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It started with a streamer named dewtroid that had ran something called Community Days. These were days when dewtroid would have players gather together to play minigame maps together, for the sole purpose of fun. They were ran entirely with redstone and scout's honor, and were mostly team based minigames (sometimes created by fans of dewtroid)

The first known inspiration drawn for PGM was a map called Airship Battle released on December 5th, 2011 to the Minecraft forums with two teams, Fishnets and Butterheads. The objective was to leak the lava out of the enemy team's core: it was unique in the way that there were no gamemodes previously where you'd build and try to conquer a tangible enemy objective with void. This spawned gamemodes with a similar premise like Destroy the Monument, Capture the Wool, and Team Deathmatch.

Two friends known as Apple and Anxuiz met together (along with long time friends McSpider and McYukon whom met through a game called bzflag) ran with the idea and wanted to create a server that offered automated games of these maps using Bukkit. There were no such team-based games prior other than Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, which were around since Minecraft classic.

The idea ran, and lots of people became invested in the idea. It became more than what it bargained for, and peaked with YouTubers recording (although it was almost always advertised through word of mouth and had a dedicated community.) This community also spawned Badlion, which were formed as a team for an early PGM tournament evolving to own a server.

PGM set an example for other servers in the market, and grew to be a classic. Though it met its fate eventually, it is unknown exactly how immense the project affected other servers within Minecraft: the estimate would be a lot.

EARLY ALPHA BONUS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlM1Argh1-g

FIRST GAME OF SSB EVER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD0dskmdZMI