1. When: In the evening or in the weekend somewhere. Normally a lanparty takes longer than just 2 or 3 hours, so I would prefer to hold it on a saturday or sunday.
   
2. What games: We had some discussions, and it appears that most people or in favor of FPS-games, with racing games added for variation. Strategy games are a bit difficult, since they take longer (for 1 match), and you have to have some (or a lot of) familiarity with the game to be any good at it. For all I care people can still play it, but I would not focus on it. So here a list of possible games:
1. Wolfenstein ET: 
• PRO: it's free, there are bots available, objective&team based, heaps of fun
  
• CON: dunno of it installs on windows-pc's here (check for opengl-driver compatibility), some learning curve (how to do the objectives, character classes, etc...)
2. Unreal Tournement:
   
• PRO: old (has both software mode, opengl mode and directX mode), so it is almost certain the pc's here will be able to run it. Different play modes, bots available, possible to play in up to 4 different teams. Some people (at least I do) have a copy.
  
• CON: too old? Some people are not in favour of it?
3. Quake III:
   
• PRO: bots, ... Almost everyone has a cracked version lying around somewhere
  
• CON: perhaps same problem as Wolfenstein ET: we have to find out whether or not the opengl drivers of the windows pc are good enough.
4. Serious Sam:
• PRO: loads of monsters, possibility to play in coop mode against the monsters.
• CON: gets repetitive after half an hour, only directX and openGL modes supported, no software rendering (driver problems again?)
5. Need For Speed (whatever the version):
• PRO: a racing game is always fun for variation, good gameplay, can be played by a lot of people at the same time.
• CON: I highly suspect this is a directX only game, and i'm not sure we will be able to play it here.
3. Who: Well, who do we invite? I guess everyone of BEG is allowed to join (perhaps some other people as well: strob, roste, ...?). I wouldn't but a note out though, just ask people.
4. Problems: Well, we can disguise it a bit as teambuilding, but I'm not so sure how Luc will appreciate that argument (still, It will be hard for Yves to fire half the group). We should of course first check which games are playable on both windows/linux/laptops/...
   
5. Food : Well, pizza seems to be favorite :p

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Michiel Van Bel 
PhD student
Tel:+32 (0)9 331 36 95                        fax:+32 (0)9 3313809
VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University
Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, BELGIUM
mibel@psb.ugent.be                         http://www.psb.ugent.be
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