Remember some years back when the US Army formed an esports team to be more hip with the youths, and then tried its hand at streaming and was promptly bullied off of Twitch—not just once, but twice? You might have expected that to be the end of it, and in some ways it was: The US Army esports team hasn't streamed on Twitch since 2022. But the Battlefield-to-battlefield pipeline is alive and well, and a new initiative in the UK aims to go harder on it than ever.
The International Defense Esports Games, announced today by the UK Ministry of Defense, is an esports tournament that "builds a bridge between defense readiness and the fast-paced world of competitive gaming," the IDEG website says. Not too far removed from, say, putting up recruitment booths at esports majors, except that the goal here, stated far more explicitly than I've seen in the past, is to leverage the games to sign up the kids.
