All comments come from interviews conducted by the author.

A few weeks after id Software released Quake in June 1996, James "H2H" Elson sent a message to his friend Yossarian "yossman" Holmberg over the IRC chat service. What if, Elson suggested, players had a place where they could get together, put faces to screen names, and play the game?

Holmberg liked the idea. Planning and organizing in #quake, the IRC channel where players shared strategies, secrets, and coordinated deathmatches, they agreed that meeting at a hotel in or around Dallas, near where Elson lived, would work best. Anyone interested in hanging out could haul their computers and set up shop. They would call it #QuakeCon, named in honor of their virtual clubhouse.

That August, Holmberg traveled from Canada to join Elson and 28 others at a Best Western in Garland, Texas. Most attendees brought computers. The group took over a hotel meeting room and strung Ethernet cables to form a network. Between setting up their computers and fragging one another in deathmatch, the group spread word of the event on #quake and other online hangouts. More players trickled in. By the end of the weekend, #QuakeCon had swelled to over 100.

To no one's surprise, Doom and Quake were the most popular choices among attendees. As the weekend wore on, a few players set up a friendly tournament and gave away small prizes such as t-shirts to winners. Pizza boxes and soda cans piled up until Sunday, when the party wound down. That was when John Carmack and the Quake team breezed into the meeting room and asked if they could play.

Carmack and the others explained that they had received emails from some of the organizers revealing that a group of Quake players was meeting nearby and had decided to drop in to say hello. After trading greetings and rockets, the group adjourned to the front lawn of the hotel. Carmack held court on the front porch, talking for nearly an hour about what he'd learned from programming id's games, namely Doom and Quake.

Before parting, Elson and Holmberg talked excitedly about how well the ad-hoc convention had gone, and looked forward to next year's get-together.

Over 21 years and counting, much has changed about QuakeCon. The pound sign fell away. John Carmack's casual talks grew into hours-long keynotes until he left id Software in 2013. A number of hotels have played host to developers and thousands of players who traveled from far and wide, toting kids and significant others or meeting up with friends from gaming clans.

Most significantly, QuakeCon evolved into more than one of the biggest LAN parties in the country. It became a home away from home for friends like Elson and Holmberg, who only saw one another every 12 months, and for families who would rather spend their vacation time playing computer games than lounging on a beach.

"Fourteen years," replied Anthony, when I asked him how long QuakeCon had held a place of honor on his calendar. "I'd say 10 years for her," he continued, nodding to indicate his significant other, Kat.

"We bring the entire family," Kat said. "This year it's his dad, his little brother, and his brother's fiancé."

Anthony and Kat, on their way to grab a bite to eat with other family members attending QuakeCon.

My method of chatting with QuakeCon 2017 attendees was arbitrary. Anthony and Kat happened to be rising out of their chairs and stretching when I walked by and asked if they would mind telling me about their history with the convention. Any player willing to tear down his or her computer and lug it to QuakeCon tends to be an enthusiast. Anthony fit the profile, more than happy to boast about the cluster of computers that belonged to his family: his machine boasted an i7 processor and an ATI graphics card. Kat's model was simpler, sans tricked-out graphics card, but more than adequate for her gaming palate, while Anthony's dad's and brother's computers were tricked-out, more in line with his own.

"I've put most of these together myself," Anthony said.

Leading up to QuakeCon, Anthony's responsibilities as family computer guru did not end after tightening screws and updating graphics drivers. "I drive down with all the computers," he explained. "Everyone else flies." Although the drive is long, Anthony feels more comfortable sitting behind the wheel for a dozen hours than letting airport personnel stow his computers with luggage. "The first two years, we flew. That didn't go well. My hard drive came loose in my case."

A passerby whose name I failed to catch shared his unsolicited but sagely advice for flying with a PC in tow. "I bought a plane ticket for my tower so I didn't have to check it."

Kat did not walk into QuakeCon 2017 bound and determined to play a specific game. She's happy to browse her library of Steam icons and jump into any game the others want to play. Unsurprisingly, the whole family gravitates toward multiplayer shooters.

"I'm quite into Overwatch right now," said Anthony. "I just got [PlayerUnknown's] Battlegrounds and started playing that yesterday. That's a lot of fun."

I could hear Anthony's and Kat's bellies rumbling over the deeper rumbles of rocket jumps, so I excused myself and wandered over to tables beneath a banner proclaiming Death by Pixels. Not a bad way to go, I thought, and introduced myself.

