1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,240 I have spent years perfecting my gaming house, so imagine then my disappointment when I found 2 00:00:06,240 --> 00:00:12,000 out that Kenton Barda not only beat me to it, but built it better than I could have dreamed. 3 00:00:12,960 --> 00:00:19,200 And here I am in Austin, Texas, where everything is bigger to take you guys on an exclusive tour 4 00:00:19,200 --> 00:00:25,600 of Land Party Dot House, the ultimate gamer house for you and 22 of your closest friends. 5 00:00:25,600 --> 00:00:31,840 Everything about it is mind-blowing from the hideaway gaming rigs to the dedicated cat bathrooms 6 00:00:31,840 --> 00:00:37,040 to the floor panels that lift up to reveal an arcade's worth of DDR dance platforms. 7 00:00:37,040 --> 00:00:42,480 And Kenton and his wife Jade spent their entire Saturday taking us around so we could dive deep 8 00:00:42,480 --> 00:00:48,320 and give you guys some inspiration for your next gaming space, along with some helpful 9 00:00:48,320 --> 00:00:54,880 what not to do and some helpful segues to our sponsor. In fairness to me, Kenton did have a 10 00:00:54,880 --> 00:00:59,920 bit of a leg up when it came to designing the ultimate gamer house. I mean, for starters, 11 00:00:59,920 --> 00:01:05,360 his dad is low-key kind of a big deal in architectural design. And for another thing, 12 00:01:05,360 --> 00:01:11,280 this is actually V2, borrowing many ideas from his original Land Party house, 13 00:01:11,280 --> 00:01:18,240 but iterating on them both in terms of refinement and in terms of scale. For starters, he used to 14 00:01:18,240 --> 00:01:23,920 have monitors at each station mounted to rails that would lift up to display artwork whenever 15 00:01:23,920 --> 00:01:31,200 they weren't in use. Only he realized that he never once used them for that. So he devised a new 16 00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:38,400 system where they hide away completely. The grown-up playroom consists of a total of 12 17 00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:44,400 completely invisible and inaudible gaming setups. All you have to do to deploy one is open the 18 00:01:44,400 --> 00:01:50,880 bottom cabinetry and fold down the tabletop. And that's it! For extra gamer cred, these 32-inch 19 00:01:50,960 --> 00:01:56,880 Corsair Xenon 4K 144Hz monitors are mounted with low-profile articulating mounts so you 20 00:01:56,880 --> 00:02:02,720 can pull them forward and oh yeah, get in the zone! Or well, as long as you have peripherals, 21 00:02:02,720 --> 00:02:10,240 which he thought of. Every station includes a keyboard and a mouse and okay, this is a bit 22 00:02:10,240 --> 00:02:16,640 of an odd choice, a soundbar. I asked about this and Kenton explained that they mostly play co-op 23 00:02:16,640 --> 00:02:22,400 games like Deep Rock Galactic and they find that the advantage of being able to yell across the 24 00:02:22,400 --> 00:02:28,080 room at each other outweighs the disadvantage of sound bleed. And of course, anyone who wants 25 00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:33,840 can plug a headset into the provided USB hub or integrate a three and a half millimeter jack. 26 00:02:33,840 --> 00:02:39,120 Speaking of plugging in, this is a nice touch. The original house had the power outlets directly 27 00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:44,720 behind the monitor, which is symmetrical, but makes plugging things in a bit of a pain in the 28 00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:49,200 butt if you bring your phone or some random other peripherals. I think the only thing that I would 29 00:02:49,200 --> 00:02:56,240 change here then is to maybe add a desk pad? lttstore.com. Above each station is a cupboard 30 00:02:56,240 --> 00:03:01,360 for snackies, which Kenton, you might want to restock because I understand you've got company 31 00:03:01,360 --> 00:03:07,200 coming in a couple of hours. They actually arranged to have a LAN tonight so that we could see everything 32 00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:12,720 deployed and maybe even get a couple games in before we have to drive up to Houston. Of course, 33 00:03:12,720 --> 00:03:18,960 desktop PC gaming is just one kind of gaming. What about the 98 inch Samsung elephant in