The veteran community is a gaming community.

As a kid I remember the first two video games I played on a regular basis, Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. I was fortunate enough to have an NES with the gun although Duck Hunt was the only game I ever owned that needed it.

Fast Forward 35 years and I’m now on my PC playing new games. Some of my favorite are Rocket League, Red Dead Redemption 2, and GTA V.

I am, in short, a gamer. Even while in Iraq our company setup a LAN where we could play Halo in our downtime against each other from our CONEXes. When I got back from Iraq, Halo and Call of Duty MW2 kept me from sleeping except for about 3 hours a night as I played until about 0200-0300. Then waking up groggy as hell for formation I’d go run a couple of miles and live in a nice state of sleep deprivation until after lunch time.

I was not alone, a lot of us were gaming constantly and the 2 most popular games were Madden and CoD.

Currently I stream Rocket League and RDR2 on twitch.tv as the_ritalate which means I should have a Discord server but I usually just hang in the servers of friends I’ve met online or irl.

If any of this resonates with you then you know that streaming and gaming has its own community and after joining the VFW I found a place where the veteran community and the gaming community merge in an organization called StackUp. I was introduced to them by SyCoBobby and other than being a member of their Discord I have no affiliation with them (this is not an ad). But, they are doing a lot of things right and so I would like to use VETS.COM to shine a spotlight on them real quick.

The StackUp organization has ways to support troops such as providing care packages “Supply Drops” to deployed soldiers, providing grants “Air Assault” to veterans who might want to go to gaming events but can’t afford it, and a community gaming recreation center. If this seems like something that can help you or that you’d like to learn more about give them a visit at stackup.org