It's part tournament and part community, and a unique way to get gamers together. The 18th annual LANFest Colorado took place October 3 to5, 2025, at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.
Most of the 29,000-square-foot James R. Sullivan Event Center was taken up by hundreds of computers on a local area network, or LAN. Participants brought and set up their own systems, but some machines were available to rent.
Jacob Anderson is an organizer for LANFest Colorado. He said there’s something uniquely special about the communal experience of gathering to game.
“If you're playing at home and you do something amazing, you can go make a sandwich - that's about the only celebration you can do,” Anderson said, “But here you can be like, ‘All right… who was MonkeyMan76?’ and somebody across the room goes, ‘That's me. Haha - I got you.’”
For attendee Tyler Hamill, LANFest is a family affair. He and his dad, Ches Hamill, usually game online with their friends. But they come from Tennessee every year to assemble in person.
“You look around you here, you'll see every style of game represented,” Tyler said. “There's something to spark your curiosity, something to spark your imagination, and you get to do it with your friends and your family and the people who matter the most.”
Tyler and Ches’ team, Meat Pickle Gamers, have been attending LANFest since 2008, but have played games together for even longer. Ches says Tyler started playing Call of Duty with the group as a teenager and has learned a lot since then.
“He actually built a computer all the way from the ground up in support of this, so he could learn how a computer works,” Ches told KUNC. “Put the operating system on, put the hard drives, the memory, the CPU…it was a huge learning experience, and he was psyched to do it.”
Anderson said volunteers working at the event also have chances to learn new skills.
“A lot of my admins have zero technical experience whatsoever. We sit these people with the experts, and they learn. And then some of them have gone on to get jobs in those fields,” he said. “With children, they walk in and see us doing our thing. And it's like, ‘I want to be that when I grow up.’ Yes, you can very well be that - not only an admin with us, but a network engineer or anything like that. These skills are in high demand.”
Gaming is the vehicle of the event, but there’s real social building here, including what Anderson calls AFK - or Away From Keyboard – activities, such as lawn games and scavenger hunts.
“We want to encourage people to get up out of their chairs and do things other than the computer games the entire time,” Anderson said. “We want to make new relationships. For example, in the room we're in right now, there is a group that has never met, and they're all playing Dungeons and Dragons.”
Attendees ranged from toddlers to seniors, and even a couple of dogs were there. Anderson says it warms his heart to see families and friends enjoying gaming together.
“It makes me really happy to see that even though they may not be playing the same game, they're all getting to spend time with each other, doing something that they love," said Anderson. "It also somewhat breaks the stereotype that it's a bunch of sweaty guys in a basement somewhere. We have people from all age groups and all walks of life.”
LANFest, which has been running in Colorado since 2007, raises money for various charities each year. This year’s proceeds are going to the Colorado Cancer Society. Organizers also donate their time to help run middle and high school e-sports events.
