Jacob's gaming journal

[Jean]

What you added is what I wanted to write you.
Games are supposed to be fun. Some people playing it are competing on unfun aspect of it (like those merit laders). I myself am not always immune to those traps dev set up to increase the concurent player count. I think it is really key to set one own's goal whatever one do.

[jacob]

Games are supposed to be fun. Some people playing it are competing on unfun aspect of it (like those merit laders).

I don't think "fun" is the right word for what I'm really looking for At least. What I'm looking for is a sustainable focus where I look forward to playing the next time. Like any activity, one person's excitement is another person's boredom. I'm trying to figure out what works for me.

Importantly, I'm looking for a game that will be fun for (many) years. The idea of spending 30 hours on a game and then dropping it for the next one, rinse and repeat does not appeal to me. I'm looking for something more than "distraction" or entertainment.

(I lack the words to describe the difference.)

I've likely been too focused on finding the right game/hobby/eSport instead of figuring out how to engage with it in the [for me] best fitting way.

The game I've spent the most time on total is World of Warships, almost 800 hours over the past 14 months or so. During that time, I've focused on different aspects and not all of them have been equally "fun".

Initially, I just played to earn credits and gain XP with a given ship in order to be able to buy another ship. Rinse and repeat. There are some 600-700 different ships in the game. I've acquired around 55 of them. "Collecting them all" allows for years of entertainment. Some players do pursue this goal. The devs know this. Some "special edition" ships retail for $140... that's real dollars! While I can't confirm it I saw someone claim to have spent $18,000 on the game over the years.

After some months, I discovered https://na.wows-numbers.com/ranking/ and realized that I was a "below average" player. I changed my focus to increasing my win rate. Even though the game is team-vs-team it's theorized that good players contribute more than bad players (if your rate is >50%, you're likely helping more than you're hurting, at least on average) and so over time this should show up in the stats. Indeed, tracking my stats, the effect of this focus had on my game can be seen almost immediately. My win rate over the past 180 days has increased to above 52% which is considered "good" but not "great". (The median player has a win rate of 48%. However, if you look at the leaderboards, there are players with 60000 battles (I have 2500 battles) with an atrocious win rate of 44%. Clearly they do not play for team-wins at all. Yet, with 60,000 battles of maybe 5-20mins each, they gotta love playing given how often they're on the losing team.) Always focusing on winning can create a toxic experience though. Getting teamed up with a potato, who obviously doesn't care about the outcome, can be infuriating!

Ship strength depends on a combination of personal skill + captain buffs + consumable (think $$$) flag buffs. In a game where victory comes down to margins, being able to e.g. reload or repair 10% faster or 7 seconds sooner can be the difference between living or dying. As such I added the subgoal of maxing out a captain instead of maxing out my ships.

Now, there's something called premium ships which has strong implications for the in-game economics. They cost less credits to maintain => more credits to buy more ships. They earn more XP, etc. and they also make it easier to train your captains for... reasons. Premium ships either cost $$$ or they cost coal, which is yet another form of credit that is basically acquired by grinding. Fine! I started grinding and eventually was able to buy one, two, three, ... premium ships.

I think this is where it went wrong. There are constant events in the game that generously hands out "free stuff" (coal, steel, credit, flags, XP in their various forms, ...) for those who are willing to grind extra. These are usually exponentially demanding tasks. Once you're committed, you're closer to the goal if and only if you just grind a little bit more. And you don't want to stop "now you've come this far". This is the equivalent of "one more year"-syndrome. Just 1,000,000 more in BB damage, and you get a 10,000 in coal bonus---something that would take 15-25 days of normal grinding.

Enough of that ... so I'm taking a break.

OTOH, I've seen examples of a play-focus I have not engaged with. These are people who have played thousands of games with the same ship. "Fear not the man who has practiced a thousand different kicks once, ... ", said Bruce Lee. This completely eliminates the chase for credits, xp, coal,... or new ships. In my favorite/most=played ship (USS Marblehead), I actually have a win-rate of 60%.

