American Legion Gaming and SVA: “a natural pairing”

Connections made between rising e-sports program and the Legion’s Be the One mission.

As American Legion Gaming volunteers have been organising PlayStation 5s, Nintendo Switches and racing simulators on the 18^th Student Veterans of America National Conference Thursday in Colorado Springs, others organising their very own cubicles started to take discover.

The screens lit up and flashed to life in The American Legion’s house. Other exhibitors quickly suspected this was not going to be an unusual 8-foot, draped desk loaded with pens, mints, stickers, enterprise playing cards and brochures to stuff into swag baggage.

“Even before the hall opened, we talked to several student vets and others among the exhibitors who play video games who said they would be interested in starting American Legion Gaming e-sports chapters at their SVA chapters at their colleges back home,” stated Jared Morgan, adjutant of Ronald Reagan Palisades Post 283 in California and American Legion Gaming’s CEO.

That night, when some 2,000 pupil veterans poured into the SVA NatCon exhibit corridor “campus,” the suspicion was confirmed. Crowds swarmed into the Legion house, which prominently displayed twin messages of Be the One and American Legion Gaming.

 “The energy in this room really is unbelievable,” American Legion National Commander Dan Okay. Wiley stated after ending a racing recreation towards one other veteran. “You can feel it. Maybe it’s just being around young people – I can almost remember those days – but there’s a lot of people visiting the booth. This is clearly something, in this gaming, that the younger generation is interested in.”

Among these was Navy veteran Christopher Stucke, a Rogue Community College enterprise main, SVA chapter president and member of American Legion Post 28 in Grants Pass, Ore. “I love gaming,” he stated, recalling how video video games with different veterans helped him get by the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It kept me connected with other servicemembers, some people I served with who kept getting orders and moving around the country and around the world … A lot of these games, you are playing on a team. Everything is a team effort, right? It really draws us in that way. It’s also just talking and connecting. You have a headset; you talk to a person on the other side. You talk to them when they are going through something, or they are talking to you when you are going through something. That loneliness – it definitely curbs that in a lot of ways. Just because they’re on the other side of the world, or the other side of the country, they’re right there when you’ve got that headset on. You’re just a game invite away from another veteran.”

The American Legion Gaming station married up properly with the Legion’s main program on the convention, to coach veterans by the Be the One mission to detect veteran suicidality and stop it from occurring.

“One of the factors in suicide is loneliness – being on your own, not thinking you have friends, or people that support you,” Wiley stated. “This is a community that can get together and support one another, and spend time with one another, which is really effective in regard to our mission with Be the One.”

Friday’s schedule on the SVA convention included an American Legion/Columbia University Be the One veteran suicide-prevention coaching session.

“There’s a lot of therapeutic value in gaming,” Wiley stated. “There’s a whole community of people who get together around certain games. It’s bonding time. It’s a time for them to reconnect, to keep those friendships alive.”

“I’ve seen what this can do for the Legion,” stated American Legion Department of Arkansas Vice Commander Allen Edwards. “We’ve had a lot of times when we’ve had veterans in the chat at 11, 12, 1, 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, and someone is always on. And they just talk. So, we’re being that one. We can be that one.”

One veteran who was on the American Legion Gaming’s Discord community – now practically 10,000 sturdy, having grown by about 3,000 over the past six months – was a federal worker struggling to make lease throughout the federal government shutdown final fall, Edwards stated. The American Legion Gaming group was in a position to present assist and get him assist to cowl prices till his paychecks resumed.

“That’s the power of The American Legion,” Edwards stated. “That came from out of the Discord. That’s huge. We actually keep track of that. We have a spreadsheet of it. That’s how many times it has happened.” He stated video games have been paused when gamers detected threat from different veterans on a number of events, typically resulting in a Veterans Crisis Hotline name.

Edwards received concerned with the initiative – now with about 12 division gaming committees nationwide and extra forming this winter – on the 106^th National Convention final August in Tampa, Fla. Now, he’s the volunteer director of subject operations for American Legion Gaming.

“Within 10 minutes, I was sold,” the Coast Guard veteran and commander of Post 2 in Monticello, Ark., defined. “Even our older guys, coming in there and jumping in a racing chair or playing Mario Kart … seeing that joy on their faces. I knew it could be a tool to combat that isolation that veterans are suffering from – bring them out of that shell a little bit. My biggest drive in life has always been to help my brothers and sisters. Getting to do that, and getting to do gaming, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

Edwards stated that gaming is rising his publish’s Sons of The American Legion squadron and re-invigorating its American Legion Auxiliary unit. “My department is very supportive of it,” he added. “My department commander sees the potential this has for driving membership with The American Legion, as well as the interactions we are getting with the other generations that are coming. We need these young veterans. Getting this young blood in there, getting these young guys and gals in, I think it’s a game changer.”

Gaming, Morgan added, is altering stereotypes and driving membership. “American Legion Gaming is a way to introduce younger veterans to The American Legion. That’s the bottom line. That’s why we’re here at SVA. This is the demographic that we should be engaging with.

“It’s such a natural pairing. SVA is an organization that really values the student veteran, a real advocate for the student veteran, and so is The American Legion. And so, I think it’s only natural that we have a presence here.”