8 ms·

Gameification of war is the literal worst thing I ever heard. Lords of War, eat your heart out.

wahern 2mo ago
There's nothing new about earning "points" for kills. Warriors have always tallied their kills and displayed their numbers, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_marking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_marking or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping, though the rewards were typically accolades, and only indirectly access to more materiel.
- pheaded_while9 2mo ago
  There is nothing new under the sun. You fail to address my clear moral objection with these irrelevant historical instances. It has no rhetorical value in this context.
  - wahern 2mo ago
    The point was just that gameification is just a modern word that doesn't reflect any change in behaviors. Presumably you were familiar with these practices under previous descriptors. And your moral objections would have been shared by many millions before you, long before gameification was coined. On the other side of the coin to thinking there's something new about the way war is waged are the people who think they can wage war without the same consequences as befell nations before. It's fundamentally the same err, IMO. So I take moral objection to the pretense that there's something morally novel to criticize. This stuff is what happens in war, always. And things can get way worse than this, and will get worse the longer we tolerate open hostilities among nations.
    - rng-concern 2mo ago
      I think the difference is between: 1) me doing a nice thing and them reciprocating later, possibly. Others may or may not see this display of niceness. 2) me doing a nice thing, getting karma points my friend and other sees, which I can possibly use to get perks of some kind. Gamification is not a new word for an old idea. It's a new thing, at least in many contexts. #1 seems a lot more human to me.
      - marcosdumay 2mo ago
        #2 is basically money.
    - user_7832 2mo ago
      I think something fundamentally new is not only the incentivisation directly affecting kills - as a top team/unit can iterate up much faster, unlike a soldier who could boast more kills, but still have the same rifle as his colleagues - but the layers and desensitisation overall. Part of this probably admittedly isn't new, and likely started with drones, where you could kill someone in Iraq sitting in DC, on the other side of the world. But now with both, being separated from the physicality, and the incentives via points (the same way arguably in app currencies are used in gacha games - "20 tokens for this character!" feels better than $40), this is way more similar to CoD or any other shooting game than it has ever been in human history, and by a significant amount. Sorry for the rambley and extremely verbose reply but tbh it's absolutely horrifying and sickening to see as a fellow human, and I just wanted to get it out. (I'm obviously not saying Ukraine is wrong for wanting to protect territory - but it's the other aspects that are "awesome" (or awe-full?), in the wrong way of awe.)
      - wahern 2mo ago
        Nobody in Ukraine is separated from the carnage, least of all the soldiers. The value in the points system is in communicating target priorities down the line. It's just another technological improvement in the vein of, say, the radio. All technological improvements will seem to have the effect of dehumanizing people. But war is fundamentally dehumanizing. In fact, for most soldiers dehumanizing the enemy is a necessity, because otherwise they can't pull the trigger. The dehumanization to be worried about is the dehumanization of people from the perspective of non-combatants, especially those isolated from the war, like Americans. Where technology creates greater moral hazards in war is when it helps insulate the leadership and population