Why are we changing Lakeside, and other community topics

Summary

I've said many times over recent weeks, we're heading in to my 20th year of putting on community LAN events and there is absolutely no change in my priorities here and the importance we continue to place on the casual side of what we do. 

The whole reason we have a community team at the events, the reason Intel specifically partnered with us to support the community side not esports, is because it's still really important to us and bearing in mind that EPIC.LAN remains to be predominantly put on by volunteer members of the LAN community who do this just because they want to, hopefully shows that. 

Sometimes, after 100+ events and 20 years it is hard to keep refreshing and rejuvinating things, because LANs and gaming now are not the same as they were when I started. Gaming styles have changed, the "big LAN games" of the past dont exist any more as things move towards more smaller squads and matchmaking amongst friends. Discord has been an amazing tool, but it's also made it much easier for communities and groups to fragment because anybody can set up a Discord. Things move on, priorities change for people and what people want from events changes too. 

Our role is to try and track those changes, keep asking what people want and react as best as we can for the majority of people attending. We can never create an event that matches what hundreds of people want perfectly, but you have my word that we will keep trying and doing our best with what we have, while keeping our events community-focussed (for casual and esports gamers) and as affordable as we possibly can while the world around us keeps creating new challenges to slow us down. 

In the mean time, keep talking to us and we hope to see you at an event in 2023.