the room? 34 00:03:19,840 --> 00:03:26,880 For the more PlayStation inclined, there's a PS5 hooked up to a Marantz AV receiver and a 5.1 35 00:03:26,880 --> 00:03:33,200 electrostatic speaker setup. And I gotta say, I absolutely love the thoughtful design of the 36 00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:39,680 built-in console up here. Unlike my setup, the front outlets are actually reachable, making 37 00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:45,760 charging your lap board or your controllers a piece of cake. Speaking of controllers, storage for 38 00:03:45,760 --> 00:03:50,800 them is built into the four lazy boy powered recliners at the back of the room. By the way, 39 00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:57,440 love to see that old school Xbox 360 wireless dongle. Look, if it works, it works. I do have a 40 00:03:57,440 --> 00:04:04,000 couple of notes even angled toward the seating position. Ceiling mounted is not really ideal for 41 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:10,320 rear speakers and some acoustic materials on this cabinetry would go a long way towards improving 42 00:04:10,320 --> 00:04:16,000 the surround sound experience in this room. With that said, it sounds like most of the content 43 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:23,040 that Kenton listens to in here is stereo mixed music anyway. And that is where these come in. 44 00:04:23,040 --> 00:04:33,280 Oh, it's heavy. Embedded into the concrete slab of this house are four, yes, four DDR dance platforms 45 00:04:33,280 --> 00:04:39,440 from Eltech. Kenton, like me, is a big games for exercise guy and says he tries to use these 46 00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:44,480 about every other day to keep up his cardio fitness. Now, at this time, he hasn't actually 47 00:04:44,480 --> 00:04:50,560 gotten all four working at once yet, but it was a lot easier to put in the conduit for all four now, 48 00:04:50,560 --> 00:04:56,560 and then hope the software would get easier to use later, rather than adding more conduit after 49 00:04:56,560 --> 00:05:02,240 the fact. Besides, how boring would life be without a few dozen items remaining on your 50 00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:07,360 never ending house project? I was speaking of conduit. Remember how I said that the gaming 51 00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:13,840 systems were inaudible? That's because I am officially not alone. Beside the adult player, 52 00:05:13,840 --> 00:05:20,720 excuse me, the grown up playroom is what Kenton's HVAC contractor called by far the biggest server 53 00:05:20,720 --> 00:05:27,040 rack I've ever seen in a residential building. And while yes, it does in fact have a small AMD 54 00:05:27,040 --> 00:05:33,280 epic actual server in the server rack for AI tinkering and a persistent Minecraft instance 55 00:05:33,280 --> 00:05:40,080 for the kids, the vast majority of these rigs are identical gaming systems that power every 56 00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:47,920 station in the house. Now, since rack mount gaming hasn't taken off yet, yet solidarity, 57 00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:52,960 Kenton ended up hosting a good old fashioned PC build party with some of his old land buddies, 58 00:05:52,960 --> 00:05:59,600 and they put all 20 of these together over a couple days. They're fairly modestly specced 59 00:05:59,600 --> 00:06:05,440 considering the overall land house budget was somewhere in the seven figure range, but I think 60 00:06:05,440 --> 00:06:10,160 Kenton mostly achieved his stated goal of hitting the price to performance sweet spot 61 00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:16,640 while keeping the systems easily manageable. On that note, none of these use local storage. 