This past weekend we had the pleasure of attending PAX South and although it went faster than it came we witnessed amazing cosplayers at their best, fascinating and fun video and tabletop games and best of all participate in an experience that we truly will never forget. In the midst of all the companies promoting their new games however, one organization stood out above the rest solely based on their mission and their goals.
Stack-Up.org, is a carefully planned coordination aimed to aid our veterans and soldiers in a unique and very enjoyable way; video games.
We had a chance to interview Brian Snyder, director of media for Stack-Up.org this past weekend at PAX South:
FRANK: All right I am here with…
BRIAN: Brian Snyder. I am the director of media for Stack-Up.org.
FRANK: Okay so now, the only thing I know from this group is your slogan here that I am looking at.
BRIAN: Yes, that is our mission, Gaming is our passion
FRANK: All right, run this through me. Tell me what Stack-Up.org is?
BRIAN: Sure. Stack-Up.org is a 501C charity that focuses on helping veterans through the amazing power of gaming.
FRANK: How do you help out veterans with gaming?
BRIAN: We do this through a couple of different ways. We send supply packages over to our troops stationed oversees, full of video gaming goodness: magazines, games, headsets; everything they need for like a whole unit to even get set up and game.
FRANK: Oh okay I see. That is really cool because you in a way bring them together closer with civilians playing and kind of make them just forget the worries of life for a little while.
BRIAN: Yeah definitely, this helps build camaraderie, it helps with the down time it helps them pass that. There’s a lot of hurry up and wait, everyone’s heard that from the military and well it’s true. So this helps pass all that time.
FRANK: Wow that is really cool. Apart from sending them all these cool things to play and pass the time, how else do you help them out?
BRIAN: We also have our Air Assault program where we bring deserving or disabled vets to places like PAX, or E3. All expenses paid and in a lot of cases this may be the only way they ever have gotten to go to an event like this. And then of course we give them the VIP treatment.
FRANK: What exactly is a VIP treatment consist of in places such as this?
BRIAN: I mean the great people here help our Air Assaults out get them you know get them into things like Oculus and really just show them to best part of gaming. And then we have our Stacks Program which are groups of veterans and civilians that come together within their communities to either do team building events where they just might go out and get some pizza and hang out or they will go volunteer with another veteran’s organization and do some good work for veterans within their community. Our Home Stack where our CEO is based we’ve been currently working with Wounded Warrior Project, taking Oculus to the wounded warriors for them to play with. Again because it’s VR, they might not have another chance to play right now.
FRANK: That’s amazing. Now how did this come about? Who is the mastermind behind this?
BRIAN: Our CEO is Captain Stephen Machuga. And this is the whole story here. He was in Iraq and they received a collection of 3rd hand romance novels. Harlequin romance novels. This is-not necessarily- I mean their heart was in the right place but a lot of the care packages that are received, the mentality that our military is still in like World War II, persists. Socks, blankets. Our military logistics are way better than that now a day. We take care of our guys really really really good when it comes to that. The problem we don’t do is on the entertainment side. That’s often left behind. So there you have 3rd hand romance novels, they didn’t have anything to do with them.
(laughing)
There is a photo floating around of our CEO where you can clearly see the outline of a GameBoy through his BDU’s, which is Battle Dress Uniform. You can see through his uniform that there is a GameBoy there. You know what you’re looking for. And that’s what got him through his deployment. That couple with well intentions, send some care packages over there to them, led to the idea of gaming. Coupled that with the fact that gaming is so helpful with PTSD, immersion therapy; all this stuff that really helps veteran’s POST deployment as well. You have gaming helping them while they are there and you have gaming helping them when they get back and what better way than with a veteran that knows first hand running the organization.
FRANK: That is actually a great leeway because I was going to mention that I have heard of many ways to combat PTSD, helper dogs and whatnot but I never thought of video games to be a perfect release of, of another form to combat PTSD you know?
