There's an element that all the silliness of the LAN party was technically necessary for the production, and as a grassroots thing the hardship added to the buyin and culture.
Part of the reason this was all acceptable in the LAN party era was that you were having fun together with friends while dealing with the annoyances. You could curse, you could laugh, and you could eat pizza together while you were wrestling with the faulty ethernet hub (remember those?) or whatnot. I remember I once accidentally blew a transformer at my friend's home while getting set up, and we all had a good laugh.
Nowadays, you play a game over the internet and you would be lucky to have even a friend next to you watching enthusiastically and intently.
More than that, people knew that they were going to have to do technology stuff, and tech stuff was oriented more at semi technical users.
So people actually learned how to do stuff, and that in itself was fun. Whereas the current low friction set up is so difficult to fix that if the first three Google results don't work, there's nothing you can do.
Prior to the pandemic we would play Diablo 3 in my home office with four people once a week, all night. Takeout food. Six plus hours of gaming after work. It's an "online" game, but we're effectively just playing a LAN game with friends. Since the pandemic we're down to three people in the home office, with desks and big monitors setup, but we still get together and play regularly.
More than that, people knew that they were going to have to do technology stuff, and tech stuff was oriented more at semi technical users.
So people actually learned how to do stuff, and that in itself was fun. Whereas the current low friction set up is so difficult to fix that if the first three Google results don't work, there's nothing you can do.
Nowadays, you play a game over the internet and you would be lucky to have even a friend next to you watching enthusiastically and intently.