of time fixing and troubleshooting networking issues. Even with all of the issues, the experience of playing multiplayer Half-Life all night made all the effort worthwhile.

The second Digital Destruiction LAN took place a few months later on December 28th, 1999. By this time mods had come out for Half-Life deathmatch. These mods could chage the gameplay so that it was almost like playing a completely new game. The best of these new mods was one called Counter-Strike. Little did we know that this mod would turn into a worldwide phenomon, with updated versions continiung to be popular 20 years later.

Chapter 4

TMC and Local LAN Scene Expands

In addition to periodic official house LAN parties at Warhawk's house, there were also countless impromptu 4 player LAN’s which took place in Warhawk's bedroom on the 4 gaming PCs he maintained. Many of the friends that participated did not even own their own PC. Most of the regulars of Warhawk's bedroom LAN center would later join TMC, mainly because Warhawk coerced them to in an effort to grow membership numbers. Some of these members would not own their own PC for many years to come, and some would not keep up with PC gaming at all. Of these early members, Nerherder would end up being the most active within the LAN scene and TMC in general.

TMC would continue to expand by word of mouth as more friends, and friends of friends began to participate. This eventually led to the recruitment of QueMine who would become an important and active member of TMC. Not only did he reguularly attend events, but QueMine was a true hardware enthusiast. He was constantly upgrading his machine to the lastest and greatest parts. This led to him regularly selling his lightly used and barely out of date parts to members of TMC. This was a tradation that lasted for many years; eventually there were dozens of TMC members using one part or another in their PC that originally had come from QueMine.

Late 1999 early 2000’s was an interesting time for PC Gaming. Networked PC’s and multiplayer PC games were becoming standard. However, broadband or any kind of internet connection fast enough to allow gameplay online was still a number of years off for many. During this time, not only were people hosting small LAN Parties at their homes, but they were beginning to organize larger groups and began hosting publicly facing events in all sorts of locations ranging from office spaces, warehouses, schools, community centers and even churches.

Chapter 5

The Early 2000's Bay Area LAN Scene

Due to the increasing availability of multiplayer games and the lack of adeque broadband internet, there was a massive pent up demand for ways to play these new multiplayer games. The early 2000's were the golden age for LAN events along with the grass roots communities that formed around them. One of the big contributors to this was a website called lanparty dot com. This website allowed users to search for local LAN events in their area, as well as post information about their own events.

For those that were itching for that high speed multiplayer gaming, but still did not have broadband at home, there really was only two ways to go: a LAN Center, or a LAN Party 

The LAN Center

Around the early 2000's these types of business were starting to pop up all over the bay area. At one point there were at least a dozen of them. They were basically a storefront filled with computers. Customers come in and pay an hourly rate to use the PC’s. Most of the customers used them for gaming but some also just used them to check their email and browse the web. 

Some big downsides to this were that you couldn't use your own PC and the hourly charges could add up after a while.

 

The LAN Party

Apart from LAN centers, how else was a gamer to get his multiplayer fix in the early 2000’s? If you had your own gaming PC, the obvious solution was a LAN Party! The issue became, rounding up enough friends that also had their own gaming PC (not to mention finding the space for several gaming PCs to be setup). This was solved thanks in no small part to the exsistence of lanparty dot com, which made it easier than ever to find LAN events in your area or even organize your own. The interest and enthusiasm for these types of events began to grow at a rapid pace and soon LAN events were beginning to pop up all over the place.

Communities began to form around various regular local LAN events. In the Sacramento area, these included Jaguar LAN, LANtrocity, Fusion LAN Gaming (FLG), LANsurge and eventually Intel LAN/ LANFest.

In the Silicon Valley area aside from the house LAN sized events there were regular LG LAN events in Los Gatos, which eventually gave rise to the Octane LAN events, also in Los Gatos. The LANtrocity group had some expansion ito the SF area for a while, but some years later another group called AG LAN became a staple in San Francisco. Other community sized events and groups in the San Jose area included SV Frag, Hurriquake LAN, and Monsterfrag.

TMC, as a part of the larger LAN community, would end up being involved or interacting with all of these organizations in some way or another. As the LAN scene grew, so did TMC.

Chapter 6

Octane LAN

The Octane LAN events were by far the best run community LANs ever put together in the Bay Area.  These events took place in the youth center at Calvary Church in Los Gatos, and was subsidized by the church and run primarily by church staff that were fans of PC gaming.

Most community run LANs, especially at that time, were very DIY and no frills. Attendees didn't get much more than a space at a 6 foot table with a folding chair. Usually located in a drafty warehouse, or perhaps an office or community center with harsh overhead flourecent lighting. Power and internet runs were generally cobbled together with whatever the organizers could cobble together from their houses or borrow from their workspace. It was usually all quite janky, but this is what was to be expected and WE LIKED IT.

This is why the Octane LAN was such a surprise. They had an organized check-in process with a staff that gave out a welcome packet and a wristband. The building was an old church sanctuary with huge vaulted ceilings, and all of the pews removed with long party tables put in their place. The building had nice acoustics with an equally nice sound system/ PA and a stage for announcements and such. There was dim colored lighting and an actual DJ that was spinning records. There were some large projection screens over the stage area that were displaying some kind of visualization that pulsed with the techno music that the DJ was playing.

Additionally, as part of the admission fee there was a BBQ outside that would provide hamburgers, hotdogs, chips and soda to all the attendees. This meant, no one went hungry and no one had to leave the event to search for food.

The Octane group threw a LAN event nearly every month until holding the tenth, and final, event on September 19th, 2003. The Octane events really set the bar for what a LAN party could be; not only a place for local gamers to meet and play games, but an actual party.  Octane set the high water mark for how to run a LAN event and how to make the most of them.

