The point of the LAN party was not to be playing games on your computer, the point was to be playing games with your friends, in person. No matter how good your connection, no matter how good your battlestation and headset, it will never compare to the sheer joy of hunching down over your computer while it’s set up on a coffee table, a mass of messily-coiled cables around your ankles, a janky mouse-balled mouse in your hand, as you have the ability to turn and call your best friends slurs and share cold pizza, secure in the knowledge that you’re going to go to sleep on a scratchy couch, wake up around noon tomorrow, and start the whole process all over again.

It’s not the tech, it’s the meatspace community that made it special.