The Major League Gaming LAN Center Initiative

K.L.

– January 4, 2011Posted in: Competitive Gaming

I took a survey for the MLG LAN Center Initiative early this morning and wanted to express some thoughts. It will be interesting to see how the initiative will pan out, considering there are not too many LAN Centers that would make the cut. I know this after working in the LAN Center business for just under three years at arguably the most successful center in the US — eBash Video Gaming Centers. eBash is centralized around one key figure, Zack Johnson, probably one of the few LAN Center owners with some innovative ideas about competitive gaming and the direction it needs to go.

Some of the core concepts behind the MLG LAN Center Initiative sound eerily similar to an article I wrote about a year ago about the relevance of LAN centers to the MLG ecosystem. The article expresses some of the concepts Zack and I discussed along with some of my own ideas. I implore you, if you haven’t read it, please read the article to try and truly grasp the idea of what MLG is trying to accomplish with this initiative.

There are very few, and I mean very few, LAN Centers that could even run a tournament let alone a tournament sanctioned by Major League Gaming. iGames, the largest collective entity of LAN Centers, has a difficult time managing centers for their tournaments. ggCircuit, a much smaller effort (I helped manage), focused solely on competitive tournaments and struggled with nearly every tournament. The LAN Centers involved in ggCircuit were probably the “cream of the crop,” yet where they made up in hardware and equipment, they lacked in human resources and employee management.

You see, to me, ggCircuit was the “MLG LAN Center Initiative,” except it did not have the official “MLG” endorsement. It was like a pilot program of sorts that had mild success. The model works conceptually, except most LAN Center owners do not truly understand the notion of competitive gaming — not forgetting the fact that most are PC oriented with limited console gaming systems. They do not follow or understand how to enforce the rules and regulations that accompany each game. Furthermore, home town, advantage seemed to play a part in the “influence” certain teams i.e. “regular customers” had over the owners of each respective LAN Center and owners, of course, want repeat business. They forget to enforce the rules and end up letting the teams and/or individual players run them and tournament instead of referees. Even worse, the staff might not know much about the games and misinterpret rules, creating problems each match, tremendously slowing down a tournament.

Do not mistake my disposition as one that is negative. I want the MLG LAN Center Initiative to succeed! I simply want to be honest about the state of the LAN Center business model because I started reviewing LAN Centers (will continue this year) and there are quite a few pot holes down this Initiative path that need to be fixed. Taking a survey or cold calling LAN Centers is probably not the best way to go in the effort to find out which centers can actually run an MLG Sanctioned tournament. I don’t want a LAN Center to tarnish the image of what it’s “like” at an MLG event because of the one LAN Center owner that doesn’t know how to operate a tournament. There are a dozens and dozens of turds for LAN centers and it is one of the main reasons so many of them are going out of business. I think the certification process is more of a task that should be handled by someone like Zack Johnson or within the iGames staff (who would likely ask Zack to do it anyway). Someone that has a distinguished reputation within the industry and can organize the facilities needed to make the initiative succeed.

The local competitive communities definitely need something like this from Major League Gaming. For the many reasons I wrote about nearly a year ago, this needs to happen, but MLG needs to execute flawlessly and the community needs to respond!

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Contact K.L. at kendall@reflectzyn.com

About K.L.

Major League Gaming Pro 2007 -2010. Captain of AmazYn. Editor-in-Chief of ReflectzYn. YouTube Partner. All around techy dude.

Zack Johnson

Haha… people are going to think we called each other before posting today…. let’ me call jinx first so that you can owe me a coke!
- http://twitter.com/arCtyC K.L. Smith
  
  Yeah I read lol, it does look a little planned!
Morsecodeuser

Good stuff. Your experience and familiarity with LAN centers is greatly appreciated. The NY scene is kind of dead when it comes to LAN centers – probably too expensive to maintain, especially with the cost of lease in Manhattan.
- http://twitter.com/arCtyC K.L. Smith
  
  Yeah I remember there were a few LAN Centers in the NY area a few years ago when Team 3D was reigning supreme. It’s a very expensive business to operate, especially in NY.
Padre

Great read. Over here in Southern California, we are making a conscious effort to bring competitive gaming to the table. A 2v2 Halo: Reach tournament at DizeLan Frag Center (affiliated with ggC at one time) this month will prove that it means business. 16 solid teams have posted about attending. I think MLG can truly spread the tournament experience by reaching out to local LAN centers and getting in touch with their roots. As you said though, it takes one LAN center to completely ruin the goals of this outreach. However, I truly believe this is a great opportunity for local centers as well as the MLG Pro Circuit to attract attention.
- http://twitter.com/arCtyC K.L. Smith
  
  Yeah I remember DizeLan in ggCircuit. It is going to be a mighty lofty goal of organizing those centers. Just knowing how some of the centers in ggCircuit has me worried. There were only a couple that had the proper tools in place to run tournaments.
  - Padre
    
    Yeah, GGCircuit failed pretty hard. You’re right about these LAN centers getting organized, but I think they can do it if they are able to put how competitive gaming runs into perspective. I know here, it’s happening (DizeLan has gone from running tournaments on funky tube TV’s to Viewsonic MLG Certified stations). As long as MLG is strict on who they want to represent them locally, this will be a great thing.
Cramsay

When I first heard Sundance mention this on the VVV podcast, it reminded me of the aritcle you wrote!

I can see exactly what you mean by Lan Centres having many limitations, and it’s pretty disheartening to say the least, but I hope to hell MLG succeed with this idea!

Good Read!
The Gamerz Dome

Dear Fellow Gamers:

We are a console based tournament center in Fort Worth, TX. This is exactly what we have been waiting for to help get competitive gaming to where it needs to be. We have been in business for 3 years and have struggled the entire way. Our tournaments are already based on MLG rules, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel but to perfect it, and it is going to take uniting all competitive gamers and gaming centers around the US to make it happen. What you are saying in your article is exactly how we have felt for some time now. Thank you for putting it out there.

Sincerely yours,

The Gamerz Dome

The Major League Gaming LAN Center Initiative

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