Whew! That was a very long-winded way of saying that there are many ways to engage with a game if the game is rich or complex or "infinite" enough. However, it's not immediately clear which "mode" one is in or steered into when getting into a game. Games are sufficiently different that patterns are not immediately obvious. However, over time, they do reveal themselves.

Now I just have to find the right fit.

[Ego]

I don't think "fun" is the right word for what I'm really looking for At least. What I'm looking for is a sustainable focus where I look forward to playing the next time. Like any activity, one person's excitement is another person's boredom. I'm trying to figure out what works for me.

Importantly, I'm looking for a game that will be fun for (many) years. The idea of spending 30 hours on a game and then dropping it for the next one, rinse and repeat does not appeal to me. I'm looking for something more than "distraction" or entertainment.

Interesting. There are times when the human interaction part of my something-from-nothing life feels similar to unlocking levels in an infinite game. Convincing someone who controls hoards of good stuff to open the gates so I can pass to the next level... and then maintaining those relationships so that I can continue to pass, is one of the things I find most enjoyable in my game. The problem I have is that leveling up demands a greater investment of time in both maintaining relationships and in dealing with the treasure that results. Our periodic resets have allowed me to restart from scratch at relatively lower levels so that the time investments are reasonable once again.

Anyhow... forgive the digression.

[Scott 2]

I think the collection and optimization focuses both break long term. Eventually you realize it's just tweaking numbers in someone else's database, with an extremely inefficient interface. Inevitabley a decision by the developers breaks immersion.

Ongoing engagement depends on play with other persons. Even if the developer promises unlimited content, there's a cap upon innovative content. That leaves what your fellow player can offer, human innovation in play style.

Unfortunately I've found there also tends to be an optimal meta, where any other approach is guaranteed to fall short. It constrains even the innovative long term player. Once that space is understood, the game depends upon willing suspension of optimal by all parties. True organic play, using the available digital mechanics.

IE - achieving gives way to exploring, gives way to socializing. That's the only path that isn't terminal IMO.

[jacob]

Interesting. There are times when the human interaction part of my something-from-nothing life feels similar to unlocking levels in an infinite game. Convincing someone who controls hoards of good stuff to open the gates so I can pass to the next level... and then maintaining those relationships so that I can continue to pass, is one of the things I find most enjoyable in my game. The problem I have is that leveling up demands a greater investment of time in both maintaining relationships and in dealing with the treasure that results. Our periodic resets have allowed me to restart from scratch at relatively lower levels so that the time investments are reasonable once again.

Anyhow... forgive the digression.

Not a digression at all! This is highly relevant to this thread and also an example of how I hope lessons learned or metaphors might carry outside the virtual world(s).

In my personal case, I'm loath to hit the restart button or at least it happens very rarely that I want to replay a game that I've already finished or mastered even if variations are available. Same holds for me for IRL games. For example, many want to go back to college and get a second degree. I don't understand this at all: I already learned how to learn in an academic environment. All I need now is a curriculum and a library card. The idea of doing it all over again does not appeal to me.

I find that the learning process and the feeling of improving my game is crucial to my enjoyment. It's hard for me to keep motivated if the learning process stalls out either because there's nothing more to learn (tic-tac-toe maxes out after about 5 minutes) OR because I've learned as much as I'm ever going to be able to (maxed out my talents). This need to learn perhaps more than anything explains why I don't want to press the restart button. In cases where I'm not repeating a learning process, I also don't enjoy the earliest stages, because I also enjoy being able to exercise a certain amount of skill. For example, I don't enjoy a flightsim at the stage where I'm barely able to keep the plane in the air or where every landing is almost guaranteed suicide. I want to get to the point where I get the expected output from my desired inputs. IOW, the point where I'm challenged but remain in control.

