For this edition of College Orientation, we sat down with Ian Gilgallon, Director of Public Relations and Advertising, affectionately known as the “marketing guy”, from MSU’s SpartyLANParty to find out a little more about SLP and what they do. SLP was founded in 2007 in order to provide a platform for gamers at MSU to do what they love doing best, game. You can read more about SLP on MSU’s profile. Ian is mainly responsible for mobilizing the community at MSU and making sure that as many people attend “the main events and the weekly game nights”, “I also keep in touch with the other LAN events in the Midwest and coordinate LAN party dates and get some SLP members to go” he added. Ian believes that SLP’s involvement with the community is what sets them apart from other similar organizations; “we may host LANs four times a year but beyond that we like to keep people involved either through chat and gaming news updates or one of our game nights” he explained as he was “trying not to f’ up [his] spelling”.
One of the biggest challenges of running PUGG was dealing with Purdue’s administration and its sometimes insulting stereotypical view of our organization, so I asked Ian what kind of challenges SLP has to face when dealing with MSU’s administration and if there was a stereotype associated with being a gaming organization on a college campus. On the stereotype part, Ian explained that he didn’t know what the administration thought of SLP; “I don’t know what the administration thinks about us, but there are a lot of groups on campus who seem useless, like the coffee drinking club”, “I bet we seem more productive than some frats that clearly advertise drinking” he added. There is one challenge that Ian described is the lack of funding to expand SLP’s LAN parties. The limiting factor, from our experience of running LAN parties, is almost always the availability of adequate power, Ian explained to me that “if we [SLP] want to host a 100+ people LAN party we need to rent a power system that runs for about 800-1000 dollars” he went on to say that “we don’t want to charge more for our events so we are trying to ask the University for more funding but they have so much red tape to get a dime it’s ridiculous.”
FragFest 2011
Ian’s point of funding led to the discussion of sponsors and how SLP goes about acquiring sponsors and how important sponsorship is to them and their continued operation. It goes without saying that sponsors are extremely important, but different organizations require different amounts and types of support to be able to operate. Ian admitted that without sponsors, SLP would still be able to operate: “two of our LANs a year are basement LANs which means no raffles, no sponsors, no tournaments; just casual gaming”, “our unsponsored events have become just as popular as our sponsored ones because it takes away that fully scheduled, competitive edge away from the LAN” he further explained. Ian explained how different sponsors help with different things, things which in turn SLP doesn’t have to worry about: “sponsors are great because while most provide prizes for the raffle, others, such as NOS, provide enough energy drinks for the night and t-shirts, it’s one less thing to worry about”. We also discussed college gaming and where it was headed, Ian believes that it will keep growing as “more than ever, gaming is really integrated in people’s lives”, “it will probably just get bigger.”
Before ending our discussion, I asked Ian if he had any advice he wanted to share with people who are looking to create a similar organization to SLP or with someone who is already running one. Ian stressed that “finding people who are interested” is key, they have to be passionate. Ian further added that once an organization is setup, nurturing and growing the community is extremely important; “maintain and expand your community, the more people who are involved, the more help and ideas you get”.
Be sure to check out SLP’s website and their tUg profile, also don’t forget to like them on their Facebook page!