The gentrification of video game history – Felipe Pepe

For example, one of the most iconic images of gaming in the ’90s and ‘00s were LAN parties. A bunch of people taking their computers/consoles to events or friends’ houses to play games like Doom, Halo, Quake, Unreal, etc. As celebrated as these LAN Parties are in media, it’s important to remember that owning a gaming PC was still extremely expensive for most of the world at the time — especially for those in the Global South. There, unless you came from a wealthy background, it’s likely that you instead went to places called LAN houses, Cyber Cafes, Locadora de Jogos, PC Bangs, Game Clubs, etc. There, you would pay hourly to play, either on PC or consoles. In US media it’s an image often associated with Korean e-sports, but it’s far more present globally than LAN parties ever were.