gamienator@lan:~$ whoami

Stephan Schaffner

aka Gamienator

A Nerd who loves LAN Partys

I organise LAN parties, build their networks and servers – and then join in playing. What started as a Counter-Strike server for my clan is now my job and still my favourite hobby.

My projects Get in touch
Portrait of Stephan Schaffner
LAN Crew
  • since 2013 organising LAN parties
  • twice a year W2TJ LAN party
  • 1,300+ guests at the biggest LAN
  • 100% Linux on my servers

// about me

First the gaming, then the cabling

I just missed the golden era of the early 2000s – I was simply too young. I made it to my first public LAN party at 16, and it has never let go of me since: the hauling, the setting up, that one night when suddenly everybody is online at the same time.

My IT career started in the least spectacular way possible: with a Counter-Strike server for my clan. That this would lead me into the IT world was never the plan – it simply happened.

What shaped me most is the W2TJ. That is where I got to experiment, break things and fix them again – learning by doing instead of a certification course. Routing, VLANs, virtualisation, storage, high availability: I taught myself most of it between two LANs, simply because it had to work by the next party.

My best IT school was a LAN party.

Other than that I am a pretty easy-going guy: pragmatic rather than perfect, self-built rather than bought, and always up for a bad pun on TeamSpeak.

Although “pragmatic” is a flexible term in my case: I have a strong tendency to over-engineer. Especially at the W2TJ – where a redundant cluster occasionally ends up serving a weekend for 60 people. Would a single server do? Sure. Do I build three anyway? Also sure.

View across the hall of a large LAN party
Where it is nicest: right in the middle of it.

// what I play

From gaming into IT – and once straight into a job

I mostly play shooters, with a very persistent soft spot for arcade racers. One game brought me into IT, another one took me straight to an employer.

  • Favourite anecdote

    Warface → Crytek

    from playing to a contract

    I played Warface so intensely that it actually turned into a job: a year at Crytek. For a while the hobby was the workplace – not many games manage that.

  • Counter-Strike

    where it all began

    The clan needed a server, so I set one up. That is how my entire IT story started – without me noticing.

  • Need for Speed

    annual ritual

    Underground 1, Underground 2 and Most Wanted (2005). Absolute favourites that I replay every single year. That is not going to change.

  • Unreal Tournament & co.

    the usual programme

    Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 3 are among my all-time favourites. Generally speaking: if there is aiming involved, count me in – preferably in the same room as my opponents, because trash talk simply works better offline.

  • LAN classics

    for the small hours

    Coop sessions, racing rounds, party games and the console playzone. Everything that still works at 3am when nobody wants to be competitive any more.

Stephan wearing a headset at the LAN party

// stack

What I work with

The Linux world is where I am at home. None of this is listed because it sounds good – it is all in active use, usually under time pressure right before a LAN.

  • Debian

    My default foundation. This is where I have gathered most of my experience, and it is my first choice for almost everything.

  • Proxmox VE

    Virtualisation and containers for everything that has to run at a LAN – from game servers to monitoring.

  • Ceph

    Distributed storage in a cluster. This is where I learned what high availability really means – painful lessons included.

  • Ansible

    Anything I would have to do twice, I do once as a playbook. It makes the on-site setup reproducible.

  • Networking

    VLANs, routing, DHCP and DNS. The heart of every LAN – and the area that fascinates me most.

  • pfSense

    Firewall and router at the border to the outside world. Rule sets, NAT and traffic shaping for a few dozen hungry clients.

  • Checkmk

    Monitoring for everything that blinks. I would rather know a switch port is misbehaving before 60 people tell me about it at once.

  • HA & enterprise hardware

    Clusters built from second-hand server hardware, laid out redundantly. Tried out where outages hurt, but nobody gets a shocking invoice.

// projects

What I am building right now

Two projects take up most of my spare time – and I would start both of them again in a heartbeat.

W2TJ – Welcome 2 the Jungle

Organiser & IT infrastructure · since 2013

« Gaming together + special event »

Twice a year we turn the Maximilian-Kolbe-Haus in Seligenstadt-Froschhausen into a LAN party for around 60 people plus the crew. Three days of gaming, poker, a console playzone and a new – usually physically demanding – special event every year.

I am responsible for the entire IT infrastructure: network, servers, monitoring, game servers, setup and teardown. Above all, though, W2TJ is my proving ground – my first attempts at high availability with enterprise hardware, Proxmox and Ceph happened right there.

  • Networking
  • Proxmox
  • Ceph
  • Game servers
  • Monitoring
w2tj.net
My organiser desk with monitoring dashboards during the LAN
The crew NOC during the party: dashboards, game servers, coffee.
Stephan at the organiser desk wearing the W2TJ wristband
Just before setup – the wristband is already on.

LAN.party

Founder & maintainer · since 2024

« The Global LAN Party Community »

It started with an accident: I bought the domain by mistake. Since it was there anyway, it grew into a community hub.

Today you will find a list of LAN parties from all over the world including a map, a small but lovely Discord community, and a handful of services on subdomains that make life easier for LAN organisers.

  • Event Map
  • Discord Gameserver Notifier
  • FlowGauge
LAN.party

// timeline

My LAN party CV

  1. at 16

    The first public LAN

    Packed the machine, drove there, got hooked. I had missed the golden era of the early 2000s – but not the fascination.

  2. before & after

    Counter-Strike server for the clan

    My first own server. The accidental starting shot for everything that followed.

  3. 2013

    Joining the W2TJ crew

    My very first organising team: the W2TJ. A regional LAN with 50 to 60 guests, with me responsible for networking and server hosting. Twice a year ever since.

  4. 2014 – 2017

    Klopperhoppel – my own LAN

    An attempt to establish a LAN party of my own. Four times we gathered around 20 guests in the “Clubraum Keller” in Karben. It never became the big breakthrough – but the basement vibe was the real deal.

  5. 2021 – 2025

    NorthCon

    Five years on the crew of a much bigger event: more than 1,300 guests. Different scale, same enthusiasm.

  6. 2024

    LAN.party goes live

    An accidental domain purchase turns into a community project with an event list, Discord and its own services.

  7. today

    Carrying on

    Two LANs a year, a growing community project and still the same question: could this not be a little more redundant?

// professionally

The short, honest version

Gaming brought me into IT: the Counter-Strike server for my clan was how I got into the topic in the first place. And once it even turned into an actual job – Warface took me to Crytek for a year.

The practical foundation for all of it was laid at the W2TJ. What I learned there between setup and teardown is what I use every working day – especially everything around networking, Linux and virtualisation.

More details about my professional background live where they belong:

LinkedIn Xing

// contact

Say hello

Questions about the LAN, up for some networking talk, or just a good anecdote? The fastest way to reach me is Discord.