No, the British Army shouldn't run recruitment drives on Fortnite

There are a great many Fortnite forays by Gen Alpha's favorite brands, such as *checks notes* Skoda, which has a current player count of *checks crumpled notes covered in tears* four. Even my now jaded and faded teenage years bore more effective collaborations with Tony Hawks Pro Skater or Colin McRae Rally - we know how to do this effectively without disrupting player enjoyment.

Enter the British Army, Epic’s Fortnite, and on the agency front, no one’s rushing forward to claim this one.

In case you’re living under a rock, which ultimately, in 2024, sounds quite nice and understandable, Fortnite is the most successful online game on the market. Right now, about 2 million people are playing. Right now. Its peaks hit nearly 12 million concurrent players depending on what’s going on, from Lego worlds to Family Guy collabs to Eminem to Travis Scott. You’re probably seeing a theme emerging here - Fortnite is marketed and geared toward younger players, from its colorful characters, its cartoonish design, its accessibility, its eye-catching ever-changing collaborations with key IPs, and, importantly, its lack of real video game violence.

Yes, there are guns. There’s a noticeable lack of blood, though, and certainly a far cry away from other games in the shooter world or even adult-focused action RPGs like The Witcher or God of War.

Here, we have colorful pops of party confetti and magically levitating school busses, not gritty night vision assaults of terrorist splinter cells or airport civilians being mown down (CoD).

Why, then, would the agency go against the T&Cs and ‘promote military enrollment’? It created a Fortnite world dedicated to recruiting, presumably teenagers and younger, to the British Army to shoot real guns at real people.

From the ground up, the conception of this idea shows a clear and frankly disturbing disregard for the minds of our young audiences that we, as an industry, have a responsibility to protect and guide through moral and ethical minefields - pun sort of intended.

A friend and industry colleague of mine, James Whatley, at specialist games agency Diva, had this to say: “The best agency/client relationships are based on trust. Trust in research and insight, trust in strategy, trust in creative, and ultimately trust in flawless execution that delivers ROI. I feel sorry for the British Army because it would’ve been sold this idea on the understanding that it was a great way to recruit and appeal to a younger demographic. Not engaging experts - real experts with years of experience (not the two guys in the office who play a bit of Fifa at the weekends) - has cost the agency. And I hope all involved learn from this because every time something like this goes wrong, it erodes the trust we all work so hard to build.”

Even if there is no blood and guts on display, the sheer audacity and principle of creating a streamlined route for (potentially) vulnerable young minds to be recruited for the literal army through a free-to-play video game is irresponsible at best and insidious at worst.

I’m not sure how this piece of “work” got through multiple rounds of sign-off all the way through to execution - but I’m glad Epic Games have softly stepped in to put an end to an idea that should have never left the brainstorm.

Be the Best? Be Better.

You can watch the trailer here.

Update: This article originally credited SocialChain for the work. The agency has denied any involvement.