Pittsburgh LAN Coalition

Maria Sciullo of the Post-Gazette wrote a wonderful article about Pittco’s recent event, Iron Storm X.

Read Videogamers come together in Castle Shannon for 24 hours of competition at post-gazette.com.

See more press coverage of past Pittco events on our new Media and PR section.

The internationally-known Pittsburgh LAN Coalition (Pittco) officially announced today the opening of registration for its latest event, IRON STORM X from 2 p.m. on March 21 to 2 p.m. March 22 at the Castle Shannon Volunteer Fire Hall in Castle Shannon, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Iron Storm X is the eleventh LAN party computer and console gaming event which Pittco has held in its more than five years as an organization.

Pittco will seat up to 200 gamers at the 24-hour event. Gamers will compete in a variety of tournaments and competitions in order to prove they are the best player of their favorite games. Tournaments will be formally announced closer to the event, but will probably include Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Counter-Strike: Source, and Unreal Tournament.

Several hundred dollars in prizes will be given to winners of these contests. Past prize sponsors include Alienware, ATXPowerSupplies.com, Bawls Guarana, BDA Gamer, CPU Magazine, Danger Den, Evo-G, FSP Group USA, Razer, Patriot Memory, Red Bull, Slappa, Steel Series, TRENDnet, and Velocity Micro.

In addition to its own dedicated servers, Pittsburgh-based computer review web sites ThinkComputers and BIOS LEVEL will be lending some of their dedicated servers.

Light snacks will be available for free at the event, while water, soft drinks, and pizza will be available for a nominal free.

Admission to the event costs $25 for pre-registration on its web site, www.pittco.org, or $35 for on-site registration.

Registration is open now.

Registration for Pittco’s IRON STORM 9 is now closed. There are still seats available for the door price of $35 tomorrow at the event.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PITTSBURGH– Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, Inc. (”Pittco”) plans to hold its tenth event, IRON STORM 9, on August 16 and 17 at the Castle Shannon Firehall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittco is opening the doors for 200 gamers for 24 hours of non-stop gaming, competition, camaraderie, and fun.

Pittco attracts gamers from throughout the greater Pittsburgh area, and even into Canada. There are 200 seats available, and registration is open immediately.

“We have been continually growing throughout almost every event,” Dan Wright, Pittco president, said. “At Iron Storm 8 we received our largest attendance level yet, surpassing the 150 mark plus staff.”

This surpassed Pittco’s previous record of 130 plus staff at Iron Storm 7.

“We have even been lucky enough to have people from all of the country, as well as Canada and Europe attend our events,” Sean Potter, Iron Storm 9 organizer, said.

Regardless of the number of attendees, Pittco promises to have more PC and console gaming action than ever before.

Prepaying for the day-long event costs $25, and the walk-in door price is $35. Pittco recommends prepaying for the event not only because of the cheaper price, but because choice seating is available to those who registered beforehand.

Iron Storm 9 will be held at the Castle Shannon Volunteer Fire Department located at 3600 Library Road Castle Shannon, PA 15234. This is the same location where the four prior events where held.

In the past UT3, Unreal Tournament 2004, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike 1.6, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Battlefield 2/142, Day of Defeat, Call of Duty 4, World of Warcraft, WarCraft III, and StarCraft have been played. If there is a popular game that a gamer desires to play, odds are that that gamer will find someone at Iron Storm who wants to play it with them.

The tournaments at Iron Storm 9 will be similar to previous events with a couple of new additions to the lineup. Some of the main tournaments are the 5v5 Counter-Strike Source with a $25 buy in per team, 5v5 Call of Duty 4, and 1v1 Unreal Tournament 3 DeathMatch. Pittco will also run a 5v5 Battlefield 2/142 tournament if there is enough interest. In addition to these main events, Pittco will be hosting some classic game tournaments which include a 1v1 “Clamato Bowl” Quake 3 tournament and a 1v1 StarCraft: Brood War tournament.

For console gamers attending the event, Pittco hopes to have an array of eight HDTVs. Tournaments for Halo 3, Guitar Hero 3, and Super Smash Brothers: Brawl will be taking place on these HDTVs.

In addition to our gaming tournaments, Pittco will be hosting many other things to do at the event, including Pittco’s heralded “Ice Head Competition”, held at the end of every LAN party. The goal of the Ice Head Competition is to see who can hold their breath the longest, upside down, in ice cold water. Ice Head, Karaoke and Extreme Musical Chairs are just a few tournaments that Pittco is planning to organize throughout the event.

Also at Iron Storm 9, Pittco will giving gamers a chance to win some serious cash and prizes in its 50/50 ROFL(Raffle). Pittco will be supplying the raffle with over $500 worth of the latest and greatest computer components. Sponsors for these items will be announced soon.

The Pittco staff is positive that having some of the latest games mixed in with old fan favorites will draw a bigger crowd to the event, as well as win over many new sponsors for prizes.

Registration for the event is now open, and is accessible via Pittco’s website (http://www.pittco.org/register/). The cost of the event will be $25 pre-paid, or $35 at the door. Drinks and snacks will be made available to everyone, and pizza will be provided for an small, additional cost.

