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Secret service eyes gamers
18/10/2007 08:31 - (SA)
London - One of Britain's intelligence agencies will embed advertisements into popular video games this month in a bid to attract new recruits, The Times reported on Thursday.
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's intelligence listening post, will embed the adverts as billboards in video games including Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent in a bid to attract "computer-savvy, technologically-able, quick-thinking" recruits.
"We find increasingly we have to use less conventional means of attracting people ... to go beyond glossy brochures and milk-round stalls," a GCHQ spokesperson told the newspaper.
The advertisements will not be written into the games themselves, but will instead be fed into them while they were played on personal computers or Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles connected to the internet.
"We will monitor the results from this campaign and are ready to change our recruitment methods ... We know we can't stand still," the spokesperson said, adding that GCHQ hoped to "plant the idea in the heads of younger players".
The Times said that GCHQ declined to specify how much the month-long campaign would cost, but cited industry sources as saying it would likely cost in the low tens of thousands of pounds.
Britain's other intelligence agencies have slowly emerged from the shadows in recent years - the country's foreign intelligence service MI6 placed its first-ever advertisement for jobs in a newspaper in May, and in recent years it has launched its own website and accepted job applications online.
- AFP
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