Running Lan Parties in college

[danbuntu]

Hi we've been approached by some student who want to run a lan party in our college. Fundamentally we have no problem with this - we've got some alright PCs and and network that can happily cope. In particular they want to play counter strike - source or GO.

 

How we're not sure about the best way to go about getting the games on to the machines and managing them. We use SCCM and image all or deployments. However we don't particularly want to re-image a bunch of machines on friday, install CS or steam and then install the games, and then reimage the machines again on the Monday.

 

Does anyone else do this and do they have any tips about to do it?

[DalekSec]

Only thing i'm aware of is, isn't CS an 18? Are they allowed to play 18 rated games on school PCs?

[danbuntu]

Good point and one I hadn't thought of.

However the we do have over 18's and it might well be that we steer them towards different games.

[NokiX]

I can't think of any way to manage the deployment of both steam and the games as the games would likely need to be on their own account and they would need the privileges to run/update the games when required. I remember when I was in college they had one of the computer science rooms as a games room as well so each machine had steam on but it was restricted to a local account which a member of staff would log the machines being used in with.

 

Also the games were all on accounts managed by the college so the games would be booted up ready to play but they were all free to play games so counter strike wasn't something that was played. I don't think paid games is a good idea here but it does require a certain amount of trust which isn't always a good idea with some prats you find in college.

[synaesthesia]

Quake Live might be a better shout, especially now you can do local games.

[DalekSec]

Quake Live might be a better shout, especially now you can do local games.

 

Also an 18? Just to be aware, What's wrong with good old Minecraft? OR a racing game or something. Playing an 18 rated game will get you in trouble if parents find out

[synaesthesia]

No it's not an 18. It's rated "Teen", 13+ and specifically adapted from Quake 3 removing religious motives and gibs for that reason.

[DalekSec]

No it's not an 18. It's rated "Teen", 13+ and specifically adapted from Quake 3 removing religious motives and gibs for that reason.

 

Ah that's why sure all Quakes were 18. Haven't played live, Might be a safer bet then!

[rich_tech]

portable halo is another option, sans gibs and violence and I think that can be controlled a bit easier as you can lock it on and off with GPOs and software restriction policies, you can search on google for it easily enough, it caused problems for another school until I showed then SRPs.

[CyberDrac]

Maybe try Warsow, more cartoony, or World of Padman

[Tech-head]

I run artemis lan games across the site. Redirected start menus and desktops for day to day accounts a separate set of redirections for artemis specific user accounts. Then just a case in AD of enabling and disabling the artemis accounts as necessary.

[datar_]

Only thing i'm aware of is, isn't CS an 18? Are they allowed to play 18 rated games on school PCs?

 

It is rated 18 for Xbox and PlayStation, but it is unrated for PC. Potential for loophole there ^_^