Ideally, I'm looking for a game that fulfills these needs for years. I'm jealous of the gamers who have stayed with the same game/community for many years and still find it exciting. Same reason I'm jealous of careerists or researchers who are still excited by the tiny corner of the universe that caught their eye 10-20 or 30-50 years ago. One thing I did not appreciate about academia or rather being an academic in a non-growing field was having to fly a holding pattern for 10-15 years, repeating the same challenge over and over, until some boomer from the previous generation would retire and release their seat. As such, even if the control was there, the lack of learning/new challenges made the work dreadfully boring [to me].

[suomalainen]

Ideally, I'm looking for a game that fulfills these needs for years.

Try parenting.

but remain in control

Or not.

[daylen]

I'm pretty much the opposite in the sense that I would rather put 100 hours into 10 games than 1000 into 1. I like a fresh take on an old formula as this resurfaces old techniques in a slightly different strategy space, but I also quite enjoy games that break the mold and force me into beginner mode. I find it difficult to sustain interest in a game if I intuit too much of the meta/strategy a third of the way through the campaign. On the other hand, complicated games that would require 100 hours just to get good enough are too much investment for me (although I have done so a couple times like with civilization).

I am still interested in creating simulations, so I am not allocating that kind of energy to modding at the moment. It is something I have considered, though. Perhaps if you find a game that you enjoy strategy-wise you could extend your interest by slowly integrating into the modding community. This could also enable you to, in time, steer the strategy space to your preference and connect with the right people.

AI is lowering the bar for what it takes to make and extend games quite fast. Basic games can essentially be one-shot-prompted with grok3/claude. The gaming and game development community is in a golden age.

[jacob]

I find it difficult to sustain interest in a game if I intuit too much of the meta/strategy a third of the way through the campaign. On the other hand, complicated games that would require 100 hours just to get good enough are too much investment for me (although I have done so a couple times like with civilization).

What my preference really boils down to is developing expertise. This means that I need the learning curve to be long. Ideally appropriately steep, not too little, not too much.

What's interesting in games with long learning curves is that they tend to have depth. Or perhaps it's rather the other way around in that games that have depth have long learning curves. Chess is an example of a deep game. Deep games have layers. Once you learn the first layer (how to move the pieces), you become able to see the next layer and start playing for that (how the opening game works and using two pieces at a time, e.g. pins and x-rays). Once the second layer is mastered, you start seeing the third layer. Pressure, the difference between open and closed positions. And I'm sure there's more layers deeper still.

For example, it's generally recognized that it takes about 300hrs in World of Warships to become "useful" on a team. Much of the initial time is spent learning how to shoot: How much to lead a target at a given distance, angle, and target speed. Beginners often don't even hit. After about 300 hours, people can choose whether their shells land at the water line (citadel), above the belt armor, on the deck or superstructure, or for- mid- or aft-ships. But they still don't know which of those does the most damage to a given ship---that comes [rather] later.

At the first layer WoWs is a simple WASD-shooter. However, once that's mastered, the next layer reveals itself. People who play at the first layer tend to die quickly. Usually the first or second ship (out of 8-12 ships on the team) to die. More experienced players keep telling them to "read the map", but at that point, this advice makes no sense. Yeah, there's a map on the screen that shows where you are, but what does reading it mean? To make a long story short, people tend to die due to tactical mistakes they made 30-60 seconds ago! Whereas noobs only think as far ahead as who to shoot at next. Reading the map has to do with awareness of where the [island] cover is, where to go next, and more importantly where your team mates and the enemy is and is likely to be. (Turns out there are two groups of people who are rather very good at keep dynamical track of where 10-20 objects are going: gamers and athletes (ballplayers)).

Just mentally speaking, the transition between "monkey see, monkey shoot" (reaction-shooting) to dynamically connecting actions and consequences between multiple agents is a huge development in perspective. This development would not have been available w/o first mastering the technical part of shooting.

The strange thing here from a philosophical perspective is that this knowledge can not be explained or written down in a way where the reader would understand it in the same way as the writer. At least it can't be done in a way that someone can instantly understand (kennen). (Not dissimilar to how reading the instructions on riding a bicycle will not teach someone to ride a bicycle. It is at best helpful but it does not substitute for actual doing.) This is where I think certain games are useful to teach things that books or the limited availability of real world experience can not.