Not only that, but they also succeeded in building an amazing community around these events; thankfully the community continued on even after The Octane LANs shut down. Octane LAN is also where TMC gained its first memebers that were not among family or friends of exsisting members. Gatekeeper was the first recruited at Octane LAN, and other highly notable members included KraZ and Dima. Docbron, a member of the Octane staff also joined, along with his longtime friend Zer. Lastly, Offspring was a notable recruit from these LANs even though his tenure with TMC was relatively short lived and full of strife.

Chapter 7

Sacramento LANs

The Sacramento area was home to a few LAN communities, many of whom were regulars in the Bay Area LAN scene. Several members of these communities eventually became members of TMC.

LANtrocity:

LANtrocity was started sometime around the year 2000 and was run by a guy that went by the name of Kilgore.The LANtrocity group primarily ran LAN events in the Sacramento area and had a very established community built around their events. Eventually they were able to expand their events to San Francisco, San Rafael, and Chico. Like many of the larger community LAN events, LANtrocity attempted to leverage their events and community into a profitable business. Unfortunately, almost every LAN community that attempted profitability eventually failed, and LANtrocity was no exception.

Fusion LAN Gaming (FLG):

In 2003 many of the admin’s and core organizers with LANtrocity were unhappy with the business side of LANtrocity and decided to split off to form a new group called Fusion LAN Gaming (or FLG for short). This new group were headed by two guys who went by the names Modfather and Sillyass. Over the years they would go on to host many LANs in the Sacramento area, and cultivated a large LAN community.

From the FLG community were recruited two prominent members of TMC in GotNoRice (aka GNR) and FAngel (also GNR's brother Active Monkey). GNR and FAngel would stay active in both the TMC and FLG communities over the years. The two groups were not mutually exclusive as FLG was merely a community and not an organized Clan like TMC.  GNR would periodically promote TMC within the FLG community, and around the year 2008 TMC saw another influx of FLG members join the ranks of TMC. These members included Gremlen, Vandalous, Hezimoe, Swagger and Kickass.

LAN Surge:

LAN Surge was run by a guy that went by Oskor. LAN Surge events started off small with about 20 people but grew quickly to well over 70. It took place in an indoor soccer arena that may have once been a roller skating rink. There was plenty of space for attendees to setup camping tents to sleep in if they liked. While the event was spacious, it was also not climate controlled, so the outside temperature and the inside temperature tended to be the same. The first event was in January of 2003 and there would be a total of 6  LAN Surge events before the event ran into venue difficulties in 2004 when the community was officially shut down. Oskor became a member of TMC on December 19th, 2003.

Chapter 8

Monsterfrag

Monsterfrag was a local San Jose based LAN event that started sometime in 2002. The events were run by a guy that went by Morfeus who was the head organizer / MC of the event. The technical side of the events were headed up by two guys that went by Lay3r III (later known as Or4nge), and Wirebalz.

The first three Monsterfrag events were held in a ballroom at the Radisson hotel in San Jose. Monsterfrag events attended by TMC were the following:

Monsterfrag 2: 01/10/2003

Monsterfrag 3: 02/28/2003

Monsterfrag 4: 07/10/2004

One of the strong points of Monsterfrag was their tournaments.  They were well organized and covered a wide variety of games, so no matter what game you were into there was a way to participate. At the first few events they had an interesting system where the two teams competing against each other would agree beforehand on the game they would be playing. So sometimes it would be Quake and sometimes it would be Counterstrike etc. This definitely kept things interesting. Another thing that made the tournaments intense was that the teams were all more or less evenly matched, so each team felt like they had a solid chance of winning. The LAN organizers also started putting up a spectator screen for the tournaments on their big projector. The main organizer “Morpheus” would then do a play by play announcement of the tournament as it was happening, while everyone watched. It added a lot of energy and excitement to the tournaments. 

At this point TMC had grown to the point where there were enough players to fill out at least three TMC tournament teams. At thesse events, TMC had an intense rivalry going with another clan called BuFu, which was exceptionally good at Desert Combat. TMC ended up taking home several gold medals during the course of Monsterfrag, and it was most glorious. 

July 10th 2004 was the scheduled date of Monsterfrag #4. This time instead of hosting it at the Radisson in San Jose like their previous events, they decided to move to a bigger venue, the Crowne Plaza Hotel in South San Francisco. They were hyping it up to be their biggest event yet, and were even going to be sponsored by PC Gamer magazine.  It seemed like the Monsterfrag organizers were really taking things to the next level with their event, and I heard some rumblings that they were thinking about turning it into a business, and even had some investors on board with it. 

The RSVP list grew, and TMC was set to have the biggest ever showing of members at an event.  Finally the day of the event arrived; many gamers showed up from miles around, and began to check in. There was a stage setup where announcements were made. There was a camera crew complete with an attractive girl and a microphone, who was roaming around the venue interviewing attendees. PC gamer was on hand giving away prizes and taking pictures of the event to publish in their magazine. Monsterfrag was truly bringing their event to the next level. 

The gamers gradually came in and setup their systems and soon the room was almost full. Thats when the problems started. As more and more people came in and setup, whole banks of tables would blow their circuit breaker and their power would go down. This would cause the very few admins on hand to run around trying to solve the problem by re-routing extension cords to different circuits.  Meanwhile attendees were taking matters into their own hands and plugging their power strips into the next available extension cord that seemed to still have power. This resulted in them overloading and blowing out that circuit as well. The LAN became a musical chairs of rolling blackouts. For those that did have power, there were big issues with the network as something was causing crazy lag spikes. The attendees then coined the term “Monsterlag”. The rest of the LAN turned out to be a disaster, and many gamers left early, which actually helped alleviate the load on the network and power.  