For more information, contact Dan Wright, president of Pittco, or Sean Potter, IS9 organizer.

ABOUT PITTSBURGH LAN COALITION, INC.
Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, Inc. (“Pittco”) was founded in 2003 to organize the greater Pittsburgh LAN scene. The mission of Pittco is to provide a safe, entertaining, and competitive environment for video gamers of all ages. Since its inception, Pittco has held nine events and has received much attention in the LAN party community. Its web site is www.pittco.org .

PITTSBURGH– Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, Inc. (“Pittco”) held its ninth event, Iron Storm 8, on March 15 and 16 at the Castle Shannon Firehall. More than 160 men and women attended the 24-hour event, including more than 150 gamers and 15 staff members.

Attendees competed in several PC and console video games tournaments and odd talent competitions. More than $2,000 worth of prizes donated by sponsors such as Warrendale-based DVDEmpire.com, ATXPowerSupplies.com, Bawls Guarana, In Win, Razer, Red Bull, Thermaltake, and VisionTek were given as prizes for tournaments in games such as Counter-Strike: Source, Unreal Tournament 2004, Halo 3, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, and Battlefield 2. Local computer enthusiast web sites BIOSLEVEL.com and ThinkComputers.org sponsored dedicated servers for the event.

Pittco president Daniel “Danielson” Wright of Mount Lebanon was impressed with the turn-out and success of the event.

“We broke our long time goal of 150 attendees and our crazy tournaments and games lasted well into the wee hours of the morning,” Wright said. “I’m impressed with my staff for their hard work preparing for the party and their sacrifice to keep events flowing and energy up throughout the night.”

Iron Storm 8 was the first Pittco event which Mark “Dauphin” Slazinski of Grove City attended.

“It was nice to see a group of guys who were willing to not only excellent sportsmen, but who helped make sure everyone was able to connect and have a blast,” Slazinski said. “Plus, I will remember the random Radio Shack trip and food run with people I just met.”

“The network performance was solid and our power never went out,” Colin Dean, server manager and public relations engineer from Volant, said. “Our fiber Internet connection gave us access to speedy patch downloads and chat access so attendees could stay in touch with friends who were unable to come.”

Pittco’s Iron Storm events aren’t just gaming tournaments. Attendees competed in karaoke competitions and even musical chairs. One tournament revolved around a game, but had consequences: the winning team earned several four-packs of popular energy drinks, but the losing team earned a can of Mott’s Clamato Energia clam and tomato juice and had to chug it on the spot.

Some attendees discussed programming and general computing in addition to playing games. While many attendees are high school students, a large contingent is in college or has recently graduated. Fields vary from computer science and information systems to political science and psychology.

“Attendees hail Pittco for its events’ atmosphere, and Iron Storm 8 once again solidified this fact,” Wright said.

Planning is already underway for the next event, Iron Storm 9, which is to be held in August.

“We’ll be aiming to increase attendance and getting even more sponsors,” said Sean “Obsidian” Potter, event chair for Iron Storm 8 and the next event, Iron Storm 9.

For more information, visit Pittco’s website at www.pittco.org to contact Dan Wright, Sean Potter, or Colin Dean.

ABOUT PITTSBURGH LAN COALITION, INC.
Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, Inc. (”Pittco”) was founded in 2003 to organize the greater Pittsburgh LAN scene. The mission of Pittco is to provide a safe, entertaining, and competitive environment for video gamers of all ages. Since its inception, Pittco has held nine events and has received much attention in the LAN party community. Its web site is www.pittco.org.

Discuss this in the forums.

Pittco has presence on a few social networks which members frequent. If you are active on another social network and would like to see Pittco have an official presence there, let us know!

Facebook

Pittco has a group and a fan page. There are two events (1, 2) for Iron Storm 8.

MySpace

Pittco has a MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/pittco.

Steam

Pittco has a group on the Steam Community at http://steamcommunity.com/groups/pittco.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PITTSBURGH– Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, Inc. (“Pittco“) unveiled today its new web site. The LAN party organizer whose events include seven large “Iron Storm” tournaments and one small “Pittco Lite” tournament redesigned the site in order to greater facilitate the use of the site as a tool for attendees, sponsors, and parents.

The site was redesigned by a team of Pittco staff members including Colin Dean, Jonathan Daniel, Sean Potter, Zack Zlotnik, and Patrick Cannon. They used WordPress, the premiere blogging software, and modified a theme originally produced by Srini G. In addition, the team also heavily modified Autonomous LAN Party, a LAN party management software.

Pittco will host its ninth event, Iron Storm 8, on March 15-16, 2008 at the Castle Shannon Firehall in the Castle Shannon suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 200 spots are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Gamers from throughout western Pennsylvania and the United States, and even internationally from Ontario, Canada.

For more information, contact Dan Wright, president of Pittco, or Sean Potter, IS8 organizer.

ABOUT PITTSBURGH LAN COALITION, INC.
Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, Inc. (“Pittco”) was founded in 2003 to organize the greater Pittsburgh LAN scene. The mission of Pittco is to provide a safe, entertaining, and competitive environment for video gamers of all ages. Since its inception, Pittco has held eight events and has received much attention in the LAN party community. Its web site is www.pittco.org.

Discuss this in the forums.