Town and Village

So as you know we help playntrade run some tourneys. The national guard came out to support this one because it was for C.O.D 4. They left a ton of cool shirts and started a box where you donate games to troops. Hopefully people are honest and leave the games there rather than take them.

Oh Robert Walsh won so he’s moving on to regional.

A local news paper covered this and here’s the article town and village in print!

Joe, gears play Sin,myself are in this photo.Where’s L.dubbs? Probably off training somewhere.
-Phire

Video game shops helping military recruit

By Sabina Mollot

Attention, video game players. Uncle Sam wants you.

As part of an ongoing effort to recruit new blood into the U.S. armed forces, the National Guard has been popping up at malls and video game shops around the country, in the hopes that the kid—or grownup—checking out the latest combat or action game might want to put his or her skills to real-life use.

“It’s a new kind of recruitment center,” explained Joe Tartaglia, owner of the Play N Trade game shop on East 13th Street. “The National Guard has found a connection between people who play video games and people who want to join the National Guard.”

Last weekend, Tartaglia’s Play N Trade was one of those shops that took part in the new recruiting program, inviting members of the New York Army National Guard to one of its gaming tournaments.

The National Guard had previously approached Play N Trade corporate, which then left it up to the individual retailers to decide whether or not to participate.

Tartaglia, owner of the only New York City-based Play N Trade (the franchise has 240 stores), said he chose to take part in the initiative for a number of reasons.

For one thing, a few of his employees are in the military, but mainly, he said, it’s to recognize that many of today’s popular games started out as military exercises and technology.

“A lot of things start with the government that end up in the private sector,” he said. “All of the video games—it could come from military simulations, combat simulations.”

One such game is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Released for the Xbox 360 game system last year, “it simulates the military experience and getting shot at,” said Tartaglia.

Of course, not all the games that originated in the military are such obvious, shoot-‘em-up style war adventures. Some focus on seemingly everyday skills like driving.

As for the more violent games, they’re certainly not without their critics, but Tartaglia, himself a gamer, dismissed them as harmless tension relievers.

“The kids who play here—they’re good kids,” he said. “I’d rather see them here (shooting things) than on the street shooting real guns and stealing things.”

His own son, Joe Tartaglia Jr., an employee at the store, is also into gaming.

Meanwhile, the video game store as recruitment center was met with some indifference at Play N Trade, at least on Saturday, when the gamers seemed to be more interested in, well, gaming.

Strolling past the Humvee parked outside the shop and the bin of National Guard t-shirts, the all-male crowd of mostly teenagers headed straight for the consoles.

The 20 or so participants “were more interested in the tournament,” Sergeant Lewis D. Swartz, one of two visiting members of the National Guard’s Recruitment and Retention Center, later conceded.

Although they left without making any converts that day, the other recruiter, Sergeant Darrul Harrison, recommended that anyone interested in more information about the National Guard stop by the Lexington Avenue Armory at 26th Street.

Play N Trade, located at 137 East 13th Street, is currently holding a video game drive for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Games can be usable with any game system and do not have to be new.