The LAN organizers were seen having heated discussions with the hotel management who had promised them that there was enough power. Note: never believe a venue when they assure you there is enough power unless they give you hard numbers regarding number of circuits and amps per circuit.  

Sadly Monsterfrag never recovered from this disaster and there was never a follow up event, which is a shame as these were genuinely fun events.

TMC had already grown quite a bit by the time these events started happening, and our large group would end up attracting more attention and even more new recruits, including: Demise, Aftermath, Metalslug and Kaffine (Kaffine would then bring in his brother Raptoer as well as his friend from school Quicksilver).

Years later, on November 14th, 2007, Monsterfrag admin Lay3r III would become a full member of TMC under his new handle Or4nge.

Chapter 9

TMM Is Formed

Sometime around November 2004 TMC reached a point where in order to move forward and attempt to participate in things like competitive gaming, we were going to need to start recruiting more people. Finding people to recruit was proving to be relatively easy; TMC had gained momentum to the point where it was expanding beyond being just a group of friends that already knew eachother. More and more we were taking on new members that we had met at LAN events, or who had found us by googling “bay area LAN parties”.  We recruited friends of existing members, and soon after were recruiting friends of those friends (not to mention the siblings of those members as well).  

With new and relatively unknown members came some problems. First was the danger of recruiting members that would negatively impact the group dynamics and cause conflicts and drama within the group. Secondly and even worse, were those that were of such low character that their actions would reflect poorly on the entire group. Finally, and much more common, were those that would join, post on the TMC forums a few times and then completely disappear.  

We realized that we needed to put into place some sort of vetting process regarding potential members. 

What resulted was the forming of “The Mowers Militia” or TMM for short.  The basic idea was that people who wanted to join TMC would first join TMM. This gave the current TMC members a chance to get to know the recruits and to evaluate their character, and skills. TMM members were also introduced to the TMC culture and current members during this time.  TMM members would receive promotions for remaining active and after several months of activity they would eventually achieve enough promotions to be eligible to apply for full TMC membership. At this point the current active TMC members would have enough experience with the TMM member in question in order to make an informed vote on whether or not that TMM member should be made a full member of TMC. 

This system ended up working really well and we ended up recruiting many new members. The barriers to entry into TMM were very low, which gave us a large pool of potential members as well as many new people who could participate in TMC activities. The most active and motivated of these TMM members eventually rose to full TMC membership resulting in a very fun and active group.

Additionaly, starting around May 2004, Kaffine began hosting the first of several LANs at his house. These were rather large by house LAN standards and brought in some more new members, most notably JonDoms and Hotdog (who would then bring in his friends Funky and Donkey).

Between December 2004 and May 2009 TMM received 143 applications. Only somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 of those applicants were able to achieve full TMC status.

Chapter 10

TMC LAN

In September 2004, Demise was working for a LAN center in Hayward called Reboot. Demise approached me with an opportunity for TMC to co-host a LAN event with Reboot. It turns out the guy that owned the Reboot center (his name was Mel), had access to another space in Hayward. This new space turned out to be very strange, it was a duplex house with Mel living on one side and his landlords living on the other. Attached to the back of the duplex was some sort of industrial workshop space; I was told used to be a print shop. The whole place felt like a large garage or warehouse. There was also an upstairs loft area with a few strangely shaped rooms. 

The space was quite large and Mel wanted to use the space for something. Demise was able to convince him to start having LAN parties there as a way to get extra income. Mel did not have the expertise or equipment to do such a thing, and thats where TMC came in. With Demise’s help TMC was able to make a deal with Mel to co-host a LAN event at the location. 

Gatekeeper and Kraz got to work mapping out the power and figuring out network details. It turned out the place had quite a lot of power coming into it, presumably to run the printing machinery that was there before. We also came to find out that the layout of the circuits was pretty crazy and definitely not to code. 

Kaffine invested about 200 dollars into networking cables and created some really nice cat 5 snakes with junction boxes on the end. Before we began promoting a public event we wanted to have a smaller trial event with primarily TMC members and other close friends. This first event, which we called “TMC LAN 0” was held on September 18th, 2004 and had about 25 in attendance. 

The trial LAN was a success and now that we had a chance to familiarize ourselves with the space and iron out some bugs we were ready to open to the public. The first public TMC LAN was held on October 2nd 2004 and had around 35 in attendance. From then on we started having a LAN event at that location once a month. We steadily grew in attendance and got better and better at throwing events. We started securing regular sponsors for the event, which allowed us to do a lot of raffles and giveaways.  At one point GotNoRice (who was a huge audiophile) started bringing his nice stereo system to the event and playing vinyl records which added a great vibe to the party.

For TMC LAN 3, we were approached by a market research company. They were interested in having a focus group at our event, and were willing to pay us each 100 dollars to participate. We jumped on the chance, and a select group of us participated in the focus group. Wwe were told it was for a large PC manufacturer (Dell) who was looking to produce products for the PC Gamer market. Apparently the LAN movement had caught the attention of some pretty big companies, and we were more than happy to provide our opinions and input on products we would like to see come to market. 

TMC would host a total of 6 TMC LAN events at this location, the last of which took place on April 2nd, 2005.

While no one in TMC had any involvement with the location after the last TMC LAN in 2005, we were shocked to see the location on the news when 20 years later on December 11th, 2025 there was a gas line explosion that completely leveled the duplex and caught fire to the warehouse.

