Our story

How we got started

How We Got Started

Craic Mods & Gaming started for a very simple reason: As a single dad, I wanted my daughters to enjoy online gaming with their friends in a safer, more controlled environment.

When they reached middle school, they started playing more games online. I’m a gamer too, so I understood what online communities could be like. Most people are there to have fun, but not everyone is someone you’d want interacting with your kids. That concerned me.

With my background as a systems engineer and administrator, I started looking more closely at the games they played. I discovered that many, including Minecraft and ARK: Survival Evolved, supported dedicated servers.

That gave me an idea.

Instead of sending the kids onto public servers with people we didn’t know, why not host the games myself? I already had computers around the house. I could control who connected, keep the servers private, and make sure the other parents were comfortable with the arrangement.

The idea was simple. Figuring out how to do it was not.

I spent countless hours searching for instructions, watching videos, and reading guides. Unfortunately, much of what I found was incomplete, outdated, or assumed you already understood networking and server administration.

And then there were the tutorials that repeated the same steps without ever explaining why anything worked.

I started calling those the “copy-and-paste videos.”

Eventually, I decided to start making my own.

I wasn’t trying to prove I could build a server. I wanted to create the kind of tutorials I wished I’d had when I started. Something another mom, dad, or everyday gamer could follow without needing years of IT experience.

That became the foundation of Craic Mods & Gaming.

What We’re Doing Today

The channel has grown beyond those first family game servers, but the philosophy hasn’t changed.

Today, Craic Mods and Gaming focuses on dedicated game servers, modding, troubleshooting, networking, and practical gaming technology.

We explain not just how to do something, but why it works.

We look for affordable solutions first, reuse older hardware when possible, and avoid unnecessary complexity. You shouldn’t need expensive server equipment or an IT degree to host a game for family and friends.

And when something doesn’t work, we don’t pretend it did.

Real installations have problems. Settings get overlooked, updates break things, and sometimes a perfectly good idea turns into an afternoon of troubleshooting.

That’s part of the process, and it’s worth showing.

Craic Mods & Gaming is about building it, testing it, sometimes breaking it, fixing it, and sharing what we actually learned.

Whether you’re a parent setting up a private multiplayer world, someone learning to mod a favorite game, or a gamer trying to get more life out of an older computer, the goal is the same:

Make the technology easier to understand, the solutions more affordable, and the gaming more enjoyable.

Because at the end of the day, we’re here to have a little craic.