By Thomas O'Kelly, Senior Research Manager
Gaming is no longer a niche.
Gaming has become one of the most powerful cultural spaces for young people in the UK. It is no longer a niche hobby reserved for a narrow group of “gamers”. It now represents mainstream entertainment, social connection, competition, identity, and downtime all rolled into one. Around 70% of UK internet users play games on at least one device, while esports is much smaller but highly concentrated among younger audiences.
That makes gaming and esports an obvious consideration for armed forces recruitment. If young people are harder to reach through traditional channels, why not meet them where they already are?
Militaries have played this game before
There is a precedent. The U.S. Army’s America’s Army, launched in 2002, was one of the most overt examples of a military organisation using a video game as a recruitment and communications tool. It was not just advertising placed around gaming, it was recruitment thinking built into a gaming product. More recently U.S. Army and Navy esports teams moved onto Twitch and competitive gaming spaces, showing how recruitment could evolve from static messaging into live community interaction.
But this also revealed the risks. The U.S. Army’s Twitch presence faced public backlash, with critics arguing that recruitment activity in gaming environments could feel covert, manipulative or inappropriate when younger audiences were involved.
The UK has not been immune to this either. In early 2024 the British Army planned a Fortnite collaboration, working with popular creators on a custom map, only to scrap the project after public criticism before it had even launched. The Army insisted the activity never involved active recruiting and contained no direct route into a job application, but it withdrew the campaign anyway. It was a useful reminder that even engagement that stops short of recruitment can prove fragile on platforms where children make up a large share of the audience.
The UK has also begun to explore a softer version of this territory. The British Army has described esports as a way of building bridges with young people in their own environment, while the Royal Navy's partnership with British Esports has framed gaming as a way to support morale and digital skills as well as competition. That distinction matters. Gaming is more credible when it is not only treated as a funnel into recruitment, but as part of real service life, technical culture, and community.
Alongside these considerations, militaries are also facing growing competition for attention in these spaces from publishers and brands themselves. Activision's Call of Duty Endowment, a veteran-employment charity, has run its annual since 20 C.O.D.E. Bowl 19, bringing US, UK and Canadian military esports teams together with professional players and well-known streamers in a televised tournament. Initiatives like this show that the armed forces are no longer the only, or even the loudest, military-adjacent voice in recruitment-gaming culture, and that any activity now has to compete with slicker, better-resourced content in the same space.
The Top Gun myth
There is a useful parallel with Top Gun often referenced as a successful use of entertainment as a recruitment tool. The popular myth is that the original film caused U.S. Navy recruitment to surge by 500%. That claim is not supported by the available evidence with fact-checkers suggesting overall Navy enlistments rose by around 8% in 1986 before falling back.
But dismissing the Top Gun effect entirely would miss the point. Its real impact was cultural. It made naval aviation visible, exciting, and aspirational. Gaming and esports can do something similar for modern service, particularly around cyber, engineering, aviation systems, drones, intelligence, communications and technical trades.
Avoid too many assumptions
There is a significant risk with the excitement around gaming as a method for engagement to assume that people who play games are automatically the “right kind of people” for the armed forces.
Gaming can signal some genuinely useful traits such as problem-solving, persistence and tactical awareness, teamwork and communication under pressure, and complex digital skills. Esports also demonstrate a level of competition, discipline, practice and performance which could be valuable to armed forces recruiters.
But none of that automatically translates into suitability for a military career. Three obvious challenges sit outside what gaming can deliver on its own.
Fitness is the bridge gaming cannot build on its own
Fitness is the most obvious gap. Esports may demand focus and reflexes, but it is still largely sedentary. An armed Forces recruitment campaign built around gaming would need a clear bridge into physical readiness which remains a fundamental aspect of the UKs Armed Forces recruitment process.
Gaming can start the conversation, but it cannot replace, and should not distract from the 2km run, the assessment environment or the physical demands of basic training.
Trust is earned, especially in gaming spaces
Trust is another issue. Many young people are skeptical of institutions, advertising and anything that feels like a hard sell. In gaming spaces, that skepticism is amplified. Communities on Twitch, Discord, Reddit and TikTok are quick to detect inauthenticity.
The armed forces would need to show up through credible people rather than corporate slogans. This could be achieved through serving personnel who genuinely game, recruits who can talk honestly about training, technicians who can explain the real-world relevance of digital skills, and role models who make service feel accessible rather than abstract.
It is worth also considering a scepticism that runs deeper than a dislike of advertising. Some gaming subcultures actively celebrate an anti-establishment, irreverent mindset, which can sit awkwardly against the hierarchy and discipline of military life. A "gamers" focus risks disproportionately attracting applicants with a mindset that basic training then has to work against. It is a circle that cannot be fully squared, but a strategy that leans on the parts of gaming culture that do align with service, such as teamwork, community, skill and loyalty, and that is open about the reality of armed forces life from the outset, will feel far more credible than one that pretends the tension does not exist.
Esports and the diversity challenge
Diversity may be the most important strategic challenge. Esports audiences are typically young and male-skewing, while the UK Armed Forces have clear ambitions to improve female representation and widen the range of people who see service as “for them”. Defence has set an ambition for women to make up 30% of inflow by 2030, yet women still account for only around a tenth of current intake.
A narrow esports strategy would not solve that problem and could even reinforce an overly male-coded image of military life.
A broader gaming strategy is more promising. Mobile gaming, YouTube, TikTok, creator culture and casual gaming reach a much wider audience than competitive esports alone.
Gaming is an effective tool but not the whole campaign
Gaming and esports should have a place in a large-scale recruitment drive, but as one part of the process, not the whole solution. They are best used to open doors, build familiarity, modernise perceptions and create low-pressure pathways into more serious exploration.
The messaging should not be "gamers wanted" but rather focus on challenge, confidence, teamwork, digital skills, belonging, adventure and progression.
Gaming can help the armed forces earn attention and start better conversations. The wider recruitment system still has to turn that interest into readiness, commitment and service.