Steven, a member of the Death by Pixels clan, has been a regular attendee since 2004, when high-speed Internet was still a twinkle in the eyes of many of his friends. "QuakeCon was the LAN party scene back in the day," he said. "There wasn't high-speed Internet, there wasn't a bunch of social media. If people wanted to play video games, they had to go to a LAN party."

A shared passion for technology and gaming formed the bonds between Steven and the other members of Death by Pixels. Nowadays, their Internet connections are more than stable enough to facilitate regular online games, but QuakeCon holds a special significance. "What's kept me coming back is, this is my family vacation now," explained Steven. "Most of these guys I don't see but once a year. We can just play video games and don't have to worry about anything for three or four days. Just get here, order food, and have fun."

"This is my third year bringing a computer, but I've come for years," said Brent, one of Steven's friends "I used to just show up and hang out." Before Brent's inaugural QuakeCon, he worked a security job and drove straight from work to the hotel still clad in his uniform.

"I'd just walk right in because I looked like I worked at the [Hilton] Anatole," he remembered. "I just kept hanging out until I thought, Yeah, I need to build a computer and start coming. We're a Dallas-based gaming group and are always trying to find new ways to mix things up and keep it exciting."

Death by Pixels made camp near the right wall of the BYOC, or Bring Your Own Computer area, a gymnasium-sized room filled with tables, cables, and players touting custom gaming peripherals and computer cases. Taking advantage of their spot by the wall, some of the Pixels crew set up a projector to display games against the wall.

"As long as you're not putting up anything super inappropriate, they don't have an issue with it," Steven explained regarding the rules for bringing along projectors.

"The projector is brand new, and we'll probably mirror whatever he's playing, and some couch co-op games like Gang Beasts," said Ryan, who was attending for the first time. "That's probably one of the main ones we'll play. It's one I'm excited to play."

Volunteers hanging out in the network area, probably crossing their fingers that another Internet outage doesn't occur..

Ryan left nothing to chance for his first QuakeCon. Instead of checking his gaming desktop as baggage, buying an extra seat ticket, or making a long drive, he left it at home and splurged on a high-end laptop. "I'm from Kansas City, so I flew this year," he said. QuakeCon's timing had been fortuitous: He'd been mulling over the idea of buying a more portable rig to take to LAN parties. Meeting up with his friends provided the perfect excuse to indulge.

"If I want to move around and game with these guys, I don't want to take my entire rig," Ryan went on. "I wouldn't trust [transporting] it on an airplane, but I don't want to drive eight hours. I'd rather just fly and get down here instead of taking an extra day of PTO from work. I just got a brand-new laptop from MSI, so I decided to do that instead. It runs just as well."

Every member of Death by Pixels performed their due diligence. Ahead of the show, they downloaded several bite-sized games they could cycle through quickly. Their selections leaned toward cooperative games as fun to watch as to play, ideal fodder for their projector.

"We've had a lot of fun with games like Dead by Daylight lately," said Brent, a third member. "We can get a lot of those in. We also like a lot of the larger games that we can play once. We do a Chivalry spree every year, and we always have fun with that."

"And of course, PUBG," Steven cut in.

"PUBG is the game right now," Brent agreed. "Everyone's playing. In fact, we just won a chicken dinner."

Members of Death by Pixels, a gaming group in the Dallas area.

Short for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, PUBG is an action survival game where 100 players parachute into a location and scramble for supplies and weapons while picking off opponents. In the vein of films and books such as Battle Royale and The Hunger Games, PUBG truncates the battleground over time, herding surviving players closer together and forcing confrontations until only one player remains standing, gifting him or her with a chicken dinner. After outlasting 99 other players, a hot meal makes a better prize than riches or weapons.

Brent and the others not only like playing PUBG, they view it as the ultimate spectator eSport. "If you [start watching] in the middle of a game of PUBG, you understand, okay, here's just trying to survive," said Brent. "You can do things [while you play]. I have three daughters at home, and if they're distracting me, I can set it down without worrying about ruining my game. I can take care of them and then come back to the game and still do okay. That's the good part about it. We're excited to see where it's going."

For some players, nothing beats the classics. Across the BYOC near the far wall, I watched a teenage girl in glasses hunched in front of her monitor, her left hand dancing over WASD keys, her Quake 2 avatar jumping and flitting and spitting rockets at opponents.

"This is my son," said Niles, introducing me to a kiddo around 10 years old glued to a computer screen, "and my daughter is competing right now," he finished. I opted not to disturb his daughter, who was still intent on her one-on-one deathmatch tournament. "This is my third time," Niles said, reflecting on his QuakeCon experiences. "I was trying to figure that out earlier. I was at the first one, and I came last year, and I'm here now."

