 The Wide World of Esports, a show devoted to all things esports. I'm your host, Katharine Noor. Today we're talking about U.S. Army Esports. With me today is Major General Frank Mooth. Welcome, sir. Katharine, great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Truly honored. I think this is your first episode for the Wide World of Esports, is it not? Absolutely, and we had to have you on because I have to tell you when I found out that the U.S. Army has an esports team. I absolutely couldn't believe it, and that made me immediately contact you and ask you to be on my show. Yeah, no, it's been probably about 18 months since we really started this, maybe more, probably 20 months since we started this path, and it's just been crazy fun. I've enjoyed every minute of it trying to dive into something brand new, not just me, but the entire team. It's been fantastic. So my burning question for you is, when people find out that you have a U.S. Army Esports team, are they surprised about it? Yeah, they are. And you normally see it online that that interaction goes with our players every day. And the more and more that we're out there, you get less of that surprise. Where you really see it, where I saw it, was at the different PACS conventions that we went to. And we first started back in January of 19. It was when our first big PACS convention, it was a soft launch for us, because we had literally just stood the team up within a couple of months before that. And we went to PACS South down to San Antonio, and they're like, the Army's got a Esports team. And we're like, yeah, we were still getting it together. We did tryouts, and we had 8,000 soldiers sign up for 16 positions on the team. And we were just still kind of going through that and testing out our players. But then once we got the PACS East, we went to PACS West, we went to TwitchCon, we went to as many different exposés and conventions as we could, the name started rolling out there. And then we got more, we just got more savvy in the process. And as Sergeant Jones, and I think you got to talk to him yesterday, who's real, he's the original idea man for this entire concept. He said, sir, if we're gonna do this, we gotta be legit. Meaning we gotta have players that have true skills. And we've got to have like kind of, I wish I was wearing my Esports jersey, but as you know, I'm moving. So I packed it up and it's moved with my household goods, but have everything legit to include if we go to a convention to have a position or at least our floor plan and our floor exhibit to be truly Esports-esque, that it kind of appeals to that Z generation. Okay, fantastic. So how does the Army use Esports? Well, you know, first of all, we find that Esports alone, the skill sets that are out there with the Esports players are very, they are the same skill sets that we're looking for in the Army. And it starts with teamwork, communication, critical skills and problem solving, multi-dimensional understanding, quick twitch thinking process and decision-making. And so we really think that all of those translates to all the 150 different jobs that we have, whether it's healthcare, unmanned aerial systems, cyber, psyops, linguists, or infantry armor, all of those, or a helicopter pilot like myself. So all of those translate and those are all great hard skills and some of them are soft skills. And so really how we use this is the Esports is just an avenue to start a conversation. None of our players goes into any of these conventions or goes onto a site at night, we have our own Twitch channel and we'll set up tournaments and nobody goes in there saying, hey, I'm a recruiter, come join the Army. That's not what we do. What we do is we go out there and we have a shared passion for Esports and we share that passion with the youth of America out there today. And it naturally devolves into a conversation of what do you do? I'm the Army and our team players come from all walks of life. We have truck drivers, we have unmanned aerial systems, we have a special forces green beret, we have infantry men, but then we also have medics. I mean, it's all across a lot of signal ears, as you can imagine, and it runs the gamut. And they say, what do you do? And they tell them and then they start a conversation. And I can give you a lot of examples of how it turns into initially maybe, okay, are you interested? No, but then later they come back and they'll go, they are. And I'll give you this example. Paxies last year in 19, it was in April. We met a young man, one of our players did. And he said, they exchanged, hey, what's your call, where do you play? What do you play? Hey, let's link up. And they linked up online later. And they played all throughout the summer different tournaments together. And he finally said, hey, are you interested in the Army? He says, no, I'm on a scholarship for college in the fall to play e-sports. He goes and starts his e-sports fall semester. I don't know what the college was. And it didn't work out. And he left and he contacted this guy. He has been playing with all summer and said, hey, I'm interested in the Army. That guy shipped out about three months ago to go to basic training. That's the story. That's the story of how we link up. We have a dialogue. And if they're interested, great. If they're not, that's okay too. Because we have the shared passion at e-sports. So, okay, when I think about Army recruiting, I think about going to a mall and seeing Army recruiters at a table, okay? Now, is this better than having a table at a mall? Yeah, so I have to go back a little bit