Went to a friend's LAN/Bachelor party. All told, I played 10, 15-minute matches of Mechwarrior over the course of about 12 hours. That's right, in 12 hours I played maybe an hour and a half of games. With about half the people there.
I love these guys but it's always, always the same damn story. No one is ever prepared, and there is a core group of friends who do NOTHING but play LoL until they're so fried they're not interested in playing anything else. People try to discuss what we should play and they're half-engaged in the conversation...or might say one thing but then turn around and go right back to LoL. One dude practically stops talking for the night, and just keeps playing LoL, alone if he has to.
And that always kind of divides the LAN party right from the outset. Not everyone can play LoL for 8 hours straight, or even an hour straight, because we don't like it that much. It makes you feel like it honestly makes no difference to them if you're there or not, because they're only interested in their fun. I gave LoL a tour of duty in the name of fun, I wish they'd reciprocate. I mean, we're all adults now. Everyone has a job and wants to enjoy the time they're not working. But I basically gave up my Friday night to sit around and not game. That's not fun for me. And they've heard this, multiple times, from multiple people at these LAN parties.
So I spent half the night installing games I'm probably not going to play. (Although someone did buy me the ARMA2 complete package so I could play DayZ, which I didn't actually end up playing.)
The next time someone even THINKS LAN party, I'm going to spearhead making a games list and sorting out wtf people will play before it starts, get shit installed before hand. Maybe with an actual plan we can avoid circling the toilet bowl, that is League of Legends eating up the whole fucking night. Christ, you can't even put more than 5 people in a match! These guys play LoL whenever they have a free minute, could they maybe give it up for one night to play other games with other people? They've been playing it religiously since the fucking game has been out. A group of 8 to 10 people become a group of 5 to 7 when they silently decide it's the only thing they're doing that night. To be fair they do make some half-hearted attempts, but usually only after they've spent the majority of the time and energy on LoL...and by then it's 2am and everyone is starting to fade.