These days, "gaming" is more than sitting around the idiot box, endlessly moving squares on a screen in various directions. These days, video games (also known as "esports") are big business, a more than $220 billion dollar industry, expected to grow to more than half a trillion by 2030.
Related: 6 Ways Esports and Gaming Can Prepare Veterans for Life After the Military
That popularity extends to the military, where most branches have an official esports team and all use gaming as a recruiting tool. The USO recognizes gaming as an effective way of dealing with military stress, and ensures that all its lounges come with at least one gaming system and have a dedicated room wherever possible.
Studies have even shown video games can help troops with post-traumatic stress disorder, as they can confront triggering situations in a controlled setting.
One Gold Star mother found gaming as an opportunity to heal the family wounds caused by the loss of her children's father and to reconnect with her son. She soon founded Gold Star Gamers to give other military families who lost a loved one the chance to do the same.
"I think like any parent fighting for their child, I needed my son to see that I can't just wave a magic wand and make him better," Martha Laughman tells Military.com. "But I can work really, really, really hard at giving him the tools to help make himself better, and there wasn't a program out there for us, so I built one."
Like many military spouses who lose their service member, Laughman, who requested that the names of her family members and details of her childrens' father's service not be included in this article, handled it as best she could. He died in an accident, and her son struggled with that loss. He was not doing well in school and, even though Laughman was once a social worker, she was at a loss about what to do about it.
She decided to get him a gaming setup. With a quick internet connection and laptop, he was up and running. It turned out to be the first step in the right direction on a long journey.
"In his room, he set up the new laptop, found his dad's old uniform and taped an old picture he found of his dad up on the computer screen," Laughman says. "He found his little headset, and he would just talk to his dad’s [memory] for like 16 hours a day and they would game together. He did that for months and months and months."
Then, she noticed a soldier from U.S. Cyber Command won a Fortnite competition. Fortnite is a free-to-play battle royale game, where 100 players fight to be the last person standing. Other versions of the game allow for cooperative or team gameplay. Still others allow players to build their own worlds in which to play. The possibilities are endless.
It just so happened that Fortnite was one of the games Laughman's son played all day while speaking to his father’s spirit. She decided to take a chance on this soldier.
"I messaged over there. I said, 'Hey, can your soldier play with my son?' They said, Yes, set it up,'" Laughman recalls. "This young soldier came on in uniform, on video with my son and talked to him. Then, they played a couple games together, and that experience was life-changing for my family."
That 45 minutes of gameplay completely changed her son, she said. He began to open up and shared his thoughts and feelings with his mother for the first time since the accident.
"He told me what he was going through, things that he had never told me before and I was completely unaware of," she says.
She remembered her time as a counselor, when she would give young boys an activity to help create a bond, so they would feel more comfortable sharing their problems. It also made her realize something else about her son.
"That soldier, that young man, was my son's hero," she says. "Not the SEALs, not Delta Force. For my son, his heroes are like Space Force, Cyber Command, intel. Anyone that has hands on the keyboard is my son's hero.
"He was talking to this guy like he was tongue-tied. This young soldier was beyond anything because he had a uniform on and won a Fortnight competition. So I realized there's a shift in heroes for these kids.," she added.
Laughman wanted to capture more of that and realized gaming was the key to reconnecting and getting her son back. She found that helping him rebuild his self-esteem could be done through gaming competition. The kids in his school were not helpful to what her son was going through, so she used her cybersecurity connections on LinkedIn to arrange a gaming tournament.
She brought together the cybersecurity and defense communities, along with the military gaming community to put on an esports competition just for the children of fallen service members. The response was incredible. Her humble ask to LinkedIn was shared hundreds of thousands of times.
Soon, she was hearing from all over the world, including Europe and the Middle East. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft and Twitch also began reaching out. Other veterans, military and first responder groups wanted in too. It all took off when Tom Andrew, a Navy reservist and founder of a cybersecurity firm, got involved.
On July 4, 2022, Laughman and Andrew launched Gold Star Gamers, a nonprofit organization that provides mentorship, training camps and tournaments to children and families of fallen service members. It also provides one-on-one time with active-duty gamers and even offers grants for Gold Star Families to buy their first gaming setup.
"Well, the real purpose is to help these kids anchor themselves with something good and find hope and healing," Laughman says. "But they think the purpose is to help them level up to a competition-level gamer. They learn everything from hand-eye coordination, processing speed, in-game strategy, in-game communication, game IQ and teamwork. And I'm learning along with them."
Some of the Gold Star Gamers even get coaching from the same coaches who help train the esports teams of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Laughman wants to help anyone who needs it experience the same rekindling of joy and happiness she saw in her son that first game day.
"If they lost a parent that served in the military, that is our only requirement," she says. "I am just in awe of how gaming brings people together, creates new alliances of understanding and fun, and builds self-esteem and communication."
To learn more about Gold Star Gamers or to apply for one of its programs, training camps or mentorship opportunities, visit the website.
-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.
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