for that one because when myself and my senior enlisted advisor, non-commissioned officer, and she's much smarter than I am, and I wish she was here, but she and I were both given the task by the secretary of the Army and the chief staff of the Army in 2018 to go reimagine Army recruiting because we failed that year. We were short by 6,500, which we hadn't had that done since 2005. So she and I immediately went down to the recruiters. We said, we're best to learn about what's going on and how we can improve the process. We went down there. The first thing we found out is that we were still calling people on the phones and that still works to some degree now. But let's face it, that's an industrial way of to recruit. And that's the same way we were recruiting back in 1974. And I found out that we weren't allowed to use social media. And she and I were shocked. I said, we're not on Instagram, we're not on Facebook, we're not on Twitter, we're not on Snapchat, which most of those are all kind of by the wayside now. But Instagram is king and queen right now. And we weren't allowed to, our recruiters weren't allowed to use it. So it was the first thing we did. And that was August of 18. We said, it's approved right now. Get on there and start using social media as an avenue to connect and or indeed any of the work sites, all of them. And so we did that. And then we set up virtual recruiting stations, which were three people teams, soldier teams at each battalion that did nothing but prospect for leads off of social media every day and creating content and means and what we call boosting on Facebook and Instagram, all of that. Now, I say that in relation to the eSports because that set up this tone of change in the organization. And so by late August, early September, we get this call from Sergeant Jones. And he's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and we're down in Huntsville, Alabama, taking a brief. And we set up a conference call. He sent Sergeant Major in email, said, I have a concept. Would you please listen to it? He sat and talked to us for 30 minutes about and gave us a lot of, he did a beta test a week before with incredible numbers of how many people he reached over a 24 hour period, basically 2.1 million people when he did a tournament. He's a caller. You know, he has his own games but he's mainly known as a caller in the world. And so he had 2.1 million people look at him in uniform like I'm wearing, calling a tournament in LA and said, I'm an army recruiter. He did, we have 150 jobs. He did our normal, you know, a bit that we give. And he told me that and I couldn't believe it. And I said, how soon can you move to Fort Knox, Kentucky? I need, we need a 16 person team stood up next month. He's like, whoa, whoa, timeout, sir. So I said, get here as soon as you can. And so by January, we had done the tryouts for 8,000 soldiers signed up. We had to stop it at some point because so many people wanted to keep signing up. 16 slots were tried out for and we got that team up and running and they were all on Fort Knox by the spring. In the meantime, we were bringing them in for different tournaments from wherever they were stationed in the United States. And that's really how it took off. So, but it started with us reimagining how you recruit and it was getting off of the analog and having a renaissance of how the army recruits utilizing digital and social media as a new platform because let's face it, at the end of the day, that's where all the Z generations, that's where they are. They're not watching traditional TV. They're not doing other the things that we grew up doing, they are on the digital plane always and they have an eight second attention span. And if you're not, if you're not creating something new every day or every other day, you become stale. And that's kind of the way we saw it. Absolutely, and I know that you're gonna be in the private industry very shortly. So one of my burning questions is whether you think that this model might translate to the civilian section. I think it all starts with a dialogue. So let me back up for a second, just so you know, we're also now, we've been doing esports now for like I said, it's 20, 22 months. And our team is mainly focused on League of Legends, Apex Legends, Overwatch, Call of Duty, Fortnite, the standard games are out there and then we have the fighting games. We're standing up a cyber team and they are gonna be, because they're now running cyber leagues and cyber tournaments, because we have an entire sector of a cyber command that we feel that we know that we have to recruit for and that's a unique skill. And these cyber tournaments, they go in and actually practice their skillsets and these cyber teams. So we're gonna now do tryouts and we're gonna, it'll be a three person team and they're gonna join, it might be a four person team and join the esports team, but just focus on cyber. So if you think about that, why wouldn't a industry, because every industry needs cyber warriors. Every private industry has to have cyber warriors that can do offense and defense to protect the companies, right? So that's just one aspect. The other thing is, why wouldn't you want somebody that you know you can talk to that communicates teamwork, think about these games, these multiplayer games, they have to work together and then they have to coordinate together. They have to get along together. They have to, you know, all of these things that why wouldn't you want somebody and they'd have to communicate. That's the kind of people you want in your organization. Now