62 00:06:16,640 --> 00:06:22,880 Instead, all of them boot from a single network image on that server that allows games to be 63 00:06:23,280 --> 00:06:28,160 installed on all of them simultaneously, that allows them all to be kept up to date easily, 64 00:06:28,160 --> 00:06:34,080 and allows them to be quickly factory reset in the event that a guest bungs something up. 65 00:06:34,640 --> 00:06:38,560 By the way, he's got a GitHub repo with all of the quirky workarounds that he had to use to 66 00:06:38,560 --> 00:06:46,480 make this setup work. That would have come in handy for us recently. Why? His only major regret 67 00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:52,160 is the motherboards whose onboard 10 gig network cards struggle sometimes when booting over 68 00:06:52,160 --> 00:06:56,080 iSCSI leading to the occasional crash. Guess they're gonna be here in less than half an hour 69 00:06:56,080 --> 00:06:59,280 by the way, so I guess we get to go through the boot sequence. You want to show us how to fire 70 00:06:59,280 --> 00:07:05,360 it all up? Sure. What, but it's that easy? You just pressed the button? Okay, that's pretty cool. 71 00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:11,600 Wake on land, kind of magic. I assume it's Wake on land? Yep. Now, there are some disadvantages 72 00:07:11,600 --> 00:07:17,600 to not having hardline power buttons to all the stations, and he had an idea for like a 73 00:07:17,600 --> 00:07:24,000 network attached USB hub of some sort with like relays or something so that he could power cycle 74 00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:30,320 them in the event of a crash, but hasn't gotten to it yet. Overall, I love this design. I mean, 75 00:07:30,320 --> 00:07:38,160 sure, he can't dump his waste heat into his pool, but by going with taller 4U cases, he also doesn't 76 00:07:38,160 --> 00:07:42,880 need to resort to water cooling to deal with all of this heat. He just lets the cool air 77 00:07:42,880 --> 00:07:49,680 fall down in front of the racks and then blasts all the hot air out into his hot aisle in the back 78 00:07:49,680 --> 00:07:55,520 where it can be picked up by the air handler and rinse and repeat. Apparently, by the way, 79 00:07:55,520 --> 00:08:02,880 at full boom, this rack can suck back about 15,000 watts. Thankfully, most games don't push it that 80 00:08:02,880 --> 00:08:09,200 hard, and Kenton has a large solar array that in February generates around 75 kilowatt hours a day, 81 00:08:09,200 --> 00:08:16,400 so I guess that takes some of the sting out of it, but for those wondering, yes, a lot of power, 82 00:08:16,400 --> 00:08:22,080 and also a lot of networking. Let's talk about that. A full ubiquity setup might seem a little 83 00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:28,640 overkill for home, but hey, if you got the budget for it, boy is it ever nice. The AI object detection 84 00:08:28,640 --> 00:08:33,040 in their PoE cameras helps Kenton sleep soundly, alerting him if anyone approaches the house 85 00:08:33,040 --> 00:08:40,400 unexpectedly, and all of these systems are wired up for 10 gig networking with PoE all over the house 86 00:08:40,400 --> 00:08:48,080 for cameras and Wi-Fi. Kenton acknowledges that most setups at this scale would probably use a patch 87 00:08:48,080 --> 00:08:55,120 panel and would probably benefit from better cable management, but as a software developer, 88 00:08:55,120 --> 00:09:00,720 he says he just plum wasn't familiar with them, and the RJ45 terminations directly into the network 89 00:09:00,720 --> 00:09:08,160 equipment hasn't really bothered him. I am going to pipe up with one other note, by the way, a 208 90 00:09:08,160 --> 00:09:14,560 volt network monitored PDU probably would have been a good choice rather than a pillar with power plugs 91 00:09:14,560 --> 00:09:21,840 in it, maybe a battery backup, but if I'm being realistic for periodic gaming parties, this is 92 00:09:22,400 --> 00:09:28,160 probably fine. Like me, Kenton is using fiber optic DisplayPort cables to go from his systems 93 00:09:28,160 --> 00:09:33,040 to his monitors all over the house, and he's been really happy with his mono-price slim cables. 94 00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:39,680 The longer runs to the upstairs are apparently working great and are like 100 feet, but unlike me, 95 00:09:39,680 --> 00:09:44,960 Kenton is using fiber optic USB cables to powered hubs for his peripherals, and he says sometimes 96 00:09:44,960 --> 00:09:51,840 these can be a little flaky, but they are much more affordable than Thunderbolt or IconDocs. 