Today (as it technically is the 21st) – I’ll be running an SOGC LAN again; it feels like it’s been ages since the last one, although it’s only been a little while ago. It feels right that there’s a feeling of having closed the older SOGC events in the past, and renewed the SOGC with this site design and rapid work in the last couple of weeks with the full site design release, comfortable layout, and heavily optimised workflow (more on all this in a later post).
Anyway, one can only hope that with this tabula rasa, the SOGC will grow properly and with real success. One of the things that I made a tenet of last time, was to never go with mainstream popularity; but times change, and the niche that we have for casual, quirky gaming is still there, but it isn’t growing. Thanks in part to digital distribution systems, and an ever-increasingly online landscape in games, SOGC’s had to drastically adjust itself with this rethink, and I hope it pays off.
This LAN serves as a litmus test to the abilities of myself as an organiser – having configured everything in this event, from the site, servers, network and power layout with the exception of our network switches, which I’ve left in the hands of my very capable friend, Ben. Amy’s returned to the team to help out with the entry fee handling, which I’m sincerely grateful for, and we’ve got Callum who’ll be returning next event as our server admin, as well as Matthew who’s going to be handling Admin duties as well (I think? We’re still in talks about that).
This isn’t the last hurrah for the SOGC, but it definitely feels more personally like a serious step away from the starry eyed dreams I had when I started the event 3 years ago. I’ve learnt a lot, and I’m sure there’ll be lots more to learn. And there’s absolutely nothing mastered yet. But with all the lessons learnt, maybe we’re finally ready to take a step towards being a serious event in Sydney.