what I tell people is those are a lot of soft skills and well, I'm sorry, those are kind of like hard skills and what we teach in the army, the great thing about it and I talked to industry quite a bit. We teach the soft skills, the stuff like, I don't know, show up on time, show up in the right uniform, show up after lunch. That'd be nice too. You'd be surprised how many business, when I talked to them, I had like an employee to show up after lunch and things like that. And then also, you know, working together and having a mission focused. So, but I still think it can translate because it all starts with a dialogue and an interest that both parties have. Well, you know what's interesting to me with eSports is this concept of a team house and that the players, they live together and they train together. Do you have any elements of that, like the team house in military, in army eSports? Yeah, so a couple of things. We feel that there's several layers to this one, Catherine. The first and foremost is that we're standing up, you know, the army's one of the army's toughest schools is called Ranger School. And so we have stood up for what we're calling a Granger School, Gaming Ranger School. And so we created our program of instruction and it's not just about, and we actually, the team had to go out to a location. I won't, it doesn't matter what location, but they had a program that they had already had, but it was mainly just for gaming strategy and great gaming skills. But we wanted to add several other layers to it. And so we wrote, we helped modify the program instruction and we're gonna end up within the next couple of months and, you know, complete it here. But it has to do with, first of all, of course, gaming strategy, depending on the game that you're on, gaming coaching, gaming, you know, get in there and work together to create that team bonding, physical fitness, nutrition, and then brain training. And this location had all of that because we feel that won the brain training, you know, the combine for the NFL. They put their players through brain training and they put them into a room and they put them in a physically kind of demanding position, standing on having to balance on like a rolling log and then have to answer or computerize questions that are based on, you know, a screen that's in front of them and they have to answer as quick as they can. And they say that training, one, it increases their decision-making ability and increases that speed of making a decision quickly. That's one, two, those guys say they come out of there, they are more worn out than a two hour physical workout because the brain is just kind of just, you know, you're eating up so many calories. So that's one, nutrition. You know, if you're gonna drink five red bulls in a day and eat malo pies at the end of the day, you're not gonna be doing, you think you're gonna be doing better in a tournament, you're not. Or if you're staying up until five o'clock in the morning playing other games and you're a professional and then you get up and you have a tournament that day, I'm sorry, your brain is just not going to function. So they have to know what their limitations are. And then seating posture, you know, because these guys get carpal tunnel syndrome, you know, after a while. So all these different things that we were teaching there. And you need to be in shape. If you're gonna sit there and play for 12 hours a day, okay, under that, that duress and then having to make split second decisions as quickly as possible. If it's been proven in combat, why do you think we're in such good shape? Because we have to go through that stress and we perform much better while you're physically in shape to be able to do that. So that's what our program of instruction was for our team when we put them through it. And I think personally, ultimately if a player is capped out at a certain level of skill, to get beyond that, you have to go and add additional capabilities within their training regimen. And it can't just be about playing more games because they're already maxed out, what are you gonna play 15 hours a day instead of 12? And you think you're gonna get better? If you look at the NFL, has the DNA of a physical, of a human being changed in the last 15 years? No, what's changed is our nutrition and our training habits have changed and that's why your players are bigger. That's why your players are faster and that's why your players are making decisions faster because their training has evolved. I personally believe that's what esports needs to do. And you know, when I look at comparisons between how many hours an esports athlete spends training versus a traditional athlete, you usually see the esports athletes are training much longer. Is that your experience? It is, but the question is, are they just training on the game? And so then can you train, could you, if you're spending 12 hours a day training on the game, could you get better at the game if you train six hours on the game and then you spend an hour in the gym doing a hit workout, a CrossFit or something to get the blood going? Then you go into an isolated room and do an hour of brain training. And then you eat a healthy meal and you get a good night's sleep. Are you a better player the next day? Vice, if you just trained for 12 hours, drank 16 Red Bulls and then went to bed. And then, and of course didn't sleep at all because you've been drinking Red Bull all day. And I'm not saying it's Red Bull or whatever. I'm just saying, I think it to get better you have to take it beyond where players may be