CyberJocks History 101

This is what it is all about. Going up against your opponent head to head.

Some people ask me how certain LANs do what they do and how they got where they are. So who or what exactly is CyberJocks? Good question. I spent a lot of time with the guys at CyberJocks as to give you their whole story.

The company, Parkside Computing Incorporated, started as a gaming club. Scott Turner, the founder, and his buddies started playing football on his Amiga in his basement. It started growing but he didn't want to have all those people in his house all the time, so he decided to make a company out of it. He obtained a storefront and set it up to do various things. Of course computer gaming was the key idea but he also started a technology company as well. He wasn't exactly sure what he was going to do with it but it was a start. In 1996, he opened up as an 800 square foot facility right across from the Buffalo Zoo. It started with eight computers, which eventually grew to a total of sixteen. Back then the systems were the hottest thing with Pentium 100's, 4 MB of video RAM and Windows 95. They were running Duke Nukem, Quake, Command and Conquer, and other classic games.

After about six months after the original CyberJocks started, Scott hired Aaron Kondziela to do some of the techie stuff. As Aaron said, "I was still learning back then. We had quite a few issues to deal with. The building was pre-wired for networks but it wasn't with network cable, it was telephone cable. It was a nightmare in there. We were running around chasing down problems all the time. We learned the hard way that it's best to do it right and do it ourselves. We didn't install that and if we could have researched it more, we could have gotten something better in there. Regardless, it still worked pretty well."

The new addition, the LANVan.

After a while they moved to a new location a few blocks away. Aaron reflected, "The facility was not set up as well for games as the old location had been. The environment wasn't really great either." Parkside Computing started transitioning towards commercial IT work, and the gaming aspect faded away as they began developing and growing other parts of their business.