Revealing structure/layers/depth is like crack for my brain. Some real world activities have depth. Many have not. Some games have it too. Many have not. An important difference is that in the real world one if often denied entry to deeper layers or at least is asked to pay too big a price to get there (the difference between being a tourist and a careerist). Whereas games are cheap and available.

[Scott 2]

How are you discovering the game's layers? Experience and observation, or reading the meta?

For me, the latter is where something like chess breaks down. Because the problem space is so deeply explored, being competitive is a game of memory. Nothing I'll do hasn't been thought of before. The optimal path is mapped.

Knowing that, I have no appetite for organically learning the game, only to be repeatedly crushed by the memorizers. Everyone's path is capped by their dedication to and capacity for, regurgitating the optimal.


I'm with Daylen on investing 100 hours into 10 games, rather than 1000 into 1. The key being - I want to discover it on my own. Only once I hit the wall, do I seek the trickle of information to unblock me. When I'm finally done, I'll go read the meta, maybe try some of it. But that's usually the end of fun for me.

[jacob]

How are you discovering the game's layers? Experience and observation, or reading the meta?

Mostly personal experience and observation with hints from the meta.

I'm very much in favor of learning by reading ("an hour in the library is worth a month in the lab"), but as I noted above:

The strange thing here from a philosophical perspective is that this knowledge can not be explained or written down in a way where the reader would understand it in the same way as the writer. At least it can't be done in a way that someone can instantly understand (kennen). (Not dissimilar to how reading the instructions on riding a bicycle will not teach someone to ride a bicycle. It is at best helpful but it does not substitute for actual doing.) This is where I think certain games are useful to teach things that books or the limited availability of real world experience can not.

Worse, since games are evolving, the internet is often misleading in that a search result might provide advice for the meta as it was in 2019 and not as it is now. However, something like

[...]More experienced players keep telling them to "read the map", but at that point, this advice makes no sense. Yeah, there's a map on the screen that shows where you are, but what does reading it mean? [..]

... did hint that the reason I keep/kept dying early in the game likely had something to do with the map so I started paying more attention to that aspect of the game instead of just working on improving my aim. This lead to a change in perspective. Now I see WoWs as a game of distancing and dynamic 2D attack surfaces---something I was oblivious to before. It's a different game for me now now that I play it from the perspective of the map instead of the perspective of the aiming reticle.

In terms of what's next, I don't know (haven't memorized) the armor layouts of various ships. However, I do get the hint that there's an optimal combination of shell type (AP, SAP, or HE) + target ship + relative angle. If I studied that, then I'd likely increase my damage/game which is still poor relative to my win-rate.

I approach gaming very much as a research project in which the meta is my "research advisor". Usually the "advisor" doesn't say anything directly useful (like the answer) but the process of conversation forces me to focus on e.g. questions and what the important points of leverage are to improve my game. And the "answers" from the meta albeit not necessarily correct will inspire me where to look next. An important part of the meta simply serves to illustrate that "it" can be done. That is, it is possible to become that good e.g. have a win-rate of 65% over 1000s of games performing way above random.

This of course requires that the meta is about complex skills that builds on other skills that need to be mastered first. If the meta was mostly about quickly adopted exploits (and the game was to find those), the meta would ruin the game or at least change it from what it was meant to be. Back in the 1990s, computer magazines would sometimes publish "walk-throughs" showing exactly where to hit the end-of-level boss or how to find the secret key, etc. For the games I'm into, the meta is more like a description of a given layer of a game. For example, for a military flight sim, the first meta would be engine-management and things like landing or flying in formation, the second meta would be combat maneuvering (how to dogfight), the third would be combat tactics such as going hot or cold or positioning to win the eventual dogfight (e.g. attacking with the sun in your back).