right now. And I think it has to do with, and I'll give you another one. I think they should put yoga in there because the brain has to rest also. I've taken yoga for years and there's nothing better and a more calming feeling to where you kind of, it's really hard to empty the brain out. And if you get to do that, it rejuvenates your brain. And as soon as you've done that, your ability to now make better and faster and quicker decisions and to be able to see more and comprehend more, it's just naturally gonna happen. So if, okay, so say someone, they want to be on the Army eSports team and they decide to join the Army and they try out and so, and they're fortunate enough to be able to make the team against all that competition. How long would they have the eSports assignment and where would they be assigned? That they'd all come to Fort Rocker or Fort Knox and then they'll be here for three years. That's the normal duty assignment because what we have to be careful about is if they plan on staying in the Army, you don't wanna hinder their professional development. And to be able to do this assignment's great, but if they are a cyber warrior or they are cryptologists or they're a healthcare worker, they've gotta get back to those jobs to be able to continue their progression in their field. And some of these soldiers, they're gonna get out and we know that too. I mean, it's not uncommon for soldier to come in and spend four years. They get, of course, when they leave, they get a 100% paid college tuition after four years. And they wanna go back and they wanna go to college. And so they get out and it's all paid for but they just go to a college. So, but some stay in. But anyway, it's three years. So if somebody wanted to join our team, the best way to tell them is look, you gotta join the Army. And then essentially, if you're playing already and you're good, you're a known entity out there in the eSports world. And at that point, like I said, we're probably gonna start running tryouts again. Let's see what's going on. It'll probably be sometime in 21 because we're gonna have people starting to hit their mark because what we'll do is we do tryouts in 21 and then you would move somewhere 22. And everyone that is here now got here in 2019. And that'll be their three year mark. And we'll probably stagger the team because we wouldn't wanna dump the whole team at once. You know, but Catherine, you talked about that house and I talked about the training, but we have a facility here. That was the other thing I told Sergeant Jones. I said, no expenses will be spared. You tell me what you need. And we have a facility here that is just, it's incredible, the gaming spaces, but we also have our own production studio to where if we stand up at tournament, we have our own caller that he tried out to be a caller and he sets there and does all of that. And then they also produce video and other content that goes with all of our eSports team. And then of course, I don't know if you're aware of our 18 Wheeler, we have an 18 Wheeler that we built with eight Scorpion chairs and we drive that around the United States with our team and go to colleges or high schools or events and challenge people. And they pretty much line up by the hundreds to get in there and play the, you know, to play in the big truck as we call it. Fantastic. So do players, okay, first of all, okay, army of players, would they have like the nicknames and would they be streaming, are they required to do their own streaming as well as training? They've got, so they have, they've have the names that they have or what they brought to the table. Oh, okay. They were already established entities and they allowed, they allowed, they were allowed to keep and I didn't want to change that. Again, they've got to be authentic. They've got to have that same vibe. And these were folks that were known out there anyway. And they're pre-am, you know, a lot of them are pro-am tours and stuff like that or they came from that circuit. So again, they're known. So yeah. So what are some examples? Who are some of your better players? Oh, see, I did. So I know them by, you know, by their names, you know. Okay. I don't, you know, I know them by, you know, private Miller or specialist Miller and, and or Sergeant Jones or some of those other folks. So yeah. I think we got, we got a specialist Rodriguez too. Yeah. When they are assigned to the esports team, do they have any duties in their regular military occupation or are those put aside until they finish that tour? Their sole function is doing esports. We do put them through a mini recruiting course, a three-day course just so they understand because they, you know, they're uniform. They wear this patch. They wear the United States Army recruiting patch on their uniform. Cause at the end of the day, they have to be able to have a discussion about to somebody about if they're interested in the army, you know, what the MOS's are and to talk about what life is about the army and the, and the different things, whether it's a, you know, we offer a loan repayment program of $65,000. You have college tuition paid for all these different. So we just kind of do it. It's not, you know, a normal course is six weeks, but we just give them a three-day cause they have to be able to have that discussion too. We want them to talk about esports, but if somebody has a quick question for them, they got to be able to have, give them an answer at the rudimentary level. And then they'll link them up with a recruiter if somebody has some more questions. But I'll tell you the