Some memories, indeed. How we had it (rural Norway, late 90s/early 00s) - Some guys would show up and spend 10% of the time on gaming, and like 90% on coding.

Some memories, indeed. How we had it (rural Norway, late 90s/early 00s) - Some guys would show up and spend 10% of the time on gaming, and like 90% on coding. They'd mainly be at LAN-parties to collect tools and meet other coders. Sometimes they'd show some cool demos they worked on, or some game they were working on - Shared folders of music, films, and pictures would get copied an masse. A LOT of the pictures were definitely not for the public eye. - Some LAN-parties would drag on for weeks, and kind of just become LAN-clubs. People would practically live there...I remember a friend hosted one of the last LAN-parties right around the time World of Warcraft got released, and while it was meant to just last for a weekend, 5-6 guys ended up staying there for a solid month, gaming WoW since the host had high-speed internet. Owner didn't mind, as he was equally hooked on the game. - The older games would only play Age of Empires, and not much else. The competitive gamers would grind StarCraft, and later on CS. - Playing all the pre 1.6 CS versions was a fun time. They seemed to change quite a bit between each update, until 1.6 became the standard. - If we encountered some networking problems, someone always knew a 40-year old networking dude that would gladly show up and fix whatever was needed. Same dudes would always have tons of spare parts lying around. - Right around the time CS 1.6 became popular, we started seeing the first "pro" gaming e-sports teams. Back then, these teams would just play at LAN parties, and then go compete in larger regional LAN parties. The prizes were laughable compared to the modern ones...one clan I knew won like $5000, which was split on 5-6 members? Those guys decided to drop out of school and pursue CS full-time, which lasted around 6 months or so. - We would have a national LAN party in Hamar (The Gathering), and traveling there from all the way north was a real bitch. Imagine bringing a full-tower case and 19" CRT onboard the plane. Even though the first flat-screens sucked, it was infinitely easier/more practical than those CRT screens. And lots of other things.