I’ve been a big fan of the Gib$Ru$ servers on TF2 for a very long time. The Gib members are always helpful and talk on the microphones, keeping the gameplay fun, and small server mods like instant teleport recharge keep the game moving quickly and competitively. I “sat down” for an interview with the guy that started it all, tony2k.

The Pxl Lab: When was Gib$Ru$ started, and what challenges did you have creating a brand new community?

Tony: I started Gib$Ru$ way back in TFC (Team Fortress Classic) about 10 years ago, and the main reason why I started Gib$Ru$ was because I was in a couple of clans with my best friend and they didn’t work out because of me. I was a hothead and I had no patience for low-skilled players. So I made Gib$Ru$ and only I was allowed, I did not recruit anyone. Me and my best friend, which is Mr.Hyde, the co-leader of Gib$Ru$, we got into Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory game and we allowed people to join us as Gib$Ru$. We had our own rocking server, with custom campaigns that people really really adored. Because of technical and network issues, we had to stop.

We were waiting for TF2 for about 5 or more years to come out. When it finally came out, me and Mr.Hyde were heavily into MMORPG games, but Mr.Hyde tried TF2 first at around December, then after a week, he got me into it. I liked TF2 at the start and I was already using the Gib$Ru$ tag from when I started playing TF2. Then I thought to myself, why not host a game server since I have a really good job, I can afford to host a professional game server. My real intention for hosting a Game Server is to have it populated 24/7. We had HLstatsX Points System running to make it more popular and at first, I was recruiting people just by seeing that the player was better than average. So I would bluntly ask the person if they want to join, without even really knowing them. So we recruited a lot of people, we had a good base of players and some bad players, but we all had fun.

The Server became a lot more populated so then we came up with a system to join Gib$Ru$. The person had to reach a certain number of points on the HLstatsX system and he had to follow the rules. We also have our HLstatsX System configured so that you get a lot more points than the default settings, so people enjoy that. Also, people with low amount of points get a lot more points off of people that have a lot of points. So they enjoy seeing a huge point difference. We also ran Instant Respawn to make the game more like TFC, we also had fun mods added to the server like, Quake Sounds, Medipacks and Ammopacks, Radio Stations to listen to, Instant Teleporters and much more plugins to make the game experience a lot more unique than the average server out there. At first, it was really hard to get people to fill the servers, because I was at work everyday, but luckily I had Mr.Hyde promoting and playing on our servers all day to get people playing.

The Pxl Lab: How do you pay for the cost of running your TF2 servers?

Tony: The majority of funding for this community comes out of my pocket. I enjoy having people play on my servers and I don’t expect people to donate. But we still do have people donating to us, which is very much appreciated. In total we’ve had about 1000 dollars donated to us, but I pay 500 dollars a month roughly, and since we added new servers, I’m paying 1000 a month. But we have two dedicated servers, one in Toronto and one in Texas, they both have the power to run 8-12 servers each, so in total I can run about 24 servers if we wanted to, but slowly we’re adding more and more servers.

The Pxl Lab: What kind of incentives do you offer to make people want to join the community?

Tony: The privilege of being part of the Community was that you can wear the tag and have a reserved slot on any of our servers.

The Pxl Lab: What kinds of rules do you enforce in the community? How often do you change them?

Tony: Our rules are very simple, and in my vision, the priority is to Be Polite and Have fun. Then we have the obvious rules like No Racism, No Cheating or Exploiting. We also have some detailed rules like, no sticky spawn camping, but spawn camping is allowed, but No Stickies. Other rules like No Mic Spamming, No Mentioning to players about the F10 button (which would close your TF2 client). we have had these rules for a good long while and we haven’t changed them, we just keep adding. We actually have to revise the Rules soon to make it more clear on some issues. As TF2 evolves, there are more ways of abusing the game and players online, so as TF2 evolves, we do as well.

The Pxl Lab: Why did you choose to use HLStatsX over other stats systems?

Tony: I have been using HLstatsX since they first came out maybe about 10 years ago for TFC. It was the best Stats System and it still is to this day. Before, in TFC, we use to run the SQL database on the same server which caused some extra load, now HLstatsX offers their Database Service and all you need are the Plugins and to configure your server to send them the log data and everything is beautiful. I won’t bother using any other Stats system out there. I am dedicated to using HLstatsX.

So if you’re looking for a great gaming community on Team Fortress 2, I would highly recommend giving the Gib$Ru$ servers a try. You can find me on their servers as Indiana Darth Jones, hope to frag you soon!