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Game CEO Sees "Gamification" of Work and Military
An anonymous reader writes "The CEO of Unity discusses 'gamification' — applying game design and technology to real-world applications beyond 'gamespace.' The military is using game design theory for some training programs — not just 'the 3-D, realistic, virtual world experiences, but also the built-in use of frustration and reward.' (And similar training packages were adopted by Unilever, the giant corporation which owns Ben & Jerry's ice cream.) Medical professionals have licensed a 'Google Earth for the human body,' and game design is also being used to build tax software. ('It has to be the most boring field, but I mean that's the point. You can make it slightly challenging and give people little reasons to play these tax tools — beyond, you know, not going to prison!') While some companies conduct team-building exercises using Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, others use game technology to standardize their in-house employee training programs. The interviewer adds, 'I know I'd feel better about job training if it felt more like killing zombies.'"
Just sayin..
... the military has yet to implement the "Game over. Play again?" feature.
Have gnu, will travel.
You know, from recent news, those speaking "Come on buddy all you gotta do is pick up a weapon", "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle", and apparently enjoying it (laughing at the least)
Seriously, some things shouldn't be made closer to computer games.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I know I'd feel better about job training if it felt more like killing zombies.
Sadly, job training is about CREATING zombies, not about killing them.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
'I know I'd feel better about job training if it felt more like killing zombies.'
I know I'd feel better about customer service if it allowed for ganking newbs.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I like this. My play in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter consisted of strategically ordering my teammates out into the line of fire, so I could pick off the enemy with his back turned. My teammates were too dumb for anything else - ordering them to keep cover was like ordering a pedophile clown not to chase after the ice cream truck.
The smart pedophile clowns are actually driving the ice cream truck.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Earning medals for working more, having a scorboard for workers.... we will end up with a very boring korean mmo, a paradise for gold farmers.
The military treating civilians like targets in a game.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Exactly. I think the problem essentially lies in that "gamification" does the opposite of what one should feel during the process.
For example, on April Fools, we hid one of newest coworkers files somewhere on the network that he had access to and told him to go searching for it. He semi-enjoyed the process, but the benefit was that he learned more about the current heirarchy and server structure at our company while doing so. It didn't feel like work because we made it a game. Turned that boring task into a game and it made it fun.
Inversely, like your example, people who would feel the weight of attrocities they commit became completely desensatized to that environment, and in the end have appalling effects. (I don't know for sure if those soldiers played video games, but I wouldn't at all be surprised).
The biggest shame is that its the military who essentially jump-started the whole gamification process. Pilots regularily went through computer simulators long before warfare tactic games were released. So how do you stop the military from doing something they helped invent?
Does this mean the frequency of interoffice teabagging will be on the rise?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
If modeling things using a decent interface constitutes gaming, though it does not.
"Game design can be such a pure interaction. I mean, many games are just interaction."
What a lame quote. Office is a great game, think of all the interaction!
- Kal`Goblez
You can stop the military by cutting its funding, which will never happen.
The United States will implode long before it takes any steps to fix itself.
We should also teach physics in first Person shooters. With Schroedinger Zombie-cats which are only half alive and Maxwell deamons. Well. Maybe not.
A little late for April Fools, don't you think?
Perhaps the solution is to make war a financially poor choice to pick instead of say, transportation infrastructure? (Trains, electric cars etc)
Perhaps the solution is to make war a financially poor choice to pick instead of say, transportation infrastructure?
Unless you are a weapons manufacturer, I'm quite sure war already is a disastrous financial choice.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Man with hammer sees nail.
Non gratis rodentus anus
I have heard that the people who created the current gaming industry got their spurs doing sims for the military. and a big issue for the us military has traditionally been getting the grunts to fire their weapons at real people. and here i think back to my bayonet training.
Indeed. In fact many think they should be closer to outdoor sports like hunting.
"IT'S COMIN' RIGHT FOR US!!!"
May the Maths Be with you!
I found a 1 UP mushroom at work.
It didn't taste that good.
In fact, I don't feel so good right now.
I personally work in the military training game design field (with Unity even). The actual training programs are not like a game in the traditional sense. They are very strict simulations focused on education and procedure, not fun.
The games that would cause desensitization are not what this article is referring to, and they do not exist in the military training field that I work in.
I think it's called a irs audit and it can cost you A Lot quarters to play.
With there bots it's like that but if mess up real bad you can get a very real court martial.
