Current Rfactor LANS?

[Slothman]

I thought I would start this out of interest more than anything.

I did not know there was so many Rfactor LAN's out there.

We run one in Albany Western Australia and have so for the last 5-6 years (before rFactor was NASCAR 2003 and GTR).

Essentially we try to do 6 or 7 through the year with a weekend LAN at the start of the year which is more of an excuse to get together and have a good time

So how many others run regular LANs?

How many LAN's?

Competition LAN's or just social events??

This is more of a curious thing...

And yes..we will be definitely using rF2

[John DiFool]

Good question-web searches I've tried in the past have ultimately proven fruitless. I wonder how many commercial LANs are out there (aka gaming centers with a number of machines devoted to sim racing).

[Tim Wheatley]

Well those guys in particular are supposed to get commercial licensing from us (sim centers, etc). There's actually a few of them around. Some do not use the standard retail versions though.

[Slothman]

Yeh commercial centres are a touch different as as Tim says ISI does have a commercial license. I used to run a gaming centre and enquired about it. We had someon elocally do it but moved on. Small town makes it hard to keep something like that viable.

The LAN's we do are just organised events between mates, we bring our own PC's, link them up and hoot and holler...all good fun

[Tim Wheatley]

Yeah there's often people who seem interested, but the difficulty of making that business work is quite scary. Location is massively important in that type of thing, as is experience.

[Slothman]

Yeah there's often people who seem interested, but the difficulty of making that business work is quite scary. Location is massively important in that type of thing, as is experience.

We had a successful LAN Cafe which also did Hobby Products Wargaming etc. The cost of rFactor Commercial License coupled with a small population (20k) made it unviable to do rFactor to the level I wanted to.

Not only that permission had to be sort from Modders for the products you would use etc. It would have been a massive undertaking for something that most users where going to use once, twice etc.

The trick with that is to encourage return users. Now the target audience are revheads and arcade junkies as, lets face it, most rFactor fans will be MORE than happy playing at home compared to the $5/30 minutes needed to recoup the outlay over say 2 years.

So once you start looking at Arcade Junkie, revheads who want some quick fun, there are better options out there on the market that will make more money...hell its a commercial endevour.

To make a rFactor LAN centre worked you would need at LEAST 10 FULL SIMULATORS..not just wheels tacked to benches, running a reasonably easy selection of mods/tracks that you could organise relatively cheap leagues for to encourage return traffic.....BIG population needed

When it came down to it you had to make sure you where cheaper than say an indoor go kart club and far enough away to make a goer of it, because your target audience is also THEIR target and lets face it, if its the same price, they want the real thing.

But enough of that

WHO DOES ORGANISED LANS?? We cant be the only ones....surely.

I was hoping to set up a "community" of LANers to share ideas, maybe even setup some online meet and greets

Otherwise us local lads will be more than happy to keep playing on our weekends

[Tim Wheatley]

The costs have been lowered quite a bit and I am happier to negotiate it now (and as you can probably guess, I'm the person who licenses it for commercial purposes). That's why I'm such a busy chap.

[Slothman]

The costs have been lowered quite a bit and I am happier to negotiate it now (and as you can probably guess, I'm the person who licenses it for commercial purposes). That's why I'm such a busy chap.

LOL...a very very busy chap

Loving the avatar pics by the way

The LAN guys have a big weekend for rF2 release. We plan on meeting somewhere and hammering this baby. Testing out lots of optiions, trying the new weather and real time track changes etc, seeing what the BETA has, tweaking in general.

BBQ Organised - Check
Eskies with ice - Check
Beer and mixers ready - Check
CC, Glenfiddich, Bullet, Jamieson all primed and ready - Check
Mad keen sim racers ready - Check
rF2 Beta -..............soon to be checked....

GREEN GREEN GREEN