97 00:09:51,840 --> 00:09:56,560 Coming back out of the server room, we didn't really show the tinker space yet, and there's a 98 00:09:56,560 --> 00:10:02,640 bunch of cool stuff in here, old Nintendo power magazines, a broken Deli 8K monitor, and I love 99 00:10:02,640 --> 00:10:08,400 this touch. All of Kenton's systems, other than his personal Debian Linux development workstation, 100 00:10:08,400 --> 00:10:14,240 are named for Mega Man bosses and have static network assignments that correspond to the bosses' 101 00:10:14,240 --> 00:10:19,120 numbers, so if you need to remember an IP address, it's as simple as consulting the Mega Man wiki. 102 00:10:19,760 --> 00:10:26,880 It's lawless. The last room in the basement is not for people. Well, not for regular-sized people 103 00:10:26,880 --> 00:10:35,520 anyway. Nope, the Landhouse has not one, but two dedicated kitty bathrooms with pet doors and 24-7 104 00:10:35,520 --> 00:10:41,200 negative air pressure outdoor venting in order to keep litter and litter smells out of the rest 105 00:10:41,200 --> 00:10:47,120 of the house. This also happens to be where Kenton keeps his trophy that he won for arguing on the 106 00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:55,120 internet. Good job. Moving up to the main floor, what about second giant TV? This one's not quite as 107 00:10:55,120 --> 00:11:01,200 big, but given that it mostly gets used for animal crossing and duck game with large groups, I guess 108 00:11:01,200 --> 00:11:07,040 that's probably okay. At least for now. Since he had the opportunity to design and build the place 109 00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:12,960 from scratch, Kenton put Kondo it everywhere. That means that in the long term, nothing would prevent 110 00:11:12,960 --> 00:11:17,600 him from running cables down through the back of this and running this off of a PC in the server 111 00:11:17,600 --> 00:11:22,800 room. By the way, since we're in here, I love this. If you look closely from now on, you're going to 112 00:11:22,800 --> 00:11:29,040 notice that everywhere that a normal house or even a gaming house would have had one network port, 113 00:11:29,040 --> 00:11:34,240 Kenton put four. That's because the price difference that the contractor quoted was 114 00:11:34,240 --> 00:11:40,560 only about 20%, so Kenton was like, okay, I guess I'll just put an access point anywhere I want. 115 00:11:40,560 --> 00:11:45,920 He apparently has like eight or 10 and he lost count. Surprisingly, the main bedroom is apparently 116 00:11:45,920 --> 00:11:51,360 pretty plain Jane other than of course having Kondo it back to the server room just in case, 117 00:11:51,360 --> 00:11:57,360 but the kids bedrooms are amazing. First, there's this kitty shelf in the family room that actually 118 00:11:57,360 --> 00:12:02,080 goes between them for late night visits from the cat while still allowing them to close the door 119 00:12:02,080 --> 00:12:09,520 for privacy. Then there's this incredible loft bed set up and of course there's Kondo it back to 120 00:12:09,520 --> 00:12:15,760 the server room for when the kids are old enough to need powerful work stations. Should I be the 121 00:12:15,760 --> 00:12:21,200 one to tell them that they all just use Chromebooks now? I'm not going to tell them. This drying rack 122 00:12:21,200 --> 00:12:26,880 is awesome. It's not gaming, but I thought it was cool. So let's head upstairs to the office. 123 00:12:27,760 --> 00:12:33,280 It's a little ironic that Kenton only moved here to be closer to Cloudflare's Austin office and 124 00:12:33,280 --> 00:12:39,040 now primarily works from home ever since COVID, but hey, at least he got this house out of it and 125 00:12:39,040 --> 00:12:45,120 it's amazing with this room being one of the best. The his and hers workstations here both use 126 00:12:45,120 --> 00:12:53,040 Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 monitors, which essentially are two 4k monitors built into one and wrapped 127 00:12:53,040 --> 00:12:58,960 around you and both have Kinesis keyboards for better ergonomics. Like any Dvorak user, 128 00:12:58,960 --> 00:13:04,800 Kenton pointed out that he uses Dvorak, but no, he does not actually recommend it because he has 129 00:13:04,880 --> 00:13:10,640 had to personally code utilities for multiple platforms now that automatically switch to a 130 00:13:10,640 --> 00:13:16,080 QWERTY layout when he holds the control key so that he can reach copy paste for crying out loud. 131 00:13:16,080 --> 00:13:22,080 What he does recommend though is the ability to seamlessly move his mouse between his work tower 132 00:13:22,080 --> 00:13:27,200 and his personal machine using an application called barrier. And because this monitor is super 133 00:13:27,200 --> 00:13:34,400 cool, it allows you to assign more or less of it to each machine depending on the focus of the day. 134 00:13:35,040 --> 00:13:41,120 That is actually a pretty strong argument for this thing versus two equally sized 4k screens. 