Chapter 11

AG LAN

Acendancy Gaming LAN (aka AG LAN) was a LAN event that took place at an art gallery space in San Francisco. The space was around 150 feet by 40 feet, complete with a stage at one end and an even larger adjoining gallery space.The first AG LAN event took place on December 18th -19th 2004 and was called Winter WonderLAN. Some of us in TMC volunteered to help out with the event, and the event organizer, Ginger, welcomed the help. We all used our own unique skills to pitch in and help how we could. TMC Members such as Kraz, Kaffine and Gatekeeper helped out with the network and power; while Warhawk helped with promotions, sponsorships and even brought in some DJ friends to play some techno beats for the event to give it more of a party vibe. It was a small start, but one that would continue to grow in size over the next several years.

There were many more AG LAN events and TMC/TMM had strong attendance at many, if not most of them. As the AG community continued to grow more fun side activities were added to the event. One of these activities was a paintball arena that was set up in the adjoining gallery space. There were also a few great dodgeball competitions that took place in that part of the building as well. Other silly activities included a dance competition on the main stage, which was both cringe and hillarious.

From 2004 to 2008 there would be a total of 11 AG LAN events; many of them with corporate sponsors who kicked in some solid prizes. Overall AG LANs were great events and may have been the community LAN that put on the most most LAN events of their size in the Bay Area.

Chapter 12

Silicon Valley Fragfest

SV FRAG 1

Silicon Valley Fragfest (aka SV FRAG) got it's start in 2002 when they did one LAN event that took place on August 9th, 2002. The event was hosted at the office of a small startup in San Jose; and was ran by three main people that went by the handles Exar, Gamekiller and Killjoy. TMC was still a small group at the time so Manticore and Warhawk were the only ones from TMC representing at this event. It was a fun event and well attended, especially for a first event.

However, there were some drawbacks. At this point Octane LAN had already set a very high bar for what a LAN event could be, and unfortually this inuagural SV Frag was a far cry from reaching that high bar. The primary drawback being, the event was plagued by network and power issues. In addition, the event was split up amoung various conference rooms throughout the offince building; which made the whole event feel disconnected. This also made it a nightmare for the organizers to coordinate activities across these seperate rooms. The end result was an event that felt more like seperate small LANs were going on rather than one unified LAN event. Following this first event Warhawk posted a rather harsh review on the TMC website.

This review got noticed by the SV Frag organizers and while they were not happy about the coverage they were open to the feedback. There was an in-person meeting between the SV Frag staff and Warhawk where these issues were discussed; which resulted in the SV Frag staff offering to add Warhawk as an SV Frag staff member for the next event. Unfortunately, organizing LAN events is no easy task, especially when it comes to finding appropriate venues; not to mention lacking any sort of budget. Despite many tries and even an attempted merger with the LG LAN folks there was little progress on the SV FRAG front. That is, until late 2005/ early 2006.

SV FRAG 2

Towards the end of 2005 Gamekiller was able to secure a venue with a connection that he had with an e-waste recycling facility in San Jose. It was basically a large industrial warehouse full of large bins of e-waste. For us, this meant plenty of space, and lots of power, perfect for a LAN venue.

The day of the LAN would be January 14th, 2006. Volras managed the website, database, and registrations. Gamekiller planned out the power/ networking equipment and worked with the venue. Warhawk managed promotions, marketing and sponsorship. We also cross promoted the event with AG LAN and their attendees, and ended up with around 100 attendees.

Given that we had exactly zero budget to spend on this event we gathered equipment, scrounged up CAT 5 cables and anything else we could find to use. We were able to pull together a sizeable prize table for raffles and contests, and we even had  DJ turntables setup for musical entertainment.

TMC ralied behind the event, and a number of TMC members volunteered to help out. TMC had a number of qualified networking type admins, who we organized into an official admin crew who would be in charge of helping attendees and ensuring the network ran smoothly.  Other TMC members were in charge of other duties such as setting up tables, running cable and cleaning up before the event. Many TMC stepped up and helped out and made it a true group effort, which was great.  

The event itself went off without a hitch. The seats were full while the network and power remained stable throughout the event. We had a few game tournaments as well as a jump rope contest, a dance competition, and even a karaoke competition, which were all quite ridiculous, and fun. 

Unfortunately this event would be a one time deal as the venue was not a place we could use more than once. Try as we might we were never able to find another affordable venue the met our LAN needs.

Chapter 13

PDX LAN

PDX LAN is not a Bay Area based LAN event, but that didn't stop it from having a big impact on the Bay Area LAN scene. Based in Portland Oregon, PDX LAN is the largest continuing LAN event on the West Coast (and possibly in the entire country). Founded by "Vector" in 2002 PDX LAN has been hosting regular LAN events to this day. Driving the long road trip from the Bay Area to Portland became a bit of a right of passage for many in TMC.

The first PDX LAN took place at the Holiday Inn at Portland on December of 2003, followed by the second event in January of 2004. Dima was in attendance at this second event and soon after the rest of TMC became aware of the exsistance of PDX LAN. Dima posted a mesasge on the TMC forums explaining what an epic event it was and insisted that we organize a TMC road trip to attend the next one. At first the idea of such a long road trip was a tough sell, but Dima is a very persuasive person and eventually plans were underway to make the trek to Portland. PDX LAN 3 took place on June of 2004 and was attended by Dima, Warhawk, Kraz and Kaffine. The event was litterarly overflowing, filling up the main hall as well as a second annex area. In all there were well over 500 people in attendance. The TMC crew also came home with thousands of dollars worth of PC gear that was won during contests, tournaments and raffles. The event was easily the most epic LAN event we had ever seen and word quickly spread among the community when we got back and it became the first of many TMC road trips to Portland.

Other notable trips included:

PDX LAN 4: This event took place in March of 2004 and was attended by Dima, Kraz and Kuyaglen. Two other TMC members planned to attend as well but ended up not making it.

