Militant Games, Gamified Military

Today’s presentation and lecture on FPS, militant games, and gamified military training induces me to bring in a finding from another class I’m taking on augmented reality production. In that class, one of the students presented on Tactical Augmented Reality (TAR). Apparently, the US Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Centre (CERDEC) “recently introduced a futuristic heads-up display (HUD) that have the potential to empower the dismounted warfighter by laying a synthetic, game-like information and sensor overlay over the battlefield picture they currently experience.”[1] By combining “integrated mapping, navigation, and 3D surface models” and wireless syncing “of devices and sensors” to share “information and images with other members of the squad,” this AR gear (goggled headset with gloves) seems to basically transform the real, live battlefield into a sort of MMO FPS, if I’m using the terminology correctly. Apparently, 120,000 such headsets may eventually be produced.[2] I highly encourage people to take a look at the following video http://www.tacticalaugmentedreality.com, which purports to approximately represent the sight and movement of a soldier after equipping the TAR kit. It almost seems like a joke how similar to an FPS it is (actually, the website itself is powered by Weebly, which seems oddly unofficial for an endeavor supposedly endorsed and sponsored by the US army. If anyone can figure out whether or not this is a hoax, I would be really happy to stand corrected.)

This development smacks of Galloway’s article on the origins of FPS, neatly bringing us back full circle to his appraisal of the comparative effectiveness of movies like Terminator and Robocop in employing first-person perspective for cybernetic/machinic vision. If we were to consider TAR within his argument, I imagine the magnitude of perspective-embodiment coherence and agency would go in ascending order from the subjective shot in movies, FPS in games, and then TAR in an actual battleground.

Anyways, according to an article by the Telegraph, the basis for this uncannily gamic interface turns out to be highly appropriate: the US army has actually “held meetings with London gaming start-up Improbable.”[3] So although there has long been a debate raging around whether or not videogames incite player violence, I think we can also turn our attention to the ways in which its visuals and mechanisms are or could be employed to facilitate/intensify actual combative violence. The argument for having soldiers use such a gamic interface may actually stem from the same roots as the argument against violent videogames — that gamification somehow makes killing more pleasurable and/or entertaining. (Another distinct argument would be that it makes killing more efficient.) What are people’s thoughts on this?

And as an ending note to this account, I’d like to include a few particularly disturbing quotes for their own alarming sake: According to army documents, TAR equipment is meant to “enable next-generation soldier lethality capabilities.”[4] Part of the army’s HUD3.0 (heads-up-display) initiative, this device aims to “increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy.”[5]

[1] http://www.tacticalaugmentedreality.com

[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/09/21/improbable-magic-leap-eye-us-military-contract-augmented-reality/

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.