from the consequences of war, and so lowers the sociological and political costs to violence. In that sense having a professional rather than conscripted army should be much more morally repugnant than e-points. Again, no one in Ukraine is isolated from consequences in any meaningful way. The Ukraine War is the most televised war in history. Especially in the beginning I forced myself to watch the videos, just so I wouldn't get lost in abstraction. The human suffering is gut wrenching. You can watch men getting shredded down; soldiers embracing each other in fear and helplessness moments before they're killed or maimed. Debates over e-points, to me, reflect a failure to appreciate the reality, a reality which is only hidden from one's view by choice. (After a few videos that left me crying, I figured I saw enough to ensure I was dutifully more engaged with the reality than the typical non-veteran at a comfortable remove.) If anything drones and the necessity of having to record a kill for "points" is arguably an improvement over traditional aerially bombardment. Being forced to watch people injured and killed comes with a greater cost, even for veteran soldiers. On HN we take for granted that, e.g., Facebook employees forced to sift through child porn continually pay a price no matter how long they've been at the job, yet seem to assume soldiers watching a drone video feed feel no different than playing a video game. That perspective betrays a certain callousness that is in some respect even more worrisome than these technological advancements on the battlefield.
  - weard_beard 2mo ago
    War is inherently amoral and in an argument about its efficacy I don’t understand what your argument is?
    - harimau777 2mo ago
      Can you expand on that? There is a long history of warrior codes, just war theory, war crimes, etc. Certainly they have virtually always been followed imperfectly, but I'm not sure that means that they don't exist.
  - squidbeak 2mo ago
    > Gameification of war is the literal worst thing I ever heard. Lords of War, eat your heart out. What 'clear moral objection' did you make? You talk in cliches so it's hard to tell.
szopa 2mo ago
Note that capturing a live Russian soldier is worth 10 times more than killing one. Think about how that affects the incentives of Ukrainian soldiers. Avoid committing war crimes, get better gear for your team.
- 4gotunameagain 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - andrei_says_ 2mo ago
    1. War is insanity already. Not sure how pointing ways someone is making war more efficient is sanewashing in this context. 2. Assuming every pow gets tortured is an extraordinary statement which as such could use some solid proof.
    - 4gotunameagain 2mo ago
      1. Even in the insanity of war, there are rules and ethics we collectively agree to (except Israel apparently with white phosphorus use). I find that gamifying taking human lives crosses the line. 2. Not every captured soldier of course, some don't even know where they are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_war_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war_(2022%E2%80%93present)#Mistreatment_of_captured_Russian_soldiers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_war_in_the_Russo-...
helsinkiandrew 2mo ago
> Gameification of war is the literal worst thing I ever heard. Is this much difference from a combat mission being written up and soldiers being promoted/awarded medals. The point of this is to see who is successful and what drones/weapons are the most effective. With a limited budget and much larger enemy it comes down to kills per dollar.
idiotsecant 2mo ago
This is silly. Elite units have always gotten better gear. If this is the part of war that causes you moral outrage I think you've got some rexamining to do.
skolos 2mo ago
It sounds more like market based allocation than gameification.