PDX LAN 5: Thiss event took place on August 11th 2005. This was where Warhawk, Kraz, Kaffine and Kuyaglen rode up on Kaffines Lincoln Continental (aka The Couchboat). This event was known as the PDX Expo because it took place at a convention center instead of the usual Holiday Inn location that the previous events were held at.There were over 800 in attendance along with sponsor tradeshow type booths.

PDX LAN 7: This event took place on May 26th of 2007. This event involved a number of TMC member piling in JonDoms minivan, as well as an additional mission of running the Antec booth at the event. Other details remain hazy.

PDX LAN 10: This event took place in Novembber of 2007 and was notable because TMC member Ocho actually purchased a 10 passenger shortbus to transport everyone and their gear to the event. There were many road fiascos involving this bus, but the entire crew made it there and back in one piece.

Chapter 14

TMC MANSION

In 2008, several members of TMC decided to join forces and rent a house together. At the time we were all single and we discovered that sharing the rent in a really big house weas actually cheaper per person than each of us trying to rent our own places. So, Warhawk, Kraz, Kaffine, Manticore (as well as Manticore's brother and another friend) all decided to rent the biggest house available. A few craigslist searches turned up a massive 4000+ square foot, 7 bedroom and 6 bathroom place in San Jose.

We moved in on May 31st, 2008. Since there were four TMC members living under the same roof we dubbed it the TMC Mansion.  Coincidentally, we eventually came to find out that we lived next door to the owner of PC building company Falcon Northwest. 

The TMC Mansion was so big that there was plenty of space for everyone to do their own thing without bothering anyone or getting in anyone's way. We had not one but two large living rooms. This allowed Manticore to watch his movies every night while PC’s and Xboxes were setup for gaming in the upstairs second living room. 

We hosted one fairly large Mansion LAN that went quite well. Unfortunately, the TMC Mansion would be short lived as 2008 was in the midst of a global financial crisis and homes were being foreclosed everywhere and the TMC Mansion was no exception as we eventually found out; causing most of us to move to a significantly smaller house in October of 2008.

Chapter 15

Corporate LAN Events

The LAN scene started out as a grassroots enthusiast sort of activity with most LANs being small and taking place in community centers, or in peoples garages. As the LAN scene grew companies began to see opportunities to reach the LAN enthusiast audience. At first it was primarily PC hardware companies, PC accessory companies or purveyors of highly caffenated products who recognized LANs as an opportunity to market directly to their consumer base.

Even in the early days in the early 2000's just about any LAN that had a website and posted pictures of their events could relatively easily secure a sponsorship from these companies. In exchange for posting the company logo the LAN website and/or hanging banners or posters at the LAN event, these LAN events were able to secure some free product to use as prizes at their events. From the point of view of the LAN organizers having sponsorsships added legitamacy to the event and made it feel more offical; and attendees were happy to come home with some free stuff.

It all worked out great for the companies involved as they received practically free marketing directly to the people that are most likely to buy and use their products. The LAN community grew more and more in those years and made it even more of an appealing target demographic to market to. While huge LANs like PDX LAN are certainly large scale, and rely heavily on contributions from corporate sponsors, they were still LAN community events first.

The growth and popularity of LAN events and PC gaming in general gave rise to the formation of corporate LAN events. These are large scale LAN events put on and run by corporations for the purposes of promoting products. Usually these events were run by a primary corporate sponsor and were supported by other partner companies. Sometimes they had components of a press conference or product launch, and sometimes they featured partner booths and presentations.

They typically brought in 500 or more attendees and tended to be big budget productions. In additiona to the LAN, there were usually lots of other fun activities and lots of prizes. Many of these events were legendary within the LAN community and gamers would travel far and wide to attend.

These events would end up being a significant part of TMC history and would result in the TMC organization growing even more.

Chapter 16

GeForce LAN

In the late 90's and early 2000's, Nvidia acheived success with it's first graphics cards. Around this time, 3D graphics cards were becoming essential for running the latest and gratest PC games. As such, Nvidia made an effort to cater to this growing fanebase of PC gamers. Starting with LAN sponsorships of community LAN events suuch as Octane LAN all the way to large events such as PDX LAN.

A very important figure in these early LAN sponsorship efforts was Phil Scholz, (aka Uncle Phil) who worked in the marketing department at Nvidia. In fact, when Warhawk was assisting Octane LAN in securing sponsorships, Phil came out personally to one of the events and met some of the attendees and even gamed on TMC member Quemine's extra PC. Phil was also a regular presence at PDX LAN events as well as other gaming events. Sadly, Phil tragically died in 2014, after being hit by a Caltrain while heroically trying to rescue a man from the tracks in Santa Clara, California. The LAN community will always remember his early involements and contributions.

Nvidia would host a total of 5 GeForce LAN events in the bay area and all of them would have a major impact on the local LAN community and were a big part of TMC history.

GeForce LAN 1

On April 13th 2004, The Nvidia Corporation hosted their first ever GeForce LAN in San Francisco. It was held in San Francisco and was part LAN event and part press conference. The main focus appeard to be on the press conference side of things and promoting the launch of the new GeForce 6800 Ultra card. The venue was decked out with fancy corporate event production and lighting, as well as high end catering and decor. There was a stage where Nvidia execs would unveil their latest hardware to the tech press as well as the gamer enthusiast crowd. The LAN side of the event was run by Vector and his PDX LAN crew. The LAN event featured copious amounts of soft drinks and pizza not to mention swag giveaways and tournaments with cash prizes. The event was co-sponsored by EA and Epic Games who were promoting new games and the Unreal game engine both in the LAN area and as part of the press conference presentation.

