Games For Soldiers

Well, we’ve had a tremendous success with getting donations of games, and still have several donations that will be coming in over the next couple of weeks. Amazing! Thanks to each and every person and company that made this possible.

Now, to continue that momentum, we need your help again! Back in the beginning of this journey, paying for shipping out of pocket was not a big deal. However, some people still saw fit to donate a bit of cash here and there, and it was very helpful and appreciated. Now that we are on the verge of sending out an unprecedented number of boxes, GFS could really use a hand with shipping costs. Each box costs $10-13 to ship, depending on contents. We don’t often use flat rate shipping boxes anymore because for an extra dollar (roughly) we can use boxes that allow us to ship far more to each unit.

So… follow this link to help us out. Even a couple of dollars is wonderful!

As a note, please remember that we are not currently a 501(c)(3) organization. We are still in the process of incorporating (and have a great lead on some potential help with that as well, thanks!). Therefore we cannot offer receipts that can be used against your state or federal taxes. We certainly hope this will not prevent your generosity, but we want to make sure you know up front.

Thank you!

2D Boy, the indie developers behind World of Goo (http://www.worldofgoo.com), have graciously allowed us to distribute copies of World of Goo with our boxes to deployed troops.  This will offer a great number of people another casual game to enjoy (and hopefully bring a large addition of sales to a very deserving 2D Boy).  Thanks again Kyle!

I’m going to step away from my normal brevity and make a blog-style post.  GFS has been phenomenally successful for a small start up getting attention by word of mouth and small newspaper articles.  Locally, those news articles have found us several donations of games and even a few cash donations to help pay for shipping costs.  This helps tremendously.  Extra thanks go to American Legion ‘Frank Wendland’ Post #253 in Royal Oak, MI.  During a recent event they held a 50/50 raffle on our behalf and raised well over $200.  Amazing!

Now, to current matters.  We’ll be starting our holiday drive on October 1st and continuing it through November 15th.  That’s about the latest date that we can recieve games and still reasonably expect them to get to troops in time.  If you plan to donate, please do so as early as possible.  Also, feel free to send us monetary donations via paypal (jesse@gamesforsoldiers.org) to help cover shipping.  I’d like to bring as much fun and cheer to deployed folk as possible this holiday.  Feel free to register and post in our forums or send me an email directly if you have questions.

I had an interview about Games For Soldiers with Jennifer Chambers, a reporter for The Detroit News.  Hopefully we’ll have a story run later this week or weekend.  A paper with such a great circulation should definitely get the word out about GFS.  I’m excited to see the results.  Stay tuned for a link to the story.

Lastly, thanks again to all of our wonderful donor companies, especially 2K Games, Microsoft and PopCap Games.  These three companies have sent us an utterly massive number of games.  Thank you also to the private donors whose help collectively builds up and helps out so much!

I look forward to a very productive next couple of months.

So, it looks like tomorrow I will be interviewed for The Detroit News.  I’m very excited about getitng the word out to more folk.  Good stuff!

Also, I’ll be sending at least four boxes out totalling FIFTY-ONE (51) games.  These games were provided by the following companies (in alphabetical order):  2K Games, Activision, Bioware, EA, Firaxis, Microsoft, and PopCap Games.  Thank you again to all of those who support us.

Edit 1: Let’s add one more package, 12 more games and 4 CDs.  Excellent!

… shipping out tomorrow.  The three boxes total 35 games being sent out.  Also, we’ve had $250.00 in monetary donations so far.  Thanks to all of those who have sent us some money.  It’s helped out with shipping quite a bit!

We’ve recently received several large corporate donations of games from Popcap Games, 2K Games, EA Outreach (EA’s philanthropic group), and Microsoft.  I will edit this entry for incoming game totals tonight!  We have SO much donating to do!!!

I lied…  no count in the works.  I had five boxes to pack up for shipping tomorrow and I still had stuff to get done.  Man, that was a LOT of donations.

So, last week when the photographer was taking pictures for the article linked below, I was busy sending out two more boxes to Afghanistan. Due to some great donations, these boxes also included several music CDs and DVDs as well as games. Excellent!

Well, we’ve made three official donations so far, totalling 20 games.  There are more donations to occur within the week.  We’ve also secured donations from several companies to stock us back up on games to send out.  Things are looking up.

On a side note, if you have any old OXM discs lying around (well, less than a year old), please feel free to send them our way.  We get original XBox games in to send out, and would like to be able to include a disc in each package with original Xbox games to ensure they have backwards compatibility (each disc contains such an update) when the troops may not have internet access for their Xbox 360.  Thanks!

As of now, I am paying for each shipment out of pocket.  It’s not that I mind, it’s just that it’s expensive.  LOL  So, if any of you out there feel the desire to give, but have no extra games (that you’re willing to part with), please donate cold hard cash money! 

… goes out to SGT Tate of the 1-4 Infantry.  Included are six PC games donated by private individuals as well as Bioware, Firaxis and Activision.  Here we go!