@wombat_overmind

Filthy heretic, debasing yourself to warp-spawn! Praise the true Emperor, the master of all mankind! Burn the heretic! Kill the mutant! Purge the unclean!

Well, that actually sounds really nice. This could be a real stress reliever and possibly help lighten up the atmosphere. Well, I hope so anyways. Hopefully, a certain lawyer won't freak out about something like THIS.

I hope this doesn't reinforce the idea that games make a good killer.

Any organised movement to battle boredom gets the green light by me.

Actually, I remember reading something like this in an old Nintendo Power. During Desert Storm one of the most used items was a Gameboy and a copy of Tetris. Talk about a good way to pass time, especially the record-breakers they probably had. ;-)

My dad told me that when he and his crew was on break during the golf war, they used to play Starfox.
I'm gonna see if i have anything to donate.

@Mario me up, baby: Golf wars?!? And here I was thinking golf was massively boring. I always figured it was a sport that could benefit from a bit more action.

Anyway, yeah, hopefully this will make things easier on the folks in uniform. I can imagine being deployed and away from your home being bad enough, they can use whatever comforts they can.

Come on, people, this is good news here, can we not drag JT's name into places it doesn't belong? He tries to put his own name where it doesn't belong half the time (such as placing it adjacent to the word 'expert') and we don't need to give him any more attention than he deserves.

Great idea. Troops deserve any creature comforts they can get, and having video games will surely help relieve the insane stress they are under. Bravo!

It's about time we got good news, oy. It's NICE!

Not a bad idea. When I go to fight, I always miss a few comforts.

I support this.

Oooo, I was just saying we needed something like this the other day...we need all our politicians replacd with people who actually reside in (and have a workable understanding of) the real world! There, let's see how long it takes for that wish to come true.

@BlackIce

The point is that when you're keyed up to that degree of intensity--and even when you're doing office work, it can be a little bit stressful to know that the familiar sound preceding launch of a mortar or some such weapon could be followed by the building you're in exploding--you need some form of normalcy. Psychologically, a combat situation can be so stressful that it causes longterm changes in physiological and mental stress reactions (PTSD for one), and it is in such trying times that the smallest comforts and familiarities of home are most important to maintain sanity and, well, downright functionality.

Maybe it won't ward off PTSD, but even if familiar leisure activities do nothing more than promote better stress management, that can be a literal lifesaver on the ground.

Awesome. One reason I play games is to relieve stress, and my stress is chump change compared to soldier-stress. I'm glad they can experience a wee bit of release.

Come to think about it, what games would be played. Would soldiers play games like Call of Duty 4, Armed Assault and other "realistic" war games? Or would it be more calm and "non-realistic" games? Like racing , sports and fantasy games.

I always found that a lot of fellow soldiers liked to play Sports Games, while I would always play rpgs on my laptop. To each their own, I say.

Also, FPS games are actually commonly played; we used to Lan COD2.

@Sidewinder

I did Motorstorm, funnily enough.

Well, they say that soldiers at war spend hours ungulfed in boredom and minutes in sheer terror. Frankly, this is a good way to relieve both. Historically it's been proven that if soldiers don't get time to 'decompress' then the effects of combat fatigue eventually get to them and they become a liability rather than an asset. With that said, sitting down to a video game; whether it's Forza, Halo 3, Lair, or Wario-ware, is a great way to decompress.

This is great news. REALLY great news.

My brother-in-law recently returned from serving in Iraq, and with any luck he'll be able to keep from going back if he can get a position with the National Coast Guard (something he's been wanting to do for a while now. He's got a real keen interest in busting up drug smuggling rings).

However, while he was there, we sent him his Xbox and games which provided him and his buddies lots of enjoyment in between missions. Only real problem was when his buddy plugged the Xbox plug, meant for 120V of power, into a 240V outlet.

FWOOOSH!

Fried Motherboard.

He mailed it back to us where we took it to a friend of ours who partakes in console modding. Despite his hardware skills, he pronounced the Xbox D.O.A. with little to no hope of recovery, save for scrapping a whole separate Xbox and planting those parts into it.

But all is not lost. As a welcome home present, my in-laws got him the Halo 3 Xbox 360, and Halo 3. Me and my wife are going to chip in for his Xbox Live service, so he can hook up with his buddies online and play against or with them. It'll help him maintain contacts with the people he met and worked with in Iraq.

If this service had been around earlier, my brother-in-law probably would have been able to get back to the games quicker than waiting for us to receive the Xbox in the mail, find someone who could fix it, pronounce it dead, and then find a replacement.

