Gaming Programs for All Ages at the Library by Tom Bruno

Author:Tom Bruno [Bruno, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2018-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

If you’re in luck, someone on your library IT staff will be a LAN party veteran if you’re not, or one of your gamer attendees will be. There’s nothing like leveraging the technical expertise of your teenaged gamer demographic, and it’s events just like these that can help draw them out of the woodwork and into the library!

Beyond the Shmups: Choosing Your Games

OK, somehow you’ve gotten permission to take over the library (or part of it, at least) and turn it into a giant LAN party, and what’s more you find that you have all of the required hardware, accessories, and power in order to pull off the event. How do you choose the games? This is an important question because while the most popular titles for LAN gaming are often shoot-’em-ups—or “shmups”—this genre is perhaps the least popular with parents and what we’ll call the “concerned community” demographic, who is most likely to complain if the library sponsors an event for teens where all they do is shoot each other for several hours.

This isn’t to say that one should immediately kowtow to censorship just because we’re talking about violence in gaming, which is a hot-button topic in many circles. Because if we’re serious about limiting the exposure of teens to violence and mature themes, why not attack YA literature or graphic novels or pretty much any other kind of material actively collected in the library stacks? No, I’m merely making it clear that shmups aren’t the only kind of computer game that is fun to play in a LAN environment so that you can make the most informed choice for you, your community, and your circle of library stakeholders.

According to the online recommendation platform Slant, the five most popular LAN party PC games are as follows:

Left 4 Dead 2—a two- to four-player co-op first-person shooter where the team is pitted against a zombie horde or two teams compete against each other (one human, one zombie).

Age of Empires II HD—a real-time strategy game where players build their own empires based loosely on world history.

Rocket League—a soccer game played with rocket-powered cars? ‘Nuff said! It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s very addictive.

Starcraft—another real-time strategy game, but this one is set in space. If you don’t know what a Zerg Rush is, you’re about to find out!

Team Fortress 2—OK, this one is a legitimate shmup, but its colorful cartoonish characters (they have a YouTube channel with funny introductions and even more hilarious “Outtakes”) and various game modes keep this venerable first-person shooter game—once called “the most fun you can have online” by PC Gamer Magazine—alive and kicking as a LAN classic!

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