The Gathering (LAN party)

The Gathering (abbreviated as "TG" for short) is a computer party which is held annually in Vikingskipet Olympic Arena in Hamar, Norway, and lasts for five consecutive days (starting on the Wednesday in Easter each year).

In early 1991, Vegard Skjefstad and Trond Michelsen, members of the demogroup Deadline, decided that they wanted to organize a big demoparty in Norway.

[citation needed] Because of this, and the fact that Deadline wasn't particularly well known, Mr. Skjefstad suggested that the group Crusaders should be involved.

Consequently, the organizers had to hire a large construction tent and some heavy duty heating equipment (there was still snow on the ground).

A group from Stavanger led by Magnar Harestad proposed to host the party instead, and got approval and some backing from the TG crew.

Meanwhile, the venues built for the 1994 Winter Olympics were made available for hire, and prices were increasingly reasonable due to lack of interest.

[5] TG lasts for five days (from Holy Wednesday to Easter Sunday every year), and is both longer and bigger than most other computer parties.

People have wildly different opinions about what constitutes a proper LAN party; the common trend at TG these years seem to be warez, games (the most popular being Counter-Strike), and IRC.

However, many visitors find this too boring in the long run[citation needed], and there are many unofficial mini-events happening all the time.

TG has always been a hub for young creative people to battle it out in many types of competitions;[citation needed] demo coding, music, graphics, animation, games, hardware-modification and Dance Dance Revolution to name a few; in addition, there are usually concerts and other things happening live on stage once or twice a day, as well as seminars etc.

[citation needed] The organization Kreativ Aktiv Norsk Dataungdom (KANDU) is formally responsible for hosting TG.

To try to make the ticket sales a bit more smooth, a group of people closely related to the administration of TG made a separate company called Partyticket (or Partyticket.net, PTN for short), selling unified ticket-related services (such as ordering, payment, seating, handling competitions etc.)

Partyticket went online for the first time in 2002, and like Billettservice instantly went down under the massive load, partly due to a problem at the third-party service authorizing credit card transactions.

Many people blame the ticket-sales problems directly at PTN and has tried to pressure TG into choosing some other solution.

Instead of buying actual tickets, people were put in a virtual queue, thus loading the server a lot less during the peak hours.

By August 8, the management of TG was required to pay 988,536 NOK in unpaid taxes, which could have caused the 2009 staging of The Gathering to be cancelled.