WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.240 I have spent years perfecting my gaming house, so imagine then my disappointment when I found 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. 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 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. 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:31.840 Everything about it is mind-blowing from the hideaway gaming rigs to the dedicated cat bathrooms 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. 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 00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:48.320 and give you guys some inspiration for your next gaming space, along with some helpful 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 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, 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, 00:01:05.360 --> 00:01:11.280 this is actually V2, borrowing many ideas from his original Land Party house, 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 00:01:18.240 --> 00:01:23.920 have monitors at each station mounted to rails that would lift up to display artwork whenever 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 00:01:31.200 --> 00:01:38.400 system where they hide away completely. The grown-up playroom consists of a total of 12 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 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 00:01:50.960 --> 00:01:56.880 Corsair Xenon 4K 144Hz monitors are mounted with low-profile articulating mounts so you 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, 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 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 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 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:28.080 room at each other outweighs the disadvantage of sound bleed. And of course, anyone who wants 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. 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 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 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 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 00:02:56.240 --> 00:03:01.360 for snackies, which Kenton, you might want to restock because I understand you've got company 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 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, 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? 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 00:03:26.880 --> 00:03:33.200 electrostatic speaker setup. And I gotta say, I absolutely love the thoughtful design of the 00:03:33.200 --> 00:03:39.680 built-in console up here. Unlike my setup, the front outlets are actually reachable, making 00:03:39.680 --> 00:03:45.760 charging your lap board or your controllers a piece of cake. Speaking of controllers, storage for 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, 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 00:03:57.440 --> 00:04:04.000 couple of notes even angled toward the seating position. Ceiling mounted is not really ideal for 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:10.320 rear speakers and some acoustic materials on this cabinetry would go a long way towards improving 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:02.240 the fact. Besides, how boring would life be without a few dozen items remaining on your 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:07.360 never ending house project? I was speaking of conduit. Remember how I said that the gaming 00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:13.840 systems were inaudible? That's because I am officially not alone. Beside the adult player, 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 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 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:33.280 epic actual server in the server rack for AI tinkering and a persistent Minecraft instance 00:05:33.280 --> 00:05:40.080 for the kids, the vast majority of these rigs are identical gaming systems that power every 00:05:40.080 --> 00:05:47.920 station in the house. Now, since rack mount gaming hasn't taken off yet, yet solidarity, 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, 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 00:05:59.600 --> 00:06:05.440 considering the overall land house budget was somewhere in the seven figure range, but I think 00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:10.160 Kenton mostly achieved his stated goal of hitting the price to performance sweet spot 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:16.640 while keeping the systems easily manageable. On that note, none of these use local storage. 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 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, 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. 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 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 00:06:46.480 --> 00:06:52.160 is the motherboards whose onboard 10 gig network cards struggle sometimes when booting over 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:33.040 in their PoE cameras helps Kenton sleep soundly, alerting him if anyone approaches the house 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 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 00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:55.120 panel and would probably benefit from better cable management, but as a software developer, 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 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 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 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 00:09:22.400 --> 00:09:28.160 probably fine. Like me, Kenton is using fiber optic DisplayPort cables to go from his systems 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. 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, 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 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:51.840 these can be a little flaky, but they are much more affordable than Thunderbolt or IconDocs. 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 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 00:10:02.640 --> 00:10:08.400 this touch. All of Kenton's systems, other than his personal Debian Linux development workstation, 00:10:08.400 --> 00:10:14.240 are named for Mega Man bosses and have static network assignments that correspond to the bosses' 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 00:11:29.040 --> 00:11:34.240 Kenton put four. That's because the price difference that the contractor quoted was 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 00:12:45.120 --> 00:12:53.040 Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 monitors, which essentially are two 4k monitors built into one and wrapped 00:12:53.040 --> 00:12:58.960 around you and both have Kinesis keyboards for better ergonomics. Like any Dvorak user, 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 00:13:04.880 --> 00:13:10.640 had to personally code utilities for multiple platforms now that automatically switch to a 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. 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 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:27.200 and his personal machine using an application called barrier. And because this monitor is super 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. 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:41.120 That is actually a pretty strong argument for this thing versus two equally sized 4k screens. 00:13:41.120 --> 00:13:47.280 Great flexibility. There's also another TV in here, although mostly gets used for music via 00:13:47.280 --> 00:13:56.880 Google Chromecast, and there's a boardroom table that, wait, no way, also converts into 00:13:57.840 --> 00:14:04.320 paradise. You have gotta be kidding me. In total, that puts this room at another 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 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 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. 00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:26.480 This space also gets used for tabletop gaming though, so keeping it thin was a priority. 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 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. 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. 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 00:14:51.440 --> 00:14:56.560 essential features like quad Ethernet ports and conduit down to the server room. 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 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 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. 00:15:12.080 --> 00:15:18.320 Both of them naturally also have three inch conduit back to the server room and networking 00:15:18.320 --> 00:15:22.800 up the wazoo. But the thing is, when you're running optical DisplayPort or whatever, 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. 00:15:27.040 --> 00:15:34.160 Now, I noticed that Kenton, like me, irrationally put Cat 6A absolutely everywhere, 00:15:34.160 --> 00:15:37.920 which is always a funny conversation with contractors to go, I mean, you know, I'll 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 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 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 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 00:16:02.400 --> 00:16:06.800 address endlessly until you press the button again, which apparently the kids love to do just 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! 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, 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 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 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.