Here’s another opportunity for Soldiers to excel. US Army Recruiting Command has established an ESPORTS team.
According to MG Frank Muth, commanding general for USAREC the idea is to connect with potential recruits stating, “If we are going to be successful in recruiting, then we need to be where young people are — and they are operating in the digital world. There are already thousands of current Soldiers who are competitive online gamers. Now we are giving them a chance to use their talents to help us relate to and connect with other young gamers. They will have the ability to start a dialogue about what it is like to serve in our Army and see if they are interested in joining.”
Soldiers selected to the team will be assigned to the Marketing and Engagement Brigade at Fort Knox for three years and will involve constant competitive training, recruiting engagements and interaction with the public on a daily basis but will not become recruiters.
The team is expected to begin competing on behalf of the U.S. Army by summer 2019
All active-duty and Army Reserve Soldiers are eligible to apply. Interested Soldiers should visit recruiting.army.mil/army_esports to learn how to compete for a spot on the team.
I wonder if the guys brought in by this will be offered a cheetos and mountain dew per diem.
But honestly, we need less guys who join expecting to be living in a video game when in reality they’re given a supply or admin MOS. I feel like these are the people who claim PTSD from boot camp because the military isn’t what they expected.
Team name, keyboard warriors.
10th Mountain Dew
oooo nice one
I thought this was a Duffelblog article at first glance….
It’s all too real.
So…online dating…Army style. Recruiter meets the perfect candidate in a Roblox match. 19 years old, HS diploma, in junior college but looking for more, no criminal record. Recruiter falls hard after they hang out in chat rooms, finally meet up in person…and…recruit is a 41 year old single mother on probation for welfare fraud.
The plus side is the Army will now be able to reach wealthy Nigerian princes with the Army message.
You forgot one essential part…sexting. No online relationship is complete without fake pictures being sent back and forth.
Damn…I thought the bobsledding article was bad news…..
All of a sudden “I just joined for college.” doesn’t sound so lame.
Here’s an unpopular opinion: This is a very good idea.
Two big motivators for me before I joined the Corps were movies and video games. If anything the DoD should provide grants/subsidies to gaming publishers so that they make more.
Get out of here with your logic. Our youth are not our future, and they are to be criticized and lambasted whenever they fail to adhere to our out-of-date beliefs.
Joining because of watching glorified movies and playing video games thinking you’ll do all that neat stuff and getting people to join to be a professional video game player are 2 different things.
what if they’re playing something like dota? i dont think anyone is expecting to be hitting towers with a sword when they join
Cool.
Right. Totally dumb. What they SHOULD be doing is joining because Lt Dan told them to, or because they saw a cool commercial on TV, or met a recruiter at the fair, or hell … because they met any recruiter anywhere ever. Your motivation to serve– assuming you did — is the only good motivation. The newer generation are worthless. They’ll never amount to anything because they do things differently than you did.
I’ll go ahead and step off your lawn, grandpa. Wouldn’t want to ruin your pristine grass.
Thank you for your service.
I didn’t know that Army Recruiting Command is run by “our youth.”
EXACTLY.
Gen Muth is a punk kid.
Really real Jet-Pilotz don`t make good drone pilotz!
But Gamers bring the mindset
“its just a pile of Pixels or dot on the Screen, not humanz”!
And even we in good old Germany know a little bit about the
“competition Army/AirForce 😉
Dooods check it out.
1 The economy is too gud.
2. The pool of non fatties who are self starters with a brain are way better informed of the assanine shit that happens in uniform than previous generations.
3. The quality of today’s army is somewhat of anamoly. The service was blessed over the last 18 years by a windfall of human capital……. That it failed to manage adequately…….
This . . . You hit the nail on the head.
Non combat roles, no problem, just be wary at the sharp end. Too much sitting on their ass when that time should be on their feet.
And e sports are not sports, they are games.
Mathlete!
Sports are games. Too many people forget that.
It’s like you guys don’t remember the America’ss Army video game which was a recruitment tool. And it’s still alive, has multiple versions and there is one currently in development.
Considering that every kid today plays Fortnite and other games, this isn’t a bad idea.
Your assertion would be better is you could quantify a return on investment. How many people joined the Army because they played that video game? If anyone actually joined the Army because they played that game, what percentage of those folks actually finished Initial Entry Training and completed their initial enlistment? Money and effort spent on recruitment is wasted without recruits that become soldiers and complete their enlistments.
I don’t think that number is public, I at least can’t find it. But if it didn’t have it value, then you might think/hope that they would have canned it. Video game development isn’t cheap.
The Army has a history of continuing to spend on recruiting programs that didn’t offer a good ROI (NASCAR, NFL, etc, etc).
Please let me go on PTDY from FHTX to the Army Call of Duty Team
did you complete your DTS so you can be a FPS on TDY to play MMOFPS?
So the Army is all about video games and Crossfit now??
I look forward to watching this disaster unfold as I retire next year