British Intelligence to Recruit Gamers via Xbox Live [UK Government Agency places recruiting adverts on Xbox Live]

British Intelligence wants you… so you can work for them, that is. British Intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (or GCHQ) is the Signals Intelligence branch of the British intelligence community, and have begun placing adverts on the Xbox Live Dashboard to try and recruit gamers to positions within their organization.

The ad campaign to recruit gamers will run six weeks and is being handled by a third-party advertising agency. This isn’t the first time that GCHQ has run ads in the video gaming domain, as in 2007, the GCHQ ran ads in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent for the PC, also trying to recruit gamers.

Xbox Live’s key demographic is 18- to 34- year old men, which is also the GCHQ’s key recruiting demographic. The GCHQ recruiting website point-blankly states that “you have to be a British citizen to for GCHQ. There are no exceptions.” The United Kingdom is one of 26 countries where Xbox Live is legally available. No current data is publicly on how many of  Xbox Live’s users live in the UK.

GCHQ is not MI6. Its mission is intelligence analysis, so it’s doubtful that Call of Duty addicts will be infiltrating foreign governments and wooing accented women anytime soon. A spokeswoman for GCHQ told The Guardian that it looks for in an employee is “reflected in game-play experiences on Xbox, such as quick thinking, problem solving and team work”. She added that GCHQ is responsible for dealing with communication and cyber threats to England, and that gamers may inherently be inclined to know more about these fields.

Targeting gamers for employment is nothing new. In addition to GCHQ’s earlier attempts, the US Army spends $10 million annually in continually developing America’s Army, a free PC shooter that has players playing the role of American soldiers.