This would mark the first of many LAN events that were corporately funded. Over the years other companies besides Nvidia would follow suit and run their own LAN events, but the Nvidia events were consistently large, high quality events.

Several members of TMC attended and brought back reports of the event.  Dima was able to secure near front row seats with a photographer friend of his named Kelly; and they were able to get some very high quality pics of the announcements. Honestplayer wrote a review of the event which was posted on the TMC website along with the pics. This coverage on the TMC website turned out to be some of the earliest and best coverage of the event and got linked to by many tech websites all around the world. This influx of traffic caused the TMC website to crash for several hours while we worked with the web host to increase the bandwidth.

GeForce LAN 2

GeForce LAN 2 took place on June 21st, 2005 in San Francisco. The event had a much larger LAN capacity and was more like in traditional LAN event in that it was hosted inside a big warehouse in Fort Mason. The purpose of the event was to showcase the new GeForce 7800 graphics card. The event also had many casemod contests for enthusiatst to show off their cusom made PC cases. TMC had a very large showing at this event, and like all of the GeForce LAN events, this one was a highlight LAN experience for all involved. EA was a big co-sponsor of the event and gave away copies of Battlefield 2 to every attendee.

GeForce LAN 3

GeForce LAN 3 took place on November 11th, 2006, inside a giant circus type tent in San Jose. The location was in a parking lot across the street from a big highrise building in downtown San Jose. Rumor was that this location waws chosen because Nvidia was set to move into the high rise; unfortunately the deal fell through at te last minute but Nvidia went ahead with the event anyway. As usual Vector and the PDX LAN crew were running the logistics of the event.

Leading up to the event Nvidia approched other PC hardware companies to co-sponsor and setup small booths within the event. During this time Warhawk worked for PC case and powersupply manufacterer, Antec and received the sponsor pitch packet from Nvidia. It would turn out that this sponsor pitch packet highligted press coverage of previous GeForce LANs and included the TMC review of GeForce LAN.

This event was the launch of the GeForce 8800 graphics card and was a bigger LAN than the previous GeForce LAN events. This card marked a big leap in graphics card technology. On hand was Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang as well as model/actress Adrian Curry (and her husband, the guy that played “Greg” in the Brady Bunch TV show). They all came onstage for a press conference where they showed off a 3D rendered version of Adrian Curry, that was apparently rendered with the new 8800 Nvidia cards. The cards were set to go on sale in stores to coincide with this announcement.

During this time Quemine and his buddy Voodoo took off to Frys Electronics to buy the card as soon as they hit shelves (in fact, if I remember correctly, when they got there they weren’t technically supposed to be on sale yet, but somehow they convinced the staff to sell them). They triumphantly returned to the LAN with two cards in hand, much to the amazement of everyone at the event. 

While they were there, Quemine and Voodoo got autographs on the cards and photo ops with Adrian Curry and Jen Hsun.  After the event, video card manufacturer EVGA even put up a website in which they offered a reward to them in exchange for their autographed boxes. Because these were the days before social media, none of us actually discovered this page until around 2008.

Once again, TMC had a very large turnout and had enough members to fill up multiple tables at the event.

GeForce LAN 4

GeForce LAN 4 was set for November 16th - 18th 2007 and would take place inside a giant warehouse in Alameda near where the USS Hornet is docked. The event would host a total of 421 gamers and feature a variety of contests, tournaments, presentations and promised to live up to the great reputation that previous GeForce LANs were known for.

For this particular GeForce LAN event, Nvidia would not be hiring Vector and the PDX LAN staff to run the event as they had for previous GeForce LAN events. Instead Nvidia was using a company called E-sports Solutions to produce the event. No one was quite sure why this was, and Vector himself seemed perplexed and troubled by the turn of events. On the bright side, this was an opportunity for Vector to attend a LAN where he could actually sit down and play games instead of having to run the show. Vector made plans to travel down to California and attend the LAN with his wife who went by the handle “Demented”. Since Vector knew many of us in TMC very well by that time he made plans to compete in various tournament events and contests with TMC, and we declared him an honorary member of TMC.

Leading up to the event Ocho did a fantastic job of organizing the seating, making sure all TMC and TMM members were able to sit in the same area. We had a huge turnout and were able to field several tournament teams and even organized a team for the tug-o-war contest.

Nvision 08

Taking place August 8th, 2008, Nvision 08 was a whole new level in terms of Corporate LAN events. The event features much more than the typical Press Conference and LAN event elements we had come to expect at GeForce LAN events.

The event itself was huge.  It took up all of the San Jose Convention center and nothing like it had ever been seen in the history of LAN events. A huge green carpet led up the walkway to the entrance, and event the fountains in the front of the convention center were spraying Nvidia green water.  There was a tradeshow area of the event which was very large and had a variety of vendors and partner companies represented. There was a theater area set up to show off various 3D presentations and other tech demos or screenings.  One of the screenings was a movie called “Fly Me To the Moon” and they even brought in some actual astronauts to be a part of it, including Buzz Aldrin himself. This was pretty awesome, as it’s not everyday you get to meet someone that walked on the moon and is a genuine part of not only American history, but world history. 

In the nearby San Jose Center for the Performing Arts there was a stage show by none other than the Mythbusters. Part of their stage show included demonstrating a monstrous 1100 barrel paintball machine that created a “painting” of the Mona Lisa in a single simultaneous shot of all barrels at once.  It was quite entertaining and only tenuously linked to anything to do with Nvidia. Apparently they were attempting to illustrate the parallel processing abilities of Nvidia GPU’s (or something). 

During the evening, across the street at the San Jose Civic Auditorium there was a complementary performance of “Video Games Live” which was a traveling concert series wherein a live orchestra would play iconic music from popular video games.

