You remember the good old days of lanning right? You know, packing up your whole PC, lugging it all to a venue, walking inside bear hugging your monitor and picking a spot on one of those metal trestle tables to set up for the weekend.
You’d shout across the floor: “Who’s up for some DoTA!?” and everyone who was keen would shout back. You’d spin up a local game real quick, wait 2 hours for everyone to update their games because nobody remembered to do that, and then play until the sun came up.
Rinse and repeat this over the course of the weekend, and you come out on the other side with new friends, great experiences and a heart rate of 200 because you’re just running on 26 cans of Red Bull.
These were the golden days of gaming. The cradle of gaming kind, if you will.
That was until Julia ‘Bish’ Robson decided otherwise.
Robson took it upon herself to give the gaming community those fun, exciting times that gamers of old used to have. Robson is bringing back the lan.
EnterLan is that lan.
50 whole hours of undisturbed, unadulterated gaming. Sleeping under the table when your winning streak finally breaks. Rubbing elbows with people who you’ve only ever known by their gamer nicks. Flooding your system with dopamine, good times and energy drinks.
EnterLan plans to bring back the joy of face-to-face gaming for the local gaming scene, and with such high hopes, we at NAG had to chat with Robson to find out what drove her to want to start EnterLan, and where we’ll all be going from here.
For those of you who aren’t aware, Robson has been in the gaming industry for years—both on the professional side as a competitive gamer and from the content creation side as a streamer. Lanning with her younger brother was where her love for gaming grew and became the passion that motivated her to be in the industry, and when the lans she used to attend were no longer around, she decided to change that.
EnterLan originally started as a cool idea for a party for Robsons birthday, but after doing a bit of digging, she realised that Lanning actually didn’t form a part of the gaming community that much anymore, and she wanted to change that. With the smaller organised lans no longer as popular as they once were, Robson found that the newer generation of gamers hadn’t even heard of or participated in a lan.
This fueled a fire within her to turn EnterLan into something real, something tangible that gamers could attend.
“The idea here is to bring back the human part of gaming. Getting gamers outside of their online silos and meeting other like-minded people in person, avoiding toxic lobbies and anonymity is what lanning is all about”, says Robson.
And so, starting off with something small, EnterLan will provide 60 tabled spots for gamers to BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer), or console, or mobile or handheld device, set up their rigs and get to gaming, just like we used to. A solid internet connection has been provided, and the venue has backup power, so Eskom has no say in ruining your weekend.
While the event is predominantly funded by Robson herself, EnterLan has managed to partner up with some pretty cool sponsors.
Carry1st headline the event by hosting an R20,000 5v5 Valorant tournament. The event will be run for lan-only attendees, so a few mish-mash teams will be formed on the spot at the lan, just like tourneys used to be. Competitive or first-time lanner, all are welcome to shoot their shot at the EnterLan Valorant tournament. Redbull will be supplying the energy, and Stub Africa will be sponsoring the financial services, such as card machines, accounting software and a basic snack bar. There will also be a stall selling food catered by The Big Tasty Bite: home-cooked meals sold at R50 a person to make sure your bellies are full. Gatherin is also supplying recovery packs for the lan which will have a few self-care items like some eye drops, body odour assistance and some toothpaste. Razer and Apex Interactive will also be sponsoring a King of COD tournament, where the best COD screenshots taken at the lan could win you something pretty sweet. Last but certainly not least, Skull Candy and Cooler Master have sponsored a few products that will be given away for community-voted competitions that the lanners will decide on.
All of this is set up for the community to enjoy an awesome weekend of gaming. It will take place on the 3rd of November at the Outlore Base in Cape Town, starting at 14:00. You can grab your tickets here. You’d better get them fast as there are only 60 spots laid out, andearly bird tickets are already sold out.
To find out more, you can check out the EnterLan links here, hop onto their Discord server here, or catch Julia ‘Bish’ Robson on any one of her social media platforms.