The gamification of real war should be terrifying to us all, as soldiers awarded points to spend for kills

Beyond the hyperbole of how we are constantly minutes away from global destruction at the hands of despotic madmen with fingers perma-hovering over the nuclear button, the reality of war is often a little more granular.

As people who play games, the closest many of us come to that moment where death seems the only inevitability is in Call of Duty (or Worms). And as annoying as it is to get sniped by a teenager from across a map, we just redeploy and are back in the action within minutes.

Video Game designers have taken wars and turned them into entertainment since the Atari 2600 and beyond. Now, though, it seems that the publishers of war are hellbent on turning their own product into entertainment for their recruits. And that is something we need to be super afraid of.

For a generation now the lines between real war and gaming war have become ever more intertwined. We already have hyper-realistic FPS games such as Bodycam and Ready or Not, pushing the graphical realism we already had with Call of Duty.

At the same time, the world’s militaries have been adapting their own technology to mirror more closely the gaming world, developing controllers such as the FMCU from Ultra Electronics, which you can see below.

A report in Wired last year highlighted that this controller has been in play since 2010, but now is seeing more use than ever before, as militarized FPS drones become the terrifying norm on the battlefield.

It makes perfect sense really…

So why game-style controllers for weapons of any kind of destruction?

Military tech expert Peter Singer tells Wired, “The gaming companies spent millions of dollars developing an optimal, intuitive, easy-to-learn user interface, and then they went and spent years training up the user base for the US military on how to use that interface.”

“These designs aren’t happenstance, and the same pool they’re pulling from for their customer base, the military is pulling from … and the training is basically already done.”

Militaries in the West have always circled around urban youth for their recruitment, offering excitement, career opportunities, and a chance to see the world, often missing out on the true guts of the reality of the war game.

For a while, while the globe was relatively peaceful, this proved to be the case. The landscape has changed dramatically in recent times, though, and now, all those console kids find themselves hunting for real-world kill streaks as technology finally catches up with the video games they have accidentally trained themselves on.

The BBC reports today about Ukrainian FPS drone controllers being awarded e-points for kills. While lengthy, this report should scare us all.

Units are being rewarded for racking up kills with different scores for tanks, machinery, and personnel

“The more strategically important and large-scale the target, the more points a unit receives. For example, destroying an enemy multiple rocket launch system earns up to 50 points; 40 points are awarded for a destroyed tank and 20 for a damaged one,” reads a military statement.

Kill vids are uploaded and analysed for their worth before points are awarded. Gather enough points and it’s reward time – much like collecting tickets in a penny-pushing arcade. But with more death.

Ukrainian commanders now claim that drones are responsible for an astonishing 70% of Russian deaths and injuries.

War has always killed people. That’s not what is changing here. But the overlaying of soundtracks to kills, points, and leaderboards is a sinister twist akin to the world of eSports but with real lives at stake.

I don’t advise you hunt, but it is easy enough to find videos of panicking soldiers in their last moments desperately trying to swat or shoot a drone packed full of explosives about to end their lives.

There was one poignant video I saw where the drone hit a soldier and failed to go off. Regardless of the side he was fighting for, I was relieved.

The BBC spoke to a soldier with the callsign Jack who said, “Our lads are worn out, and nothing really motivates them anymore. But this system helps. The drones are provided through this programme, and the lads get rewarded. It’s a decent motivation.”

It’s not all roses, though, as others are quicker to complain, and, surprisingly, not about the methods but rather something gamers in lobbies the world over are all too familiar with. A soldier calling himself Dymytro told the BBC that units were squabbling, trying to claim each other’s kills or even hitting already disabled Russian vehicles, trying to get points for themselves.

Does the military really need to develop its own anti-cheat?

Probably, because that is fundamentally what we are dealing with – kids playing games, but now more than ever, those games really are life and death.

If you needed to feel more uncomfortable about all of this, the e-points gained from kills can be spent in something known as the Brave 1 Market – already dubbed the “Amazon for war”. Here awaits more than 1,600 products that can be purchased with points. You can even leave reviews. But these are not cheap watches or bandanas for dogs. Here you procure more military equipment that might keep you alive longer – more drones and even motorized stretcher carriers – what the actual f…..

I am probably naive. I have never been near an active warzone in my life. Maybe this is the future, but I am deeply unsettled by the idea that our kids today, who are happily playing Fortnite and Apex Legends, are making a career choice from taking those same skills into dismembering people for real. Even being sought out by recruiters looking for those specific talents.

Ukraine, for its part, is fighting a war for its very existence and needs to leverage every advantage it can find against the might of the Russian military machine, but this goes beyond that; this is the future of warfighting, and for some reason, it seems a lot more scary than it used to.