It is recognized by the Guinness Book of Records and Twin Galaxies as being the world's largest LAN party and computer festival, as well as having the world's fastest Internet connection, and the most generated traffic.[2] The Internet connection record was beaten in 2012 by the second largest computer festival in the world: The Gathering in Norway.[3]
In the year 2007, the founders of DreamHack received a diploma of honor from the municipality of Jönköping for being important to business, education and society of the local community.
DreamHack winter 2004.
Event summary
DreamHack calls itself the world's largest "digital festival".[4][5] The winter event consistently has approximately 10% more visitors than the summer event, but in other respects they are quite similar. Both events are 72 hours (stretching over 4 days), and have scheduled activity around the clock, every day.[6]
Attendees' ages range from elementary school to senior citizens, though the average age is 16-17. People arrive from all over the world to participate. The latest DreamHack competition took place in Romania Bucharest between 24 and 27 April 2015.[7]
The event consists of five major components: the festival, the gaming competitions, the digital arts competitions, the live concerts and the expo.
Component
Description
Festival
Every seated participant gets a table (60 cm deep and 83 cm wide), a chair, a power socket and a LAN socket through which DreamHack supplies one of the fastest Internet connections in the world as of 2011 .[2] To this place they bring their own equipment of choice, usually a display or TV and a computer or console. Some bring their own office chairs to substitute the ones supplied. Since there is activity around the clock, participants can sleep in the adjacent sleeping halls, to which they bring their own sleeping equipment.
Gaming competitions
With a total prize pool of over 3 million SEK, the DreamHack esports competitions attract professional players from all over the world, most notably South Korea. From DreamHack, about one hundred different video streams are broadcast over the Internet, of which most cover the esports competitions. 21 of them are produced by DreamHack crew, the rest are independent and include Swedish national TV. These are watched by people from all continents in the world, and at DHW11 the number of unique viewers were over 1.6 million, which is another record.[8]
Digital arts competitions
In the DreamHack Kreativ competition participants compete in creating all things digital, including photographs, drawings, music, 3D-models, demos, games, animations and movies. It is for many the most important part of the event, since competitions of this kind are very rare, and places where these artists get to meet their audience in person are even rarer. Some participants spend the entire event producing a creative works, such as a movie or piece of music. The hours-long final ceremony, during which all submissions are presented on the huge screens and sound system of MainStage, draws a big crowd and is highly appreciated by the audience.
Live concerts
Every evening and night there are big musical acts on MainStage. This aspect of DreamHack has increased dramatically in popularity and is a major factor in the rise in sale of daypasses, hinting that future concerts are likely to be even grander. The technological direction of the festival is reflected in that MainStage is unusually visual for a stage of this size, with a sophisticated setup of lasers, lights and professional video broadcast equipment.
Expo
Many companies present their products in the expo area and it is common for big game development studios to allow visitors to play the games currently under development. There are also various seminars and lectures, as well as a shop selling computer equipment.
DreamHack is arranged with the help of about 800 volunteers, set up in "Crew Teams". They work in shifts to provide service for the visitors around the clock, like the support crew that have a helpdesk where the participants can address their technical problems. The organization also relies on local police and security officers who patrol the area.
History
DreamHack began as a small gathering of schoolmates and friends in the basement of an elementary school in Malung in the early '90s. In 1994 it was moved to the school cafeteria and became one of the larger regional demoparties at the time. The 1994 gathering was also the first one to go by the name DreamHack.
In 1997 the event took place at Arena Kupolen in Borlänge and became the largest LAN party of Sweden and the third largest party in Scandinavia at the time. Furthermore, DreamHack 2001 and the upcoming events were held at the Elmia exhibition centre in Jönköping, where it has been since.
Starting the year 2002, DreamHack became a semiannual event with DreamHack Summer, aiming for games, taking place in June and DreamHack Winter, slightly more specific for the demo scene, being held during the last weekend of November. This difference has since blurred and perhaps been completely erased.
It was announced on November 15, 2012 that DreamHack would be partnering with Major League Gaming (MLG) and Electronic Sports League (ESL) to help facilitate the growth and development of the North American and European eSports scene. This partnerships includes universal rankings, unified competition structures and more.[9]
In 2013, the now fully featured corporation DreamHack AB also began arranging a third event during the late summer, in Stockholm. It was hosted at Globe Arenas in 2014.
In November 2015 Modern Times Group bought 100% of DreamHack for an enterprise value of SEK 244 million.[10] At the Winter 2015 event, commentator Richard Lewis and AllianceDota 2 player Jonathan 'Loda' Berg had a physical altercation,[11][12][13] which resulted in Lewis's permanent ban from future DreamHack events.[14]
Past events
The event has broken records many times, Swedish records are marked (SR) and world records are marked (WR).
Hafthor "Hafficool" Hakonarson Sebastian "Zebbosai" Olsson Yoeri "kaptain" Poels Will "Permzilla" Kirby Luke "Stark" Hageman Jason "kaidus" Allan
2nd
swedeRage
Simon "BeaVerN" Sjosten Ruben "ryb" Ljungdahl Kevyn "TviQ" Lindström Hugo "Flippy" Perhirin Théo "Tek" Guillebaud "kos"
3-4th
Publiclir.se
Aleksanteri "AMS" Savolainen Michael "nation" Korbař Joakim "ondkaja" Wennerberg Sebastian "Smirre" Hopstadius Dennis "Dennia" Forsblom Björn "Herr_P" Rundquist
^"event schedule". Dreamhack AB. Winter 2010. Archived from the original on April 13, 2015. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
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