Event: GeForce LAN 4 - LAN Party Event Date: 11/16/2007 Written By: Warhawk Date Written: 02/16/2026

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 featured a variety of contests, tournaments, presentations; living up to the great reputation that previous GeForce LANs were known for. The event itself was divident into two main areas. The first huge room houses the BYOC area, the sponsor tables and the tournament area. The second huge room featured a mainstage stage for events and contests, a special "club SLI" area, a giant XFX bus, an area for serving food and some other sections where professional overclockers and such would do demonstrations.

E-Sports Services vs PDX

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. 

Crysis

This event also coincided with the launch date for the game Crysis this game was developed by a studio called Crytek and was being published by EA. Incidentally, a few months prior I had helped plan a large scale press event for the Crysis team. This event had been a group effort between EA and Nvidia (Intel and Microsoft were also involved to a lesser extent); it took place nearby, on the USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier museum.  

The entire time I was on the Hornet I kept thinking that it would be an awesome place for a LAN event. Apparently the Nvidia guys that worked on the event with me thought the same thing because a few years later GeForce LAN 6 would be held on that carrier. 

At GeForce LAN 4, as part of the final marketing push for Crysis, a copy of the game was given to every attendee at the LAN.  It was a great gift and attendees were excited to receive a brand new, highly anticipated game as part of their admission to the event. 

One slight complication was that Crysis was riding on the bleeding edge of graphical advancements in video games. As such, the game required some extremely beefy PC hardware to run smoothly. Unfortunately this meant that a large portion of the LAN attendees could not play the game with their current hardware. Even many members of TMC, who prided themselves at having cutting edge PC rigs could not yet run the game. Still, we were happy to have it, even if some of us were one upgrade cycle away from being able to properly play it. 

Sponsors

There were a variety of sponsors at this event, each had a small “booth” area which consisted of a couple of 6 foot tables. Some of the companies with booths at the event were Antec, BFG, Tagan, Thermaltake, Patriot, EVGA, and Corsair. 

Each booth area featured the latest products offered by each company and had representatives there to answer questions and explain the products. Most of the vendor booths had raffles that would run periodically throughout the day, as well as their own small giveaway games such as the Antec musical chairs contest which had by this time become a LAN party standard.   

Now that I was no longer working at Antec, Dave (aka Daristar, who would join TMC some years later), was the primary guy in charge of the Antec booth.  TMC was at this point already well known to Dave and the other Antec staff, so the tradition of TMC Antec volunteers continued at this event as well. 

There was also a “Club SLI Lounge” that was sponsored by BFG. “SLI” stood for “Scalable Link Interface” and was the technology used by Nvidia that allowed two Nvidia Video cards to work in tandem inside a computer. So instead of the typical PC setup with only one video card, you could have two and link them together.

Club SLI was something started by Nvidia, as a kind of loyalty program. To become a member you had to sign up on their website, install and app that would scan your PC hardware and report it to the Nvidia site. If it found that you indeed had two Nvidia cards installed in your computer you were given a Club SLI membership number.  One of the perks of Club SLI membership was access to the Club SLI lounge at GeForce events. At this particular event, the lounge featured free energy drinks (subsidized by BFG), a cool lounge chill out area with beanbag chairs everywhere, and a live DJ spinning techno beats. 

The BFG rep went by the gamer handle “Battlemaster” and I had gotten to know him fairly well over the years. We originally met because in the past we had both staffed booths at the same sorts of tech events. As Battlemaster and I got to know each other over the years, he also got to know TMC from our typical group presence at large LAN events. 

At GeForce LAN 4 TMC had possibly the largest LAN turnout yet. Battlemaster commented to me that TMC had become quite a presence at these events, both in terms of numbers and in terms of our community influence and the fact that TMC was even helping out in vendor booths. Battlemaster seemed both intrigued and impressed by this.

I took this opportunity to suggest to Battlemaster that perhaps BFG could sponsor TMC in some way. I suggested that TMC could use our LAN community influence to somehow promote the BFG brand or something of that nature. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch as the majority of our members primarily used Nvidia based video cards as opposed to ATI cards (BFG exclusively produced Nvidia based video cards). Not only that but many of our members (including myself) already used BFG products as it was. I saw this as a great opportunity for both BFG and TMC to mutually benefit. 

Battlemaster seemed to be seriously considering this possibility. He rubbed his chin, stared into the distance and I could see the wheels turning. Achieving this kind of sponsorship would be a great benefit to TMC and could lead to even bigger and better things down the road. For those few seconds, I stood in silent anticipation as Battlemaster contemplated the possibilities and weighed the pros and cons of such an arrangement. 

Just then, in a completely unrelated conversation a few tables away, Metalslug begins shouting profanity to the heavens and something to do with how ATI video cards are so much better than Nvidia cards.  If it were a movie it would have been right on cue and accompanied by a needle-across-the-record sound effect. Upon hearing this outburst, Battlemaster looks at me and says “yeah, it probably wouldn’t work out”. Just like that, another opportunity had vanished.

The PMS Clan

Another clan in attendance that never seemed to miss a sponsorship opportunity was the all girl PMS Clan. They were starting to show up more and more at LAN events, and we had gotten to know a few of them. I remember at one point sitting at a table with the PMS clan leader, and she was coaxing Kraz into saying things to her in French because she thought it sounded sexy.

Tournaments

Another attraction at the event was the tournaments. The main tournament at this event was the Team Fortress 2 tournament. Team Fortress 2 was a newly released title at the time and was widely played by just about everyone. With the organizational help of Ocho, TMC was able to assemble 3 teams (of 6 people each) for the Team Fortress 2 tournament at GeForce LAN 4.  