135 00:13:41,120 --> 00:13:47,280 Great flexibility. There's also another TV in here, although mostly gets used for music via 136 00:13:47,280 --> 00:13:56,880 Google Chromecast, and there's a boardroom table that, wait, no way, also converts into 137 00:13:57,840 --> 00:14:04,320 paradise. You have gotta be kidding me. In total, that puts this room at another 138 00:14:04,320 --> 00:14:10,080 eight gaming setups, all of which are wired down to the server room through a cable run 139 00:14:10,080 --> 00:14:15,120 that goes right down the middle of the table, like a regular conference table. That means no 140 00:14:15,120 --> 00:14:20,720 heat and no fan noise that's kicking out into the room from any of these, even with a full house. 141 00:14:21,360 --> 00:14:26,480 This space also gets used for tabletop gaming though, so keeping it thin was a priority. 142 00:14:26,480 --> 00:14:33,360 And keep it thin they did. Fun fact, by the way, Kenton designed this table himself in Sketchup 143 00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:37,680 and then had the cabinet maker bring it to life for him. Man, I gotta do more stuff like that. 144 00:14:37,680 --> 00:14:44,480 Then maybe I too would have a secret drink fridge in my home office. So cool, literally. 145 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:50,560 As for the rest of the upstairs, it continues to be gamer AF with a couple of call rooms with 146 00:14:51,440 --> 00:14:56,560 essential features like quad Ethernet ports and conduit down to the server room. 147 00:14:57,120 --> 00:15:01,840 The one has a treadmill so that you can be that guy on the conference call whose head is bobbing 148 00:15:01,840 --> 00:15:06,400 around. And there's also a couple of guest bedrooms, because occasionally folks will fly in from out 149 00:15:06,400 --> 00:15:12,080 of town for get-togethers and gaming parties, and it's nice to be able to accommodate them on site. 150 00:15:12,080 --> 00:15:18,320 Both of them naturally also have three inch conduit back to the server room and networking 151 00:15:18,320 --> 00:15:22,800 up the wazoo. But the thing is, when you're running optical DisplayPort or whatever, 152 00:15:22,800 --> 00:15:26,480 it's kind of necessary to have a big conduit if you want to get the connector through. 153 00:15:27,040 --> 00:15:34,160 Now, I noticed that Kenton, like me, irrationally put Cat 6A absolutely everywhere, 154 00:15:34,160 --> 00:15:37,920 which is always a funny conversation with contractors to go, I mean, you know, I'll 155 00:15:37,920 --> 00:15:42,480 take your money, but like, I hate working with this stuff. Are you sure you don't want to use 156 00:15:42,480 --> 00:15:49,920 Cat 5E? Please? The last major tech feature is an intercom system to the outdoor spaces, but 157 00:15:51,760 --> 00:15:57,040 they work about as well as my light switches at home for the time being. They're SIP phones and 158 00:15:57,040 --> 00:16:02,400 Kenton hasn't learned about SIP infrastructure yet, so all they do for now is broadcast their IP 159 00:16:02,400 --> 00:16:06,800 address endlessly until you press the button again, which apparently the kids love to do just 160 00:16:06,800 --> 00:16:13,200 to troll him. So in the middle of the night, he'll be like, is someone in our house? Shut up! 161 00:16:14,160 --> 00:16:19,360 All that remains then is to ask, how do I do? I'm thinking of starting one of those like, 162 00:16:19,360 --> 00:16:25,440 realtor YouTube channels where I tour the houses that I'm listing for sale. So this is kind of a 163 00:16:25,440 --> 00:16:32,240 trial run for me. Were you guys thinking of selling by any chance? No. I didn't tell him I was going to 164 00:16:32,240 --> 00:16:40,640 do that. I don't blame you. But I would blame you for not listening to the segue to our sponsor.