Gamification is not a word. More importantly, depending if you use a hard 'a' sound (as in play) or a soft one (as in plan), you get a completely different view of what it's actually supposed to mean. Personally I like the soft a version instead.
PS If you don't understand, read more 40's detective fiction and pay attention to the slang.
I think the absolute perfect example of this is Call of Duty. I remember playing the AC130 gunship level in Modern Warfare (the first one) and thinking to myself how scarily accurate this is to real life. I knew I was playing a game and that those little spots of light weren't actually real people I was killing, but I have to admit, it must look like a game to the soldier watching the monitor on the real gunship.
And I think that that's the next phase in technology that the military will take/is already taking: moving the human element out of war. Already we have unmanned combat planes - planes that essentially take the humanity out of warfare. Just point and click on a monitor screen thousands of miles away and you just killed three 'terrorists.' Soon, the U.S. military will hire only gamers for their front-line efforts.
P.S. This is the first step to a completely economic style of warfare. When humans no longer fight and it's just the U.S. robots vs. the Chinese robots, then will war become completely pointless and entirely about economics. I think science fiction predicted another one.
That's the new buzzword in training. VIE's.
However this has been going on for a long time.
The first real problem is that you need to be working with objectives that translate into games and simulations.
Building a game or simulation when the objectives don't fit creates horrible, horrible games.
The second real problem is the proprietary nature of the existing toolsets.
I predict with browser-based 3d (web3D/canvas) along with easy client-server communication (jQuery/webSockets/json), the floodgates will open.
Thats a scary thought...better be careful about who we get to play Peter.
http://slashdot.org/~peterofoz/journal/230553 I'm frustrated. Why can't business apps be designed to have GUI's that are as slick and clean as a game? One issue to overcome is the screen real estate taken up by graphics and chrome. Also, business apps design should include a configuration management tool; hand editing web.config files should be in the past.
Don't wait too eagerly for the economic scenario in the way you imagine, ours vs. their robots. In case of adversaries capable of waging large scale war based mostly on robots...open war likely won't happen, IMHO. It would be too risky, too destructive (and anyway if it would happen, using human resources eventually would be only, well, economical); yes, another cold war, another MAD. Economic, in a way, in the end.
Periphery wars by proxy will of course still take place, but without great number of newest tech; still relying on troops.
I think I even see which continent might be conductive to that the most in the future...with still booming population that's in large part quite desperate for some time now.
One that hath name thou can not otter
It's all unethical. Until the other guys are robots too, then it's OK. Until scientists invent robot with souls; then it'll go back to being unethical.
I guess (And this is nothing more than a guess) that the weapon manufacturers have great sway in political decisions. Perhaps they made big campaign contributions to today's leaders feel obliged to provide them purpose.
Again, this is not a conspiracy theory. Just an argument of the form:
War is good for weapon makers.
Leaders start war.
Therefore weapon makers influence leaders.
That wikileaks video has apparently been a bigger PR disaster for video games more than the US fucking military.
So much so that when SLASHDOT USERS see that the military might use video games, their concern is for the corrupting influence of video games rather than the corrupting influence of war.
The behavior of those pilots does not indicate the influence of video games but rather policy.
Men are capable of evil fucking things, with or without the assistance of video games, ak-47s, or predator drones. Some of those are more enabling than others.
The real point this PR roadkill is trying to make is that video games use techniques that would be useful in other contexts. Obviously this is true and fucking harmless, on its face. Unfortunately, his example is that they would be useful for helping to implementing corporate and military policy.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
P.S. This is the first step to a completely economic style of warfare. When humans no longer fight and it's just the U.S. robots vs. the Chinese robots, then will war become completely pointless and entirely about economics. I think science fiction predicted another one.
No.
Everyone will quickly discover that when both sides have easily replaceable robots and limited amount of resources, defending against enemy robots is less efficient than spending same resources to attack enemy's homeland and civilian population, destroying them faster than enemy destroys you.
We will be lucky if amount of expected destruction (and politicians' understanding of it) will be sufficient for MAD-like situation when even best outcome after the first strike is so much worse than the current situation, no one would want to start such a war. Something tells me that either it won't be true, or politicians won't believe that it's true.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The best way to make war a financially poor choice is to be defeated.
You can apply this strategy to your enemies, under the theory that if you defeat them soundly enough it will be a financially poor choice on their part to continue fighting you rather than investing in, say, transportation infrastructure. E.g. WWI.
You can apply this strategy to yourself, under the theory that if people think you’re getting defeated they’ll quickly lose heart and decide that the war isn’t worth it and you should invest instead in, say, transportation infrastructure. E.g. Vietnam.