The LAN portion of the event was also massive. Not only was there a 600+ person LAN area, but there was also a second LAN area that was designated for attendees to attempt a set a Guinness World Record for the "Longest Continuous LAN Party". Over 200 gamers were part of this section alone and acheived their world record goal.

A few TMC members split off to be a part of the world record attempt but the majority of TMC congregated in the main LAN area and had two full rows reserved for TMC. An impressive showing to be sure; and our TMC banner was hoisted above our main table and could be seen throughout the LAN area.

GeForce LAN 6

GeForce LAN 6 would be the first major LAN event hosted by Nvidia since Nvision in 2008. The event took place 4 years after Nvision, on October 14th - 16th, 2011.  What made this event unique was that it would take place onboard a retired aircraft carrier docked in Alameda called the U.S.S. Hornet.  There were over 620 gamers in attendance at the event, which was hosted by a variety of hardware and software sponsors in addition to Nvidia. 

The old sailor bunks were used to bunk hundreds of gamers who attended the LAN and bought special “LAN Camp” tickets. This way they did not have to leave the event, or otherwise find lodging outside of the venue. 

EA and the Battlefield 3 team sponsored a high profile Battlefield 3 tournament, and all attendees received a free copy of Battlefield 3. As was the case at GeForce LAN 4, the tournaments were once again run by E-Sports services.

QueMine made a rare appearance and was even randomly awarded some new video cards by “Uncle Phil” the Nvidia rep as part of a video promotion Nvidia was filming.  

This would mark the last large scale LAN event in the bay area. Subsequent Nvidia events would focus more on product launches and press conference style presentations. There would be a set of GeForce LAN events in 2025 but they would be located in China, Taiwan, Germany and Las Vegas.

Chapter 17

Showdown LAN

Besides GeForce LAN, the other primary corporate LAN that occured in the bay area was Showdown LAN. Showdown LAN was an event put on by Future US, the publishers of Maximum PC and PC Gamer magazines. Since Maximum PC and PC Gamer were popular PC gaming centric publications a LAN event was ideally suited to their target market. They were also able to use their publisher clout to bring in a variety of hardware and software sponsors to help fund the event.

Showdown LAN 2006

The first Showdown LAN took place on August 26th, 2006. Maximum PC brought in Vector and the PDX LAN staff to run the LAN portion of the event. The event completely sold out with over 400 gamers in attendance. There was a very large sponsor booth section which included the usual hardware companies as well as some software companies. Some of the games being shows included early demos of Company of Heroes and a developer guided presentation of Supreme Commander.  

Everything about the event production was completely smooth. There were lots of contests and prizes. In particular, during one lunch break the LAN participants headed out to a nearby park to eat pizza and partake in various feats of strength in order to win valuable prizes. Crucial, the memory company hosted a 100 vs 100 dodgeball contest, which was complete mayhem and a lot of fun to watch. 

Antec hosted a PSU toss contest. This was a competition to see who could throw a broken PSU the furthest across a grass field. This turned out to be a lot more dangerous than anyone had envisioned, especially since there were no guidelines as to how the PSU should be thrown. At one point a particularly burly AMD employee decided to try his hand at it; what he did was dangled it by the power cables, and then spun around extremely quickly and let it sail like a hammer throw in the geek olympics. Luckily we all survived without any major injuries; prizes were won, pizza was consumed, and everybody had a lot of fun.  

Regarding TMC’s presence at the LAN, it was our largest LAN turnout to date. We coordinated seating so we were all seated at the same table. We even had a large TMC banner made that we hung over our table so that our area was visible throughout the entire LAN. This proved very effective and not only got us a lot of attention but also a lot of new member applications following the event. 

These new recruits included XiiiXiii (aka Ocho) and his friends Hermanbaggins, and FI4BNGR. Additionally another group of friends from the Fremont area also joined as a result of the TMC presence at Showdown and GeForce LAN, these included Hybridchemestry, Deek, and Yaya.

Showdown LAN 2007

After the success of Showdown LAN 2006, it seemed only natural that there would be a follow up event the following year. Maximum PC announced Showdown LAN 2007 was scheduled for June 16, 2007.  It was to be held in downtown San Jose in the “south hall” of the convention center. It turns out the “south hall” is actually just a giant semi-permanent circus tent type structure behind the actual convention center building.  The setup actually turned out quite well and the tent was filled with gamers, vendor booths, a large presentation stage and even some fun activities like a mechanical bull, and pugil sticks. 

Valve had recently acquired Turtle Rock Studios, who had been working on a new game called Left 4 Dead. Gabe Newell himself was at the event to give a keynote about Left 4 Dead, and there was even a booth where an early version of the game was playable for LAN attendees.

The event itself was great and TMC as usual had a large section reserved where all the members sat together. There were many contests to compete in and many prizes to be won, and TMC members always excelled in taking home lots of goods. One of the great things about TMC was that buying, selling and trading parts was a common activity within TMC. Most of the time goods were sold to members within TMC at significantly discounted “bro deal” prices. Most of the members were very generous with one another, and if a member won a prize at an event that they did not need it would not be uncommon for them to give it to a member that did need it.

Showdown LAN 2008

Showdown 2008 took place on September 19th, 2008, about a month after Nvision 08 set the high watermark for corporately sponsored LAN events. Showdown was coming in with two previous years of successful LAN events under their belt, and was poised to continue the tradition and ride the positive momentum of Nvision 08. The event took place in San Mateo inside of a large building near what was once a horse racing track. Unfortunately, Showdown LAN 2008 would have a bit of a lackluster feel to it.

