Good points Jeff... particularly on how LAN-only games could possibly have different gameplay than internet-based games.

As I'm currently in Asia, and have thought out about this myself I felt I should comment. Here in asia there are game centers everywhere, and in these games centers are banks of computers, I've seen them vary from 20 to 100 computers in size. Also game centers are almost always packed with teens playing a varity of multiplayer games, and MMOGs. Also I know from experince back in univeristy people used to play multiplayer games across the campus network for hours on end. So I think their is a definte market for lan only games the quetion in my mind becomes not should but what.

What kind of game could be made to take best advantage of a lan only environment? Some ideas the spring to mind are persistant world games, that an operator can modify to better suit the tastes or better challeng the patrons. As well as quick play or short round games that can support large numbers of multiple users.