War is always a financially poor choice, but especially so for the loser. Even when it is a good choice economically, politically, and socially, it is still a financially poor choice.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31744792
Seems to be true.
Philosopher and media theorist McKenzie "Ken" Wark addresses a large aspect of this issue of gaming as subversive work and mis(re)appropriation of labor in gamespace to the application of capitalist/vectoralist interests in his recent work Gamer Theory (online interactive book).
The Video Game Monologues project does a reasonable job explaining some of this, put to animation.
The point isn't to make things fun or like games. There are concepts applied in games that really should be applied everywhere, but aren't as few understand them. They are suggesting that these concepts are being used in the military and various workplaces. This is a good thing, this is progress.
This is not making war fun at all, if that's all you got out of this you missed the whole point of the article. I'm not denying that certain things shouldn't be fun, I am only stating that this article's subject is not closely related as it may sound from the title.
That was really awesome game http://www.bankruptcyattorneyincalifornia.com/
Answer that. I doubt it strongly. You "talk a big game", but you're clearly just another wannabe.
Answer that. I doubt it strongly. You "talk a big game", but you're clearly just another wannabe...
Nice job not desensitizing Apache pilots...
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
This is not the gamification that seems in vogue betwen game dev's.
The one that is too popular, is the use of "MMORPG" adiction to everything. Give tiny rewards for completing boring task, to train people to LIKE to grind. And it works. Imagine a framework around your work, where you get and complete quest (task) and get XP for these quest, and level up, and stuff like that.
-Woof woof woof!
Perhaps because Iraq was ruled by a genocidal dictator, because there are loads of terrorist groups operating from within both countries, and securing the future of Israel is not only politically, but also morally right?
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
In the case of military training those "concepts from games" are applied pretty directly. Plus it doesn't matter it's not fun (are all games fun to you?) as long as it's close enough to confuse us internally, to desentitise in real scenario (which is arguably the goal... :/ )
One that hath name thou can not otter
Saddam did not tolerate any of the terrorist groups we're preoccupied with. If you want to use that argument, the invasion should have been aimed at Saudi Arabia. Which simply wouldn't happen.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
Australian's aren't quite THAT desperate!
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
Using lessons from game theory /= making something into a game.
Game theory is all about psychology - the 'how' and 'why' of games - it's not about 'what' games actually are. (This is a distinction which most people don't seem to appreciate, unfortunately).
Game theory can therefore be applied to almost anything we do that uses similar applications of psychology, which as it happens, is almost 'everything'...
'Stupidity is an often fatal disease' - R. A. Heinlein
That they're treating civilians as targets is clear, but where do they say it's like in a game?
It seems to me like there are more effective ways to dehumanize opponents and convince someone that the only good arabs are dead arabs, without video games. You just need half the country and their idiot ministers bleating about how Islam is the work of the devil, they're all terrorists, they're all hell-bent on destroying Christianity and the West, they all hate us for our freedoms, they all want Sharia courts in Washington DC, they're all child rapists like <insert isolated tribal incident<, they all want to be suicide bombers when they grow up, etc. And attribute to them some ways of thinking born out of the pure ignorance of the idiot minister or fundie banner-waver ascribing it to them. (E.g., if I see one more rationale which basically takes it as a fact that Muhammad is like Jesus for the Muslims, I might barf.) And how you might be letting some good people burn in Hell if you let the Islam spread.
And then give them guns with references to bible verses inscribed on their optics. (It actually happened.) And have idiot fundie sergeants introduce it as "the Jesus gun" in training.
With a sizable chunk of America being in that state of mind, where every single Muslim is a dangerous enemy, not by virtue of actually shooting at anyone or even having a gun or anything, but just by virtue of being Muslim... do we really need video games to explain why it was inevitable that someone just lets it rip on full auto and lets God sort them?
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying _all_ America is like that. I know that a lot are very embarassed by their bleating fundie brethren. But when you have some tens of thousands of soldiers over there, if even one in ten is fighting a Crusade in his own mind, and is more concerned about his being elligible for the Rapture that'll come any day now than about peace in a few years, this kind of thing is pretty much doomed to happen.
It's sorta like for a high score all right, but not the video game kinda high score. More like about the kind that'll get some idiot in the top scores list in Heaven.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Anyone remember the movie Toys ?