Where previous events felt like an actual party with an atmosphere of fun and excitement and plenty of activities, this event felt a little more like going through the motions. All the boxes were checked as far as what made a LAN: there was a LAN, there was space, there was power, there were games, there were prizes. Even with all of those boxes being checked, it still felt like the soul had gone out of the event, and my extension the LAN community in general. Instead of being a vibrant community, it felt segregated and unwelcoming.

Gone was the community vibe of gamers introducing themselves to new people, getting games started, and making new friends. Instead there were rows of gamers were sitting mostly in silence at their designated tables, playing together with the group of friends that they came with. Gone was the exciting and fun party atmosphere that many LANs had. There was no thumping background music, or gamers shouting in excitement over the game they were involved in (or because of some physical challenge they were taking part in). There was just a subdued atmosphere, with harsh fluorescent lights shining down on a drafty convention hall.  

At one point there was some sort of physical challenge game that took place, such as hard drive shuffleboard. Even that seemed uninteresting to most attendees. It was one of those things that at one time seemed novel and fun, but had at this point been done at so many events prior that everyone was tired of it. It seemed more like a hoop we were being forced to jump through to compete for prizes than the fun activity it was supposed to be. 

Again, there was nothing wrong with the event, it was organized and run very well and there were no major malfunctions, but it definately felt like something was changing in the local LAN community at large.

Chapter 18

The Decline of LAN Events

We didn't realize it at the time, but Showdown LAN would be one of the last corporate LAN events in the bay area, and would be the start of a very sharp decline in LAN events in general. Of course there were a number of factors that contributed to this and this wasn't the fault of Showdown LAN 2008, it was just the vibe at this event would be a harbringer of things to come.

Part of the issue was there weren't many new games coming out that were suited for LAN. The overall trend at the time was less and less publisher support for PC gaming, as many major publishers focused on more profitable console releases. Some publishers still put out PC releases, but more often than not they turned out to be poorly optimized versions of the xbox or playstation version of the games. These were known as “ports” and almost always sucked, even if the xbox or playstation version of the game was a relatively decent game.  

At the same time, publishers began leaving out the LAN capabilities of their new releases, which meant that a game could no longer be played multiplayer on just a LAN. Instead, a constant connection out to the internet was required to play multiplayer, even if the people you were playing with were in the same room. In the past, LAN venues having internet access was more of an added bonus, but now a hefty internet connection was a requirement, which was a huge barrier to entry for community LAN events.

Not only that, but newer PC hardware was becoming more and more powerful and as a result gaming PC’s were drawing more and more electricity from the wall.

Added power and internet bandwidth requirements made finding a venue with enough power and internet extremely difficult. In most cases, either suitable venues were simply not available, or the costs for running LAN events was too high and cost prohibitive. As a result, the majority of LAN communities in California died out, or went dormant around 2008 and 2009. There were still LAN events that continued on for many more years, such as AG LAN and LANfest in Sacramento are; but it was nowhere near the same as it once was.

Another contributing factor the the LAN decline was that the ways these LAN communites connect and interacted with eachother online was changing (for the worse). The website lanparty dot com was once the central hub where the LAN community would go to find out about local events; but by 2008/2009 was essentially dead.

The local LAN scene and community once relied on locally managed and hosted forums, which meant that it was a relatively tight knit community of locals that would regularly meet up at local events. However, with the rise of social media and reddit, the focus shifted from local sites and communities to a more global focus. So, instead of conversing online with local LAN gamers you could actually meet up with, it was more common to be talking to faceless stangers that could be anywhere in the world, which made the community seem much less personal.

The TMC forums were once a very active part of this local community but unfortunately the forums did not survive the rise of social media. While there was an attempt to move the TMC presence and community over to social media platforms, it never had the same attachment or appeal. Added to this the sharp decline in LAN events for TMC to attend and there were a number of rocky years for the organization and the communty as a whole.

Chapter 19

The Return of TMC LAN

In 2013, thanks to a tip from Aftermath, a potential LAN venue was discovered. This was the "Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment" also known as "The M.A.D.E." located in Oakland california. This was a non profit organization dedicated to preserving games and digital entertainment history. After some initial talks with the staff and some initial evaluations of their power and network situation, plans were put in place to host a test LAN event that would consist of a small group of TMC members. After the success of this initial test event a TMC OakLANd 1.0 public event was hosted on February 1st, 2013. The second TMC OakLANd 2.0 event was held on March 2nd, 2013, TMC OakLANd 3.0 was held on May 10th, 2013 and finally TMC OakLANd 4 was held on Juuly 19th, 2013.

Most of the events had around 10 attendees, and unfortunely it was difficult to get the word out to the larger community outside of TMC. It also didn't help that the venue was in Oakland, and there was a shooting nearby the 2.0 event and the whole area generally didn't feel safe. Because of these factors it was ultimately decided to not continue these events, as the amount of time and effort that went into hosting them was not worthwhile.

One attendee of these events from outside of TMC was LastElement, who was also an attendee of the original TMC LANs. He would then go on to ofically join TMC and would continue to host the occasional private TMC garage LAN.

Chapter 20

TMC Today

Looking back, the years between around 2003 and 2007 were among the most formative, both for TMC and the LAN scene in general. Not only were there consistently held, community LAN events (including TMC LAN) as well as farly consistently held corpoorate LAN events. Not to mention there were near constant smaller house LAN events going on quite often. During this time active membership within TMC was constantly growing, and for a while it felt that the sky was the limit. All good things eventually come to their end and the local LAN scene would be no exception.

Many members of TMC have gone on to careers at silicon valley tech giants, the gaming industry, or the PC hardware and peripherals industry. The responsibilities of adult life, careers and family inevitably take priority, but a core contingent of TMC has stayed together over the years and continues to game and LAN whenever possible.

This website will serve as an archive of what once was, and what still continues on today.