BRIAN: Well not only that. So you have the PTSD which is an obvious therapy thing. You can play the game, an altered realistic game and help people relive past experiences to talk about it or we can play a game that has nothing to do with real life and just get away for a while. You can go wither way. It’s amazing truly what gaming can do as far as helping them but then also when your making the transition from military back to civilian life uh, we’re tribal. We really are and the military is a hardcore tribe. They have their own languages, they have their own way of doing things and sometimes coming back to civilian life can be intimidating. We’ve all heard about that, gaming is a way to help with that because gamers have their dialogue. Gamers have their own way of doing things, so it helps bridge that gap. It brings them back into another tribe where before we would just push them out into the wild.
FRANK: So it becomes a smoother transition?
BRIAN: Yes of course, and it helps them bring them back to civilian life. Civilians and veterans can play games and now we have a shared language. We can talk about the same things and that can lead into opening up dialogue, somebody may have something they need to get off their chest that day and gaming may lead to it coming out and may help them. It’s amazing to behold and you know I’ve done a lot of our local events and stuff like that and I’ve seen veterans who don’t go out to events but you mention there are video games involved and they’re there. Because they know that like that’s going to be their people.
FRANK: And how long ago was this organization founded?
BRIAN: We’ve been up for about a year and a half now. It was November 2015 when it was founded.
FRANK: Oh wow. You say it’s been a little over a year but from the things you guys have done and how active you are and all the pictures I’m seeing here; it really does appear that you guys have been doing this for years. Did you guys have any problems or difficulties starting off as some majority organizations usually do?
BRIAN: I mean luckily because we have a military veteran who is our CEO, he knows what those guys need. And not only is our CEO a military vet, but he’s also a gamer (laughs). I mean he’s on Twitch a couple nights a week. He twitches on our channel for Wednesday nights, you can actually interact with the CEO and I mean he knew what was going to happen you know? He knew how this needed to be done. And I mean luckily we have a great staff of volunteers that work with us, we do what we call our weekly board room meetings on Wednesday night that are open to the public. Everybody can come in and suggest and add to it and help make this better. So this is a group effort with a very strong vision at the top. You know our motto; Gaming is our passion Veterans are our mission. You couldn’t say it better than that because we know the gaming space. We’re all gamers and we have great people who really know what they need. We listen to them. When we bring Air Assaults out here there’s always a post you know, what did you like? What didn’t you like? What could we have done better? You know, help it make it better for the next guys.
FRANK: If people want to help you guys out, what can they do to help?
BRIAN: There are a lot of ways you can help out. I mean the easiest is go to Stack-up.org, you’re going to find all the resources that you need to be able to help whether it’s through a cash donation, a physical donation of gaming equipment. Then you can also get involved through streaming, we’re always looking for people to do charity streams for us but really even just coming around, getting involved with the staff, just hanging out in the discord, talking with soldiers; talking with veterans, talking with other people, hitting a retweet button hitting a like or a share on Twitter or Facebook; all of this helps grow our message and all of it helps veterans.
FRANK: Man that is beautiful. Well thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, it was great meeting you and even better to get to know this organization. Good luck on everything.
BRIAN: No thank you very much.
Well there you have it folks. It doesn’t take much to help out our veterans and soldiers. A thank you goes a long way when you see them out on the streets so please thank them for all their sacrifices and everything they endure so that people like me can sit around at home writing articles and movie reviews. But if you want to or feel the need to do more than thanking them; you now know who they are, you now know what they do and you now know their mission so get out there and help out in any way you can! From the biggest donation to the smallest, literally everything we do to spread their mission and goals helps out our boys. Truly, thank you from the bottom of this little author’s heart.
https://www.facebook.com/StackUpdotorg
https://twitter.com/stackupdotorg
https://plus.google.com/u/0/112839071998847112533/posts
https://www.twitch.tv/stackupdotorg
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQpg1uZs3NqPiJBKxLW127Q