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.'"

Comments

Unfortunately ...

[PPH]

... the military has yet to implement the "Game over. Play again?" feature.

Partly why it seems to be like game for pilots?...

[sznupi]

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.

They have it backwards!

[CorporateSuit]

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.

Failure to understand the problem space

[Locke2005]

'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.

And you end up with :

[Ralph Spoilsport]

The military treating civilians like targets in a game.

Re:And you end up with :

[damburger]

They were walking down a road, you inhuman prick. They weren't "acting like insurgents" and there is no way that camera could be mistaken for an RPG. Look at some fucking pictures. Even if the Apache crew were as idiotic as you are, that still doesn't excuse them gleefully opening up on a van which had just stopped to help the wounded, and had two children in it. Go to hell, you bloodthirsty redneck apologist.

Re:And you end up with :

[Tom]

If you actually watch the video, its pretty hard to find a lot of fault with the heli crew.

While I don't jump on the sensationalism either, this is too far off the other end.

There was a guy apparently carrying something at his side. I've not done any slow-motion or such, just watched the video, so I figure I had the same view as the guys in the heli. I would not have said that that's a weapon. However, did you notice how the communication went? It went straight from "could be a gun" to "we have individuals with weapons" to "AK47". At that point, someone in the chain of command should've said "uh, you're looking through a shitty b/w camera and you can make out the model of the gun?" and wondered whether things on the ground really are that way. What should have happened - and didn't - was confirmation. "Are you certain they have guns?"

I didn't see anything that was even close to looking like an RPG, either. Not to mention that an RPG is an unguided weapon and pretty much sucks against moving helicopters (if they were hovering, that'd be another story).

The good Samaritan with his kids was well intentioned, but didn't think it through either. There obviously had just been an attack and with two helicopters flying around, it doesn't take much to figure that the place is still being watched. Not that he deserved to die because of it, but it was unwise to put himself and his family in that position.

Yes, that's easy to say from 20,000 miles away. In that situation, to him on the ground, things may have looked different. We'll never know. He may have thought there was a shooting, and the helicopters have secured the area. It had been a few minutes since the last shot had been fired.

And, once again, there was - to me - no reason in the video why they opened fire on the bus. Even before someone had left the car, the chatter was already "they're going to recover bodies and weapons". Then they proceeded to load the injured guy into the car, and at that point the helicopters opened fire. No weapon in sight.

Yes "don't bring your children to battle" is a nice saying. Except that this happened inside a city. You know, the place where civilians happen to live.

Now, I can understand that you'd rather stand on trial for shooting an innocent civilian than discovering too late that he's not and be killed yourself. Perfectly understandable, human, everything.

What I don't get is:
a) the total lack of critical thinking. Even when everyone was dead and one wounded guy tried to crawl away, it appeared that the gunner actually wanted him to reach for a weapon so he could shoot him. Likewise, at no point did anyone in the chatter wonder whether the guys in the bus could be just civilians trying to bring someone who is seriously injured to the nearest hospital.

b) the lack of protocol and procedure in the chain of command to deal with situations like this. After years of operating in urban warfare, they should've done some homework. A lot of things you and I carry with us when we're shopping, or moving, or just bringing some stuff to a friend, can look like a weapon from far away. A lot of perfectly innocent behaviour can look not so from far away. Aparently, the official non-policy is "whatever the guys at the scene think they see, that's gotta be it".

c) why the cover-up? We all hate it when we make mistakes, but covering it up only raises the suspicion that you have something to hide.

Re:Partly why it seems to be like game for pilots?

[Monkeedude1212]

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?

Re:Partly why it seems to be like game for pilots?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.