There's nothing new about earning "points" for kills. Warriors have always tallied their kills and displayed their numbers, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_marking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_marking or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping, though the rewards were typically accolades, and only indirectly access to more materiel.

pheaded_while9 2mo ago
There is nothing new under the sun. You fail to address my clear moral objection with these irrelevant historical instances. It has no rhetorical value in this context.
- wahern 2mo ago
  The point was just that gameification is just a modern word that doesn't reflect any change in behaviors. Presumably you were familiar with these practices under previous descriptors. And your moral objections would have been shared by many millions before you, long before gameification was coined. On the other side of the coin to thinking there's something new about the way war is waged are the people who think they can wage war without the same consequences as befell nations before. It's fundamentally the same err, IMO. So I take moral objection to the pretense that there's something morally novel to criticize. This stuff is what happens in war, always. And things can get way worse than this, and will get worse the longer we tolerate open hostilities among nations.
  - rng-concern 2mo ago
    I think the difference is between: 1) me doing a nice thing and them reciprocating later, possibly. Others may or may not see this display of niceness. 2) me doing a nice thing, getting karma points my friend and other sees, which I can possibly use to get perks of some kind. Gamification is not a new word for an old idea. It's a new thing, at least in many contexts. #1 seems a lot more human to me.
    - marcosdumay 2mo ago
      #2 is basically money.
  - user_7832 2mo ago
    I think something fundamentally new is not only the incentivisation directly affecting kills - as a top team/unit can iterate up much faster, unlike a soldier who could boast more kills, but still have the same rifle as his colleagues - but the layers and desensitisation overall. Part of this probably admittedly isn't new, and likely started with drones, where you could kill someone in Iraq sitting in DC, on the other side of the world. But now with both, being separated from the physicality, and the incentives via points (the same way arguably in app currencies are used in gacha games - "20 tokens for this character!" feels better than $40), this is way more similar to CoD or any other shooting game than it has ever been in human history, and by a significant amount. Sorry for the rambley and extremely verbose reply but tbh it's absolutely horrifying and sickening to see as a fellow human, and I just wanted to get it out. (I'm obviously not saying Ukraine is wrong for wanting to protect territory - but it's the other aspects that are "awesome" (or awe-full?), in the wrong way of awe.)
    - wahern 2mo ago
      Nobody in Ukraine is separated from the carnage, least of all the soldiers. The value in the points system is in communicating target priorities down the line. It's just another technological improvement in the vein of, say, the radio. All technological improvements will seem to have the effect of dehumanizing people. But war is fundamentally dehumanizing. In fact, for most soldiers dehumanizing the enemy is a necessity, because otherwise they can't pull the trigger. The dehumanization to be worried about is the dehumanization of people from the perspective of non-combatants, especially those isolated from the war, like Americans. Where technology creates greater moral hazards in war is when it helps insulate the leadership and population from the consequences of war, and so lowers the sociological and political costs to violence. In that sense having a professional rather than conscripted army should be much more morally repugnant than e-points. Again, no one in Ukraine is isolated from consequences in any meaningful way. The Ukraine War is the most televised war in history. Especially in the beginning I forced myself to watch the videos, just so I wouldn't get lost in abstraction. The human suffering is gut wrenching. You can watch men getting shredded down; soldiers embracing each other in fear and helplessness moments before they're killed or maimed. Debates over e-points, to me, reflect a failure to appreciate the reality, a reality which is only hidden from one's view by choice. (After a few videos that left me crying, I figured I saw enough to ensure I was dutifully more engaged with the reality than the typical non-veteran at a comfortable remove.) If anything drones and the necessity of having to record a kill for "points" is arguably an improvement over traditional aerially bombardment. Being forced to watch people injured and killed comes with a greater cost, even for veteran soldiers. On HN we take for granted that, e.g., Facebook employees forced to sift through child porn continually pay a price no matter how long they've been at the job, yet seem to assume soldiers watching a drone video feed feel no different than playing a video game. That perspective betrays a certain callousness that is in some respect even more worrisome than these technological advancements on the battlefield.
- weard_beard 2mo ago
  War is inherently amoral and in an argument about its efficacy I don’t understand what your argument is?
  - harimau777 2mo ago
    Can you expand on that? There is a long history of warrior codes, just war theory, war crimes, etc. Certainly they have virtually always been followed imperfectly, but I'm not sure that means that they don't exist.
- squidbeak 2mo ago
  > Gameification of war is the literal worst thing I ever heard. Lords of War, eat your heart out. What 'clear moral objection' did you make? You talk in cliches so it's hard to tell.

szopa 2mo ago

Note that capturing a live Russian soldier is worth 10 times more than killing one. Think about how that affects the incentives of Ukrainian soldiers. Avoid committing war crimes, get better gear for your team.

4gotunameagain 2mo ago
[flagged]
- andrei_says_ 2mo ago
  1. War is insanity already. Not sure how pointing ways someone is making war more efficient is sanewashing in this context. 2. Assuming every pow gets tortured is an extraordinary statement which as such could use some solid proof.
  - 4gotunameagain 2mo ago
    1. Even in the insanity of war, there are rules and ethics we collectively agree to (except Israel apparently with white phosphorus use). I find that gamifying taking human lives crosses the line. 2. Not every captured soldier of course, some don't even know where they are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_war_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war_(2022%E2%80%93present)#Mistreatment_of_captured_Russian_soldiers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_war_in_the_Russo-...

helsinkiandrew 2mo ago

> Gameification of war is the literal worst thing I ever heard. Is this much difference from a combat mission being written up and soldiers being promoted/awarded medals. The point of this is to see who is successful and what drones/weapons are the most effective. With a limited budget and much larger enemy it comes down to kills per dollar.

idiotsecant 2mo ago

This is silly. Elite units have always gotten better gear. If this is the part of war that causes you moral outrage I think you've got some rexamining to do.

skolos 2mo ago

It sounds more like market based allocation than gameification.