Krakah, you bring up some very good points, and I think it's time for a little full disclosure on this.
Everything that's being mentioned here is
Planning Phase Only. So don't worry that I am going to destroy the fun and casual LAN atmosphere.
This is a plan to restructure our new "Summer LAN" where we partner with LANFest. I'm testing the waters of rebranding our LANFest event as something more competitive so that it is distinctly different from the FITES LAN in February. The reason is I don't want to have FITES competing with itself to fill seats. By having two events that are essentially the same, with no difference, we run the risk of people choosing one LAN or the other and not getting to our max potential.
To be clear, the February LAN will remain the same FITES LAN that people have always known. There is no fear of that ever changing.
This is an experiment on my part to see if there is something that can be done to get FITES on board with the growing esports scene that would allow us to hold a LAN event, have an open play BYOC area, and still meet our mission as a charitable non-profit organization.
There's a lot to discuss about this plan, and I would love to go over it with you sometime if you are really interested. It's just more to convey than a simple forum post can get across.
As I said, this is in the "planning" and "testing the waters" phase of things. If I find out this plan is feasible and is possible then you can expect a full on media barrage as I try to explain things out to our current LAN audience and work on getting new attendees.
Also, PM being sent about BF3/4 things.