Amid a recruitment struggle, branches are using huge hits like Fortnite as marketing tools. Some veterans see the practice as unethical – especially given the age of the gaming audience
His esports team – navy personnel who compete with gamers online under the name Goats & Glory – consists of 12 enlisted sailors who used to work as flight officers, sonar techs and even a chaplain’s assistant.
“I was in a country fighting a population that lives on less than $1 a day with gigantic weapons and armored vehicles,” says a former US army intelligence analyst, Jeremiah Knowles, “and if I’m patrolling in Afghanistan with my assault rifle and a kid gets too close …” He pauses.
In 2018, the army formed the first military esports team but was accused of unethical recruitment practices in its Twitch stream, including censoring questions about war crimes in its chat and holding a fake Xbox controller giveaway.
In a video posted to Instagram last fall, you can watch a navy esports team member slipping a Meta Quest VR headset on to a child’s head in an elementary school library in Utah.
“Even if they’re not directly providing a link to join the army or whatever,” Cronin tells me from her dorm room at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, “they are trying to appeal to the cool factor of ‘ooh, we do mid-air refueling’ and ‘we jump out of planes and shoot guns’.”
Others attribute youth reluctance to recent publicity about a culture within the military that allows for racism, white supremacy and sexual violence; gaping holes in the US’s veteran support system; the legacies of the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; and ideological opposition to war itself.
The original article contains 3,548 words, the summary contains 253 words. Saved 93%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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His esports team – navy personnel who compete with gamers online under the name Goats & Glory – consists of 12 enlisted sailors who used to work as flight officers, sonar techs and even a chaplain’s assistant.
“I was in a country fighting a population that lives on less than $1 a day with gigantic weapons and armored vehicles,” says a former US army intelligence analyst, Jeremiah Knowles, “and if I’m patrolling in Afghanistan with my assault rifle and a kid gets too close …” He pauses.
In 2018, the army formed the first military esports team but was accused of unethical recruitment practices in its Twitch stream, including censoring questions about war crimes in its chat and holding a fake Xbox controller giveaway.
In a video posted to Instagram last fall, you can watch a navy esports team member slipping a Meta Quest VR headset on to a child’s head in an elementary school library in Utah.
“Even if they’re not directly providing a link to join the army or whatever,” Cronin tells me from her dorm room at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, “they are trying to appeal to the cool factor of ‘ooh, we do mid-air refueling’ and ‘we jump out of planes and shoot guns’.”
Others attribute youth reluctance to recent publicity about a culture within the military that allows for racism, white supremacy and sexual violence; gaping holes in the US’s veteran support system; the legacies of the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; and ideological opposition to war itself.
The original article contains 3,548 words, the summary contains 253 words. Saved 93%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!