It Begins

The crowd gathers to watch the opening of PDXLAN 4.05.

By the time THG arrived on the scene, the party was already in full swing. Registration and setup had concluded earlier in the day, and the games had already begun by the time the opening ceremony started. Vector gave a brief speech welcoming all to the event, and went over some of the finer points of PDXLAN etiquette and what to expect from the party. Each day at PDXLAN was dedicated to a particular theme: Friday served as setup day, Saturday was contest day, Sunday was multiplayer game tournament day, and Monday was prize day.

Vector welcomes everybody to the event.

To coordinate everything, PDXLAN relied on the Autonomous LAN Party (ALP) system. ALP was created by a team of coders known as the Nerdclub, and is available free on the Web . It allows gamers to connect with one another to create unofficial tournaments, join official tournaments, and even coordinate food runs to any of the restaurants in the vicinity of the hotel. At PDXLAN it was set up to handle everything from tournament registration to caffeine consumption!