If you have been seeing the various branches of the U.S. military such as Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force regularly showing up at eSports games as recruiters and or even fielding their own teams to compete, they see video gamers as a big talent pool to recruit from. It looks like they have a very good reason to focus their efforts in the video game community --- video games can enhance cognitive performance.

The games in particular are first person and third person shooter games like the “Call of Duty” series, according to a research sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONS) focused on understanding the cognitive effects that video games have on the human brain.

The U.S. Navy esports team, Goats & Glory, plays Valorant against Navy Talent Acquisition Group Mid America Future Sailors at an esports event during Kansas City Navy Week, June 29, 2021.  (Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Chris Williamson)

“Anyone who is in a position where they would benefit from greater than normal cognitive control, top-down attention, peripheral visual processing would benefit from playing action games, which are primarily first- and third-person shooter games,” said Dr. C. Shawn Green, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madisonsaid. “That’s obviously a huge set of individuals, from those involved in combat, to people like surgeons or pilots.”

“People who play video games are quicker at processing information,” said Dr. Ray Perez, a program officer in ONR’s Warfighter Performance Department. “Ten hours of video games can change the structure and organization of a person’s brain. In the past few years we have gathered data through research that backs that up. The data will eventually be applied for training to enhance warfighter performance.”

The results are indeed promising. In their approach they did many more trials where they were assessed how quickly they learned a specific task then they resumed training video games. They then did their video game training as usual and did a post-test where they did many trials of a new cognitive task. The research found that those who trained on the action video game were faster learning of new tasks compared to those on control video games.

The Marines and Sailors have been training on simulators and video games for years now and with this research, it can help the Navy and Marines as well as the other branches interested in research develop or determine which video games can optimize the development of the cognitive skills performance which can translate into better battlefield performance.

If you are gamer who looks towards having a military career, you’re in luck, you may a have distinct advantage over others. Just make sure you’re in good physical shape.