The History Of Sounds Like A Plan Gaming
The History Of Sounds Like A Plan Gaming
The Beginning
Back in late 2008, myself and a few friends were highly into popular online racing game, TrackMania, So much so that I purchased a server for it, and formed Madness Gaming. This server soon became very popular, and I then invested in 2 more servers, hosting a total of 3 TrackMania servers. During mid 2009, we wanted to re-brand the community as we wasn't too keen on the name, an old member of the TrackMania community suggested "SLAP - Sounds Like A Plan" and from that point on, we were known as SLAP - Sound Like A Plan Gaming. When Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released, a lot of the community purchased the game and we decided to launch a Slap Gaming Clan. We focused a lot of time and effort on this clan, and the TrackMania side of things was abandoned due to costs and lack of active users.
SLAP Gaming Mincraft
Since the launch of Minecraft, a friend of mine kept nagging me and nagging me to get it, saying it was an amazing game and I would love it. However, my opinion of it was "It's lego for a computer - it will be rubbish!" and refused to buy it! Then in December 2010, just before Christmas, I finally gave in and agreed to buy it. Within a week of playing, I was hooked on it. Me and my friend, Hungryhomer aka Duee wanted our other friends to be able to join us for games, and on January 20th 2011 we purchased a 6 slot Minecraft Server from Multiplay UK, SLAP Gaming Minecraft was born.
Within weeks of purchasing our server and inviting our friends, they were inviting their friends, and the community was growing. We upgraded the server to more and more slots, within a few months were paying for 30 slots, however this was very costly. In mid-2011 we looked into other alternatives, and Duee decided it was more cost efficient to just rent a server and manage the server ourselves, installing all the software, plugins, etc.
This enabled us to have full control over our server, managing plugins, Minecraft versions, max slot limits, and much more.
Throughout 2011 SLAP Gaming Minecraft continued to grow and grow, beginning to average between 15-20 people throughout the day.
The community just kept growing and growing, and the costs for SLAP were getting higher and higher, and was all being funded purely from mine and Duee's pockets.
In mid-2011 we introduced VIP onto the server as a solution to try and cover some of the costs, and the response we received from this overwhelmed us. We expected to make around £20-£25 a month, but instead we were getting up to x10 as much! This allowed us to invest in better hardware and provide a better experience for all of the community.
In early 2012, we had got to the stage that we were very efficient at updating our server and plugins everytime their was a Minecraft update. We realised that we could run the Bukkit Development Versions on our server, and if we kept them up to date and used the correct versions of plugins, we could have our server updated within hours of a Minecraft update, compared to most servers which took days to update.
January 2012 bought Minecraft 1.1 with it, and their was a lot of issues with Bukkit versions and Minecraft Servers, but not for SLAP. We managed to make ours work within 40 minutes of a Bukkit Dev release. Realising the opportunity we had, we posted our server on all the big community forums; Yogscast, Minecraft Forums, Planet Minecraft, Bukkit Community. The SLAP server has an insane increase in community members. For the next few days, we averaged around 50+ people online for most of the day. The staff we had at the time putting in insane hours to try and manage it all and help the community, and it paid off. From that point we kept our Forum posts as active as possible and made sure we were one of the first servers to update on every future release of Minecraft.
January - February 2012 saw SLAP receive a 300% increase on Membership applications, and a 150% Increase on Donations. It was the most successful period SLAP has had to date.
Since then, SLAP Gaming has continued to grow and grow and has aimed to serve its community as best as possible.
We listen to community feedback, and improve our services as best we can, to ensure that you, the people who make this all possible, get the best gaming experience possible.
But all of this is only possible by the dedication of our amazing group of Voluntary Staff.
The People Who Make This Possible
Over the years, we have had many volunteers come and go, but some people have dedicated years of their lives to this community and got it to where it is now, and I am eternally grateful to these people. Without them, none of this would be possible. We now have around 20 people from all over the world, dedicating their spare time to this community, and I would like to hope they are going to be with us for the future of SLAP Gaming, because without them, we wouldn't be be where we are today.
One think that most people seem to overlook is that all of the Staff members within SLAP do not get paid for what they do, they do it because they chose to. They chose to be a part of SLAP Gaming, and help us succeed in our ultimate goal, which is to provide the best Gaming Community we possibly can. Their levels of dedication astound me. They will put in ridiculous hours, give up personal commitments, go out of their way to help others, So that the community can have an enjoyable time. This is something I think everyone needs to realise, appreciate, and be thankful for.
The Future Of SLAP Gaming
2013 brings a new Year for SLAP Gaming. We have a large, stable international community, and we want to take advantage of that. Big changes to the community are coming. We are going to head back to our roots, and also explore new territories, and we want you all to be a part of it. So stick around, and see what SLAP Gaming brings in 2013.
I Would like to personally thank each and every one of you for making this possible.
SLAP was something I created over 4 years ago, and has been a huge part of my life ever since. It has dominated my life, and has had drastic effects on it, causing a lot of highs, but also some lows. But I don't regret any of it.
Everytime I log on to our servers, and see people playing together, and being happy, enjoying themselves, it reminds me that it was all worth while, and what I have created is changing the life of hundreds, thousands of people accross to world, and that is something I am very proud to have achieved.
Once again, I thank you all, and I hope you will be a part of SLAP for many years to come, because SLAP is here to stay!
- Jackster21