I'm all for this service, and so is my wife. We'll see about donating to it soon.

~Otaku-Man

Kudos on this idea. It sounds like a great stress reliever for the men and women of the armed forces to whom we owe so much.

God bless them all.

er Sarcasm to the Sarcasm above

@Icehawk

Just have to hope no one gets silly and donates war games.

Why not? When I was in the Army, the top games that fellow Soldiers played were: FPS, RTS, Sports, and RPG. There also was a strong tendency to play games with a war-based theme to them.

@Tyler Baumbarger

I don't think that there was any offense intended in the initial statement. As your military friends would confirm, there is a very well-known, and well-used statement about wartime, which is what GP used, the "There are no Athiests in foxholes." It isn't an attack on Athiesm, or Athiests -- it is just that when faced with imminent mortality in a wartime situation many people end up, very quickly, making prayers to God (or gods, depending on whatever religious influences are around). Or, at the very least, the individuals try to make peace with their lives. There is no attack against Athiesm, or Athiests in it, nor is it even "off-color" toward Athiests. Heck, the term "Foxhole" is more considered the "off-color" terminology, and is looked down on in the Army (but still used).

@Xlorep DarkHelm

Damn, beat me to it.

I am about ready to drop a PS2 and 10 games on ebay..mm i might donate to this instead...*sigh* I need the moeny tho >

@Xlorep DarkHelm

There is an addition to that saying. "That isn't a comment against atheist, it's a comment against foxholes."

I liked the article Dennis, as I said before, kudos on it. I think there's a lot of people taking something personal that wasn't in any way intended to be. I'll have to look into the group some more as well.

I was rather shocked when I saw this trimmed article in my RSS reader, but that's because I'd never heard this expression before. While I don't suspect for a moment that Dennis was trying to offend, and that he was simply using it to segue into "...but there are gamers" in order to introduce the topic, it is pretty clear that the expression is based on a negative stereotype. It's made a little more sour by the fact that atheism hasn't got anything to do with the story at all. Without the existence of the phrase, it reads similar to: "Now, they say that Christians firebomb family planning clinics but it turns out that so do bored teenagers," as an intro to a story about arson.

@Tyler Baumbarger

You are the one making it a religious argument. I simply am saying let the statement go.

Note that while the military professes to respect any and all religions or the lack thereof (they are getting better at it) it is still a matter of personal preference. There is no "right" or "wrong". Understand please that I have not faced imminent mortality in a wartime situation, nor do I think most here have. What would I do if I did? Not sure since I have not been there. I do know that fear will cause one to do things they would not do otherwise. Is the quote offensive? Again it is a matter of personal preference. Was it intended to be offensive? Doubtful. Methinks that religion is a touchy matter at best, and I know of at least one that posts here on a regular basis that has stirred up that hornet's next more then once. I recommend De-Caf.

Just remember people. You do not need to defend your faith or lack, just have it or not.

That aside I still think it is good idea here. Spread the love or at least the games.

People get scared. People don't want to die. Naturally, sometimes in a stressful situation, reason may fail and you'll find yourself turning to some personal supernatural for a feeling of comfort and safety. Some people live lives devoid of reason, but satisfied by that comfort.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

:D

Oh, Jack! Here's a great opportunity to enact that study I proposed a while back, and earn some goodwill at the same time!

Purchase some of your "murder-simulators," or if you'd want more specific data, "military-simulators." Provide them to troops, then compare their fitness reports before and after.

Should prove your correlation. Right?

Eville1
ah the first golf war I can remember it now... the first President's bush playing golf int eh sands...for acouple years.

It seems his boy forgot to bring his clubs for this one.....


wha?
sorry :P

If wacky-jacky ever gets around to paying the 10G to charity he promised, this would be a worthy cause for his donation.

[...] Click here to read more…  « Fun For Our Troops Sends Gaming Relief Non-profit group buying games for soldiers » [...]

As your military friends would confirm, there is a very well-known, and well-used statement about wartime, which is what GP used, the "There are no Athiests in foxholes." It isn't an attack on Athiesm, or Athiests -- it is just that when faced with imminent mortality in a wartime situation many people end up, very quickly, making prayers to God. Or, at the very least, the individuals try to make peace with their lives. There is no attack against Athiesm, or Athiests in it, nor is it even "off-color" toward Athiests. As a welcome home present, my in-laws got him the Halo 3 Xbox 360, and Halo 3. Me and my wife are going to chip in for his Xbox Live service, so he can hook up with his buddies online and play against or with them.