The team lineups were as follows: 

Team RED:
1. Orange 
2. XiiiXiii 
3. Herman 
4. Metalslug 
5. Bowser 
6. Gatekeeper 

Team BLUE:
1. Deekortiz
2. Fi4bngr 
3. Alien10140 
4. DonkeyPunch 
5. Warhawk 
6. Mofo 

Team MAGENTA: 
1. Glen 
2. Kraz 
3. Hawtie 
4. Vector 
5. Swagger 
6. Demented 

Team Red was the strongest of the three teams because they had the most gametime under their belts as well as the most time playing together as a team. Team Blue had a lot of solid players, but it was hard to predict how the team would do as most of the team members had not played together as a team much, if at all.  Team Magenta was a complete wildcard as the team consisted of a few players with very little time playing the game mixed with a few that had moderate to high levels of experience with the game; coupled with the fact that none of them had really played together as a team. 

From what I remember, the Magenta team got knocked out early, and team Red and Blue made it through a few rungs of the tournament ladder before having to face off against one another. 

The battle was fierce and extremely evenly matched. It was a best of three match, and both Red and Blue were able to secure wins, leaving it down to the tiebreaker round.  We ended up fighting for control of the map and just when one team seemed on the verge of victory, the other team would swoop in and gain back some ground. Fight for control went back and forth like this at least three or 4 times. 

We were starting to get tired and there seemed to be no end in sight to this stalemate. It was then that the Antec booth announced it was going to start it’s prize raffle and you must be present to win. 12inch nick’s friend Mofo, who was on my team started to get antsy. He started looking at me and I think he even asked at one point if he could quit the tournament and go to the raffle. As more of a test than anything else I said something like “do whatever you want.” It was admittedly not the most stellar move in team leadership on my part. I should have yelled at him to shut up and keep playing, but instead I held onto the hope that he would choose to sacrifice the potential of winning prizes to instead support his fellow TMC comrades in their fight for tournament dominance. As it turned out, the lure of free prizes proved to be too much; he bolted out of his seat and headed for the raffle. Needless to say, my Blue team lost, and also Mofo would not be in TMC much longer.  

Metalslug vs Gatekeeper

The Red team moved on to the next round in the tournament, but trouble was brewing between Gatekeeper and Metalslug. Both were more than capable players but friction between the two of them had been forming over the past few matches. On one hand, Gatekeeper had the most experience on the team, and on the other hand, Metalslug had the biggest ego on the team. 

Gatekeeper was well versed in the engineer class, and had his own system down, while Metalslug was more of the mindset that everyone should do things his way. Gatekeeper was having none of that and kept playing along the tried and true methods he was already well versed in.  Finally the friction boiled over into a full blown confrontation between the two, that resulted in Gatekeeper quitting mid match and walking off.  So ended the TMC Team Fortress 2 tournament aspirations at GeForce LAN 4. In the end we were our own worst enemies. 

Contests

In addition to the tournaments, there were a number of other contests and opportunities to win prizes. 

There was a massive dodgeball game outside as well as a tug-o-war contest. TMC came prepared with a team to compete in the Tug-o-war, as we had discussed strategy and team selection on our forums beforehand. When TMC showed up with our team, which consisted of many large and burly men, we were disappointed to find out there were no other organized teams. Instead there was just a rag tag group of randoms that also wanted to do tug-o-war, but no one was willing to form up against the imposing TMC team.  The contest organizers eventually decided to mix everyone up and randomize the teams to make it fair. While it didn’t go exactly as planned, the winning team was still made up primarily of TMC members. 

On the mainstage there were various contests in which participants had to perform various stunts to win prizes.  In one contest, an attendee volunteered to have his head shaved on stage for a prize. In another, a lineup of contestants had to each hold a chair off the ground with their arms outstretched for as long as possible, with the last person to drop the chair being the winner. Our own 2MuchDutch came away victorious in a race to see which contestant would be the first to finish eating an entire raw onion. Another challenge was to see which contestant could fit the most marshmallows in their mouth. Sgt. Moody came away with the win by cramming 22 marshmallows in his face.  

The last contest tied into the Crysis launch, and involved making a homemade “nanosuit”; the futuristic body armor worn by the main character in the game. A dozen or so contestants cobbled together their own hastily created nanosuits out of whatever was readily available. Many featured bike helmets and various sporting equipment, while others featured cardboard and copious amounts of duct tape.  

To close out the event there was a massive raffle on the main stage at the end of the show where some of the more big ticket items were raffled off. and there was a giant raffle on the mainstage at the end of the show as well. As usual TMC fared well in everything giveaway related. 

Drunk Burger

One evening after the LAN, a group of us went across the water into the Jack london Square area of Oakland.  I don’t fully recall everyone that went but I do remember the group included myself, Kraz, Battlemaster, Vector and his wife Demented (and possibly an Antec rep or two).  

We first stopped into a bar/ pool hall and had a few drinks. I don’t recall exactly how many, but I do remember that half of us had eaten and half of us had not. 

I was part of the group that had not eaten and I decided that we had to split off and find some food or else we would be doomed. I was by far the most sober of us, and so I led both Kraz and Vector to a local burger joint called Nations, while the rest stayed behind to play some pool. 

Along the way it became clear that all of that drinking on an empty stomach was having an effect on Kraz and Vector. The two of them were a goofy giggling mess and couldn’t manage to hold a straight face for more than 10 seconds.  While Kraz and Vector were eating burgers and unsuccessfully trying to act sober.

I don't remember who took these pictures:

Pics from another set (maybe Moody?):

Other picture set (photographer unknown):