leads that we're getting from these events with an elite, a lead will ultimately lead to a contract. So the leads are somebody's interested. They give us their name. They give us their zip code, their email address and their phone number. And if I could Catherine, so the, the, during this COVID, we were very lucky to be have transitioned or have positioned ourselves to do a lot of virtual recruiting because of all the things that we were already doing. And so for example, of the difference between our traditional recruiting, face-to-face and virtual is the New York state fair occurs every year, 300,000 people show up. It's up in Syracuse. It's three weeks long. We pay $15,000 and set up the booth that you talked about. And we'll send 15 recruiters there for 15 hours a day for three weeks. Traditionally we got seven to 900 leads. During COVID, we took a three-week period in Syracuse that that time did. They ran a call of duty tournament. Two recruiters worked eight hours a week for three weeks and we got 1400 leads. And we didn't, we paid $2,000 for what we call registered or win. So think about what that translates. We are, we are reaching more people across a greater space with less manpower and people power and less money and the words getting out. So that's the difference between throwing traditional and doing what we're doing now. Sure. And I would think that at some point in the future, perhaps bigger businesses might do the same and have these sports teams. Do you think that would be, that's a possibility? Well, I know this. The Navy came to us and spent three days here with us. We were fully transparent, showed them everything we were doing. Air Force has already contacted us. I know the British Army has also stood something up. There's no reason why they shouldn't. If you're trying to, you know, they talk about the aging workforce. If you're trying to reach the Z generation right now and you think putting something on, Monday night football is going to reach them, you're just not looking at the demographics. You're not looking at where they're spending time. And if they're logged on and their screen time at the end of the week is eight hours, if not more, none of that was on traditional media. It was all on Instagram, YouTube, or they're watching Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime Prime. I mean, it's all these other non-traditional spaces. And if you're not there as a civilian sector organization, you are missing out on where the Youth of America is operating today and into the future. And certainly the demographics is 18 to 25-year-old males in terms of players. However, girls and young women are getting into it in much greater numbers. Have you had any women on the team yet? Yeah, we have one right now, matter of fact. Yeah. Fantastic. Because it's certainly an equal opportunity situation because they're as good as the men. It's just that there has been a tradition of discrimination against girls and women in eSports, but I hope that's changing. Well, so do we, because the Army, of course we don't, that is not tolerated. We have zero tolerance for anything that is not fully transparent. Every MOS has opened up to every female. Matter of fact, I read in the paper yesterday, the first female past special forces training to get her green beret. And she should be getting it this week or next week. That is fantastic, right? So there's zero tolerance for discrimination or anything in the racial side here in the Army. It's not tolerated. Everything's open to everybody, period. So, and same thing with the eSports. So it's all about, it's a meritocracy. It's about skills. That's what we're looking for. And if you can bring the skills, we want you on the team. Sure, and has COVID-19 interfered with your eSports operation? No, on the eSports side, it's actually increased because all the battalions, we have 14,000 recruiters across 1,400 locations, best way to describe it. And what it has allowed us to do is they've now established their own many eSports tournaments within their recruiting locations or they've reached back to our team and we will remote in and play tournaments and say, okay, it's like come on, come all and play against one of the US Army eSports players for a registered to win gift and we offer a bunch of different stuff. And so that is actually, we've increased our presence on the eSports, on the platform during COVID-19. We had to reduce our presence in the stations, the traditional brick and mortar stations because of COVID-19 and the potential risk to our force. So did our recruiting go down? It did, but we were poised on the virtual side and we did about 50 to 60% of what we would normally do. But thank, you know, it's very good that we were doing virtual before because we would have made zero. And so we learned a lot of lessons and we actually, you know, that we're ramping up now and it's kind of, it's taken off now, but we had to change, we didn't have to change, we had to adopt some of the policies that we're already doing because we went 100% virtual for about seven and a half weeks. And you know, actually eSports is relatively pandemic proof in a lot of ways, so that's fantastic. But, sir, we're out of time and I really appreciate you joining me today for the first Wide World of eSports show. And I thank everyone for listening in today and watching us on two weeks. My guest will be William Collis, the author of the book of eSports and Co-Pounder of Oxygen eSports. And so thank you, sir. And we'll see you all again next time. Thank you, Catherine. It was truly my honor. Terrific.