My friends and I have been playing LAN and online multiplayer games for many years. The first LAN parties were probably Doom-based, and then Doom II and Duke Nukem 3D after that. Some Warcraft mixed in there for good measure. Those were the early days of network gaming (not counting BBS games, of course).

We spent hours building ad hoc LANs out of fussy old SMC and 3Com Ethernet adapters, 10Base2 coax cable and T connectors (don't forget the terminators!); tweaking IRQ and DMA settings in clunky DOS drivers; eating kilos of pizza and drinking litres of Coca-Cola to get us through late-night frag sessions. Serious geek stuff. Maybe even nerd stuff. Yeah, definitely nerd.

Games and technology evolved and it's now easier than ever to play multiplayer games online or on a LAN, and yes, we're still playing them, although usually without the Coke (beer is now the fuel of choice) and the uber-late nights. A 2am session on a weekend is now considered a very late night.

Some good friendships have developed through computers and video games, and a few of us have been playing fairly regularly over the past few years. With gamers forming "clans" to play together online, we thought we'd start our own and called it Great White North, or "GWN" for short. We've had ideas about setting up a website, message board, etc. for our little clan (3-5 members is the most we've had). LGX even whipped up a few logos for us. Nothing significant ever materialized, however. Well now Gamespot makes it easy to organize a little web space for our group, in the form of Gamespot Unions. I just discovered this feature a few weeks ago, and thought it'd be a good way for the GWN to create a web presence and give us a forum to throw ideas around.

So without further adieu, I present the official Great White North Gamespot union! (This link will give you a message about the union not being established yet, until all four of our Charter Members confirm their membership. Soon!)

Oh, and on another very loosely-related note, the damaged Lian-Li case that I ordered last week from NCIX has been accepted for RMA, full refund. WOOT. I'm thinking about picking up an Antec P182, based on a recommendation and review from Silent PC Review about it being very suitable for building a quiet PC, which is essential for me if I'm to be able to leave it on all the time as a Windows Media Centre server. It's also much cheaper than the Lian-Li cases, a big bonus. Let me know what you think!