Really? This is no different now than it was in any other war. The lines "How do you shoot women and children?... It's easy, you just don't lead them as much." didn't just come out of thin air or some novelist's mind. People have always treated war that way. It's a coping mechanism for doing the most horrible things a human can do.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I'll take insensitive soldiers who laugh while killing people that they think (incorrectly) are attacking their fellow solders over solders that rape and murder women and children, knowing full well what they're doing. That is the way it has been done for centuries, from vikings to normans to the invasion of Kuwait. Having insensitive solders who think it is a game is one of the less horrible stories from war. The fact that this is "progress" is one of the many reasons war should not be unleashed.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Well, as for Iraq, its worth remembering that Cheney is closely tied to Haliburton. More importantly, Bush and most of the right wing either didn't care about or didn't prioritize the cost. There was the bad blood between Bush and Saddam Hussein, the aspirations to stabilize (using imperial measures) the middle east, and lets face it, making war empowers a president.
Its still amazing that people don't talk more about the lack of WMDs in Iraq. The concerted effort to make the case for going to war with Iraq followed by the revelation that it was just a fabrication is just mind blowing. The cost in blood (both US and Iraqi) is so staggering and yet people seem willing to forget about it. Its pretty obviously a crime and the administration that perpetrated it are pretty clearly war criminals.
"Typing of the Dead" anyone?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Inversely, like your example, people who would feel the weight of attrocities they commit became completely desensatized to that environment, and in the end have appalling effects. (I don't know for sure if those soldiers played video games, but I wouldn't at all be surprised).
Alternatively, couldn't game design be used to better train the pilots to act properly before they get into tense situations? For example, to learn Geneva Convention rules and internalize them, rather than depending on gut feelings of morality.
There's nothing wrong with being desensitized to death, per-se. It's important to ones psyche as a first responder, medical professional, or when your life is threatened and the only way to preserve it is to kill the other person first. It's only when one is desensitized to death and lacks a sense of right from wrong that we get atrocities.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
So far we're talking about one particular Apache gunner. It takes a little bit more than that to legitimately assert that this is routine in U.S. military.
Sci-Fi got pieces of this right decades ago.
I nailed it down for friends 10 years ago.
Just as obvious as the neuromancer interface wasn't going to work.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
Must have something to do with a few airplanes flying inside the WTC and the Pentagon.
Not mentioning the attacks in the 1990-2000, the killing of kurds and shiite, the invasion of Kuwait, etc.
Saddam didn't tolerate the group from attacking him.
He actively helped them after the first war, as he was weakened and needed them not hostiles to him.
How do you think al-Zarkawi arrived in Iraq? He was there after the invasion of Afghanistan to recover from his injuries.
Overthrowing the KSA government would be stupid then and now:
1) Saddam left in power would be a huge PITA now, more if the KSA was overthrow by the US.
2) Saddam didn't exported oil then, KSA did so. Invading would disrupt the oil flux for long time.
3) Iraq people are, mind you, much more secular than the KSA people. They are much more diverse, so they have a chance to really become democratic and have a working democracy and a rule of law.
4) Just now, when it is needed, the oil production of Iraq is coming on line in large quantities. This will force the KSA to keep the production up and the prices down. Their margin will be less and they will earn less money. Less money for them, less money for the jihadists.
5) A working Iraq is a huge PITA for both KSA and IRI (and probably Syria and Turkey, also).
Iran people resent that their filthy Arab neighbors have a democracy when they are forced under a theocracy. Unable to destroy the democracy next door, Iran and KAS will start to feel the internal pressure from their people.
6) Killing scores of jihadists and criminals in combat help much to build a society will less crime and more peaceful. true in Iraq, in Iran and in KSA.
7) The US is not the only actor to spend huge sums of money in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its enemies do the same, even if they are much poorer. They money they spend there (and the men and the time and the other resources) can not be spent in other places and in other plans.
Why doesn't anyone seem to consider and mention the relationship between game play design techniques and human addiction? Let me assert that video games are addictive and this is intentionally programmed into them in accordance with known additive stimuli.
If you doubt me... then you obviously have never closed your eyes and listened to the sound of Mario games and compared this to the sound of slot machines. I assume you all recognize the addictive qualities of slots: sound, light, motion and possibility of reward.
All video games employ these techniques (yes I am including 1st person shooter games), because if they did not... people wouldn't play them so much and the consumers perceived value of the product would decline.
So it is a natural extension to use these well known addiction techniques and apply these to tasks requiring human attention for extended periods of time. This is just a cost reduction mechanism as an employee who is mentally addicted to the requirements of work requires less incentive to continue. (see Greenpeace's pay schedule for evidence)