Niles looked on proudly as his daughter scored a picture-perfect kill with the railgun. Her interest in Quake 2 arose organically, as if it hereditary. "Quake 2 brought me to QuakeCon," Niles said. "These guys play Quake Champions and Quake Live. I play, too, but not very well."

In addition to his kids, both of whom are too young to drive, Niles had a coworker help him pack up his car and make the journey with him. "We loaded up the night before and drove straight through," said Niles. "It's going to be an annual trip, but it's been touch and go [in the past]. Now that my son is also interested in playing, I'll bring them back every year."

Niles and his son who, along with his daughter--unseen, competing in a Quake 2 tournament--plan to make the trip to QuakeCon on a regular basis.

A QuakeCon volunteer who preferred to go by Chkn, his online handle, is another regular, though he shows up to do more than just play games. One of the convention's many volunteer staffers, Chkn has done it all, from setting up the BYOC as a member of the crimp nation, to his role as a network admin at 2017's extravaganza, checking badges at the entrance of the network operations center to make sure only his peers gain access to the machines that monitor connections.

"The first year, I just played games," he recalled. "The second year, I was playing games, and it was 2:00 in the morning. I went to go find something to drink, and they're like, 'Will you watch this room for a little bit for us?' I said sure, and that turned into an eight-to-10-hour shift. It was the board game room. I was playing board games with people, watching over the room."

For his third year, Chkn struck gold when he secured a spot on the crimp nation team, helping set up tables and network connections throughout the BYOC. Over several years, the process of volunteering at QuakeCon underwent change. "You signed up and they would ask you what you thought you'd be good at," he said. "This year is a little bit different. You actually had to apply [for positions] rather than them saying, 'Hey, we need volunteers.'"

On August 24, a Thursday evening and the first night of QuakeCon, a huge block of the BYOC lost Internet connectivity. "I actually got a call from work where I'm a systems administrator, saying, 'We need you to come in.' I said, 'There's no way that's happening,'" he recalled.

Chkn wasn't on the clock when the Internet went dark. Talking with fellow volunteers, he learned that those who had been on duty had worked until nearly 4:00 in the morning only to determine that the trouble wasn't on their end: AT&T had experienced widespread issues that affected Chkn's place of work as well as QuakeCon.

Going back to work was not an option, and not just because he was having a blast. Like many, Chkn made a long trip to join in the festivities. "Buying tickets is crazy. When you buy your ticket, it's April or May, and you put in your time off [request] at that point. That way you make sure to guarantee that time. I know businesses usually say two weeks [ahead of time off]; no, we need several months. A week or so before, [QuakeCon volunteers] start hunkering down on getting everything put together."

Chkn, a volunteer at the 2017 QuakeCon, outside the network admin area in the BYOC.

QuakeCon attendees share more than energy drinks and inside jokes. Instead of heading back to hotel rooms to rest, some players ball up jackets and shirts or fold their arms over their keyboards and sleep at their desks in the BYOC. Those who depart the BYOC for any period of time leave their computers, keyboards, mice, even outerwear at their place settings.

To the uninitiated, leaving customized, cutting-edge equipment out in the open might seem strange, even imprudent. QuakeCon attendees don't sweat it. Despite trappings such as booths where developers show off upcoming products and PR reps who arrange interviews between journalists and developers—my main reason for attending—QuakeCon is not a trade show. It's a friendly neighborhood LAN party, only on a much larger scale.

There are few strangers at QuakeCon. Everyone, from couples like Anthony and Kat, to families like Niles and his kids, to volunteers like Chkn, are there to play games and have a good time. The air is redolent with caffeine and junk food, plastic and electronics, camaraderie and implicit trust.

"At work, it's not fun," Chkn said. "I have to sit behind a desk. I have to take calls with clients, with my boss. It's very stressful. At QuakeCon, I get to sit around drinking energy drinks and cracking jokes that people understand because they're all network engineers. It's a fun time; we're all relaxed."

"Everyone here is excited. That's why I love this place," explained Miguel, another longtime attendee. "The main thing I tell people is that other events are just events. If you go to QuakeCon, you're happy to be here."

Miguel, far right, and a group of QuakeCon attendees. Miguel has attended QuakeCon for years and, in 2017, was one of the organizers for Caught at QuakeCon, a contest where attendees who performed good deeds and evinced positive attitudes would be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a top-of-the-linee, custom gaming PC.

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