The Boston Stack Celebrates Its Most Heavily-Attended Event Outside PAX East!
Way back in November, the Boston Stack leads had started planning with their friends at Microsoft to hold a big event in their store at the start of the new year. Microsoft’s community outreach programs state that if any employee volunteers for a local nonprofit, Microsoft will donate an hourly amount of money to that organization, per person. The store’s Game Manager explained that if the Boston Stack could reserve an event early in the new year, he could advertise the event to his coworkers as an easy way to get their mandatory community service out of the way. Stack-Up would get a considerable donation for a single event, and Microsoft’s employees could fulfill part of their yearly outreach hours just by playing video games. Everybody wins!
Unfortunately, as many veterans know, even the best plans fall apart at the first immovable obstacle. The four months between those two meetings were filled with setback after setback. An early January event became a mid-January event, which then became a late January event, and so on until the Boston Stack could finally muster the time and resources to reserve a spot on February 16, last Friday night.
With only one Microsoft volunteer and a few shaky “maybe”s from the Stack members, the Boston leads prepared for what they expected to be another minuscule and unremarkable event.
However, as many veterans ALSO know, expectations can be proven monstrously wrong. When the leads arrived at the Microsoft store, there was already a line of players for the event’s game cases! The shaky “maybe”s from the Stack members turned into a solid “yes,” making the Microsoft COD WW2 tournament one of the most highly-attended events in the Boston Stack’s history!
Sleeves (ironically sleeveless in the picture) decided to bring his flack jacket to the event to help draw some walk-ins. The prop worked like a charm, and Sleeves was bombarded with questions about his work in the Marines for almost the entire event.
The only notable downside to the event was the lack of Microsoft volunteers due to the Stack’s unavoidable commitments; though the heavyset pros of the event make it feel almost shameful to mention that problem.
Perhaps other Stack-Up Leads share this occasional difficulty of equating a successful event with monetary gain. It’s perfectly natural to see the business in the entertainment, especially when it feels like little or no returns means you’ve somehow let everyone down. Yet when you’re in a room filled with nearly two-dozen young players cheering each other on, a couple of passersby talking to your Stack members about the military, and even some banter with the Microsoft employees on the clock, that voice shouting for more donations gets drowned out for a while.
We had fun; and next time, we hope to have even more!
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