Organised Chaos leading the South African LAN revolution

Organised Chaos, a name that has become synonymous with the South African LAN scene, is heading up its own revolution in our nation, redefining the way we see LAN gaming and taking it to a whole other level. We talk to the man behind it all, Dietmar “Treath” Rheeder-Kleist.

From the beginnings of Organised Chaos, to the success they have found in Cape Town, and now in their latest venture, their desire to go national with event's in Johannesburg, no task seems too great for the members of this enthusiastic and experienced team.

Read below for our recent chat with Rheeder-Kleist.

For more info on Organised Chaos, head over to here.

Dietmar (right) with colleague Trooper (left) preparing for the LAN ahead

Could you introduce yourself and give us a brief history of Organised Chaos of how it got to where it is today.

I’m Dietmar “Treath” Rheeder-Kleist. I founded OC under the name of “School is out” in December 2001. I started the LAN with a friend lending me a 24 port Surecom switch and 4 power cables, with 32 people attending.

The next event about a month later saw 48 people, and the third event a massive 64 odd players, melting a cable or two.

During these events I ran a poll on paper to the attendees where I put suggestions such as “ free coffee” and the various names I had come up with to name the event. Among these were “Organised Chaos, The collective, and some others” Organised Chaos received 9 votes in total, and the others dismal 2 or 3 votes.

Once I renamed it to OC, I took on two partners in crime Lance Aylward – a high school friend and programmer; and Reinhard Rheeder-Kleist – my brother and game junkie / server administrator. We moved our event from Table View High School and had a bad experience at a local scout hall where despite checking the power availability, the electrics were shot. About 100 people pitched with only 60 being able to connect at once. We move to Theo Marais sports hall where we grew from 80 all the way to 260 over the space of 2 years. As of 2007 we starting looking for the next best thing and moved into Bellville Velodrome March 2008 where we had a knockout 400 people to start with.

As of today we have capacity for 840, with our biggest attendance in one event to date being 750 odd. (June & July 09)

OC's latest and most inspiring venue, the Bellville Velodrome

Several weeks ago, Organised Chaos announced that they would be expanding nationally with an event in Johannesburg. It was later cancelled due to a number of reasons. Could you elaborate on this and ensure us that it was just a minor setback in your expansion?

Most people I have spoken to are under the impression that JHB is “where the money is”. People earn more, even though living expenses are higher you still earn more. Likewise, venues are incredibly expensive. We anticipate that the JHB market will be about 5x the Cape Town size, and bearing this in mind want to find a venue that is big that we can grow into. We also received various feedback about the location of venues and we checked Tshwane events centre, Sandton Convention Centre, various casinos, the NASREC(MTN Expo Centre) and even Gallagher estate.

The expense in purely hiring the venue takes up our entire budget for the event, making it way too expensive to run. It makes no point running the LAN at full capacity just to break even (when we aren’t even sure if we would fill to capacity). Rest assured though, we are either going to negotiate a better rate, find a venue sponsor or start smaller. It must just be financially viable.

From what we have seen on OC.co.za, as well as reports from a number of gamers who attend OC, it is more than just a LAN. Is OC trying to build a ‘festival’ type vibe around its LANs, such as having cosplay contests, side competitions and so on?

Most definitely. The OC crew are focused on driving lanning as a way of life, a sub-culture that creates events that are worth waiting for and are incredibly worth waiting for. Lan events can be compared to motorcycle rallies or other major events and our drive is to make every one memorable so that gaming culture spreads. Finally we want to begin the revolution of renaming lanning to Digital parties, as consoles will soon find their niche at these events as well.

Cosplayers (dress up) regularly attend the event

What is your view on the South African LAN scene? Do you believe it is healthy in its current state? Is OC leading the pack?

Hmmm, a curious question. I think our attendance stats show that we are leading the pack as no other monthly lans claim more than 400 people per month. We’ve received various reports to the effect that our event is better than JHB events, but these must be taken subjectively. I don’t know if other LANs are punting the “LAN as a lifestyle” side of things but based on personal experience of other local LANS, I can tell you that they have no concept of running a business as I was trying to pay my attendance fee when I was told to come back later. Incidentally that LAN died a slow death.

The other aspect I find really annoying is the false advertising that various lans enter into to compete with each other. And yes I realize you have freedom of speech, but people aren’t stupid and eventually cotton on to the mis-advertisements. Finally in terms of sponsorship, I think much damage has been done by our “forebears” but that damage is slowly being repaired as vendors confidence in lanning is restored. We’ve presented to local distributors and their brands and have secured monthly sponsorship and funding which is a good indication that things are recovering. Going forward though we must be careful to act eithically and diligently to ensure sponsors feel like their marketing spend is well spent.

OC's monthly LAN's are always near full capacity

What needs to be done for us as gamers as well as LAN organizers to take LAN gaming to the next level? Are major LAN’s such as rAge vital or are smaller monthly LANs better in your opinion?

Organisers need to realize they are running a business. This “charge to cover the venue rent” is not sustainable. There is a mindset with traditional or old-school gamers that LANS may only charge to cover expenses. Look at any public service and realize that people’s time is worth money. Both smaller LANs and expos such as Rage and needed. Just like sport clubs and major series’s are needed, lanning is not much different in that aspect. Again if I compare lanning to motorcycling, the regular breakfast run ( or house lan ) is important, which then leads to the larger rally ( LAN event ) which differ in size( Motorcycling: Buffalo, Swallows etc ) (Lanning : OC, Frag, Mayhem MPLD) then leading up to the major events such as Rage or Motorcycle Toy Run

Competitive LAN events have been few and far between this past year. OC features both COD4 and DotA competitions regularly. Is this a main focus of OC and will we see an expansion to other titles? What competitive events will the future OC Jhb LANs feature?

It’s a numbers game. OC is driving competitive gaming as long as we get the interest from the community. It’s pointless running a competition with no entries. We moved two of our sponsors to sponsor a series of events, and want to do this with other games. We can only do this if community captains rally players to attend the LANS and ask for these tournaments. COD4 and Dota are VERY popular obviously, but we recently internally sponsored a UT3 tournament. Its purely an economy of scale argument.

This isn’t our main focus, we focus on social and competitive gaming. Competitive gaming stems from social gaming, so remembering this we pay equal mind to both. To give an example we designated Team Fortress 2 as our social game for August OC, and incentivized players by giving out chocolates and sodas to the players who were in the servers when we asked them to be. We will definitely take COD4 and DotA tournaments to JHB, but would like to expand this to at least 1 tournament of each game genre per event, so 3 tournaments max per event. We can’t dilute further than that as we need to keep the sponsor in mind and their marketing reach.

OC features a whole host of special give-aways at each and every event

What is Organised Chaos’s plan for 2010? Can Jhb lanners expect regular monthly events, and will Cape Town lanners see something new at their beloved events? Is OC going to change the face of LAN gaming in South Africa?

We plan to go to JHB once a month, so yes they can expect regular events. Once we find the right (priced) venue we will be there every month. At that time we’ll need to arrange local crew to assist us and begin spreading the OC culture that has been very popular in Cape Town. We’d also like an opportunity to manage the infrastructure at Rage. In terms of new things at OC Cape Town, we are already innovating by having a licensed bar and decent chill area with couches and chairs and tables. Next we will be running a decent console area. We think we have changed the face of lanning in SA already, and you can expect more from us going forward.

Thank you for your time Dietmar, any last words?

Thanks for the opportunity. If anyone can point us to a decent venue in JHB or has any insight to the JHB scene please drop me a line.

OC, at the forefront of South African gaming