[Scott 2]

I find the parts I can't figure out are often the most rewarding. IE - the cave I fail to discover, highlights a limitation in my approach to spatial exploration. So I'd rather fail in the lab, then read why.

What's more challenging, is when the meta exposes something I simply can't pull together. Maybe I can never read the map in WoW. That's a quandry. How hard should I try? Is this a legitimate growth opportunity?

My experience there, is it's game dependent. Knowing when to walk away is required, which I've gotten better at with age.

Repeated bunny hops in Urban Trials? Nah, I'm good. Deck construction with exponential scaling in Slay the Spire? Yeah, I'm missing out. Copying the meta showed me how powerful the thinking is. Still haven't cracked it for myself though. I don't know if I can.

As a younger gamer, I couldn't stop. One racing game, I literally burst blood vessels in my eye, wrapped a shirt around it, and continued grinding. The only option was to win. I paid for that game, and I was playing all of it. I had to buy an eye patch to work the next day. Not fun.

[jacob]

Perhaps the most exciting (to an idea guy anyway) about high-level sims is how it makes it possible to test out real life scenarios w/o the cost of trying. In Prosperous Universe, fuel is a heavily traded commodity. People buy it practically regardless of what it costs because it's necessary to run the interplanetary/stellar transport system.

The real life equivalent of course being the oil price and its production and consumption. Well, ...

Turns out that if a significant number of people in a market are price-insensitive (I'm looking at you index investors), there's a way for traders to profit from this insensitivity. Lets say that the price is trading around 13.5. There are regular supplies (sellers) and regular consumption (buyers) and it just so happens that they transact around 13.5. There's also an order book going up to 20 on the ask side and down to 8 on the buy side with mostly inactive bids and offers. Lets say the integrated offers (=sum(askprice*asksize) for askprice<17) up to a given price (here 17) equals 1,500,000 for an average price of 15. As a sneaky trader, I can spend 1.5M to buy all offers up to 17. This leaves a spread going from 17 down to 13.5 or so. However, because the regular supply rate is low, sellers aren't immediately going to populate the prices between 17 and 13.5. With my newly bought inventory, I can now feed it out at 17 even if I didn't buy it all at 17 and profit.

The way this could break is insofar an even bigger whale has a reserve they can dump out in front of me (at 16.9 say). In that case THEY get the profit that I set up. I would therefore have to be sure that I'm the biggest whale with enough cash to effectively corner them out.

And this is maybe one way in how the little price-insensitive "investor" loses to big traders.

[sky]

So thats why I had to pay 17.1 for SF on my last run. Are you Lumber Liquidators?

[delay]

Turns out that if a significant number of people in a market are price-insensitive (I'm looking at you index investors), there's a way for traders to profit from this insensitivity.

Yeah, you saw that in World of Warcraft too, someone would corner the market. Traders quickly figured out they can work together. Once you join the club, other traders won't break your game. This balanced out because people have off-market access, they can gather things themselves, or organize supply within their own group.

You can certainly do that with index investors. Pension funds make mandated purchases at predictable date making them vulnerable to gaming. Given the size of index funds you'd need to put a large amount of money in play. Index investors will have different reply mechanisms, like teaming up and asking the government to put you in prison. And you can be gamed yourself by a larger whale. It will balance out at some point. Even manipulators don't want to endanger the market that is their lifeblood

[jacob]

@sky - No not me, but I know who you're talking about.

[jacob]

Yeah, you saw that in World of Warcraft too, someone would corner the market. Traders quickly figured out they can work together. Once you join the club, other traders won't break your game. This balanced out because people have off-market access, they can gather things themselves, or organize supply within their own group.

Yes, there are at least two corporations in PrUn, who do most of their exchanges/trading internally. There are the "space commies" who just hand over their production to other members of their corp for free according to need or central planning in expectation of reciprocal action. Then there's KAWA, which as far as I understand operate using some centralized computation of fair value, organizing all their internal trading from that. I've dedicated 3% of my brain space to come up with a third way of exchange where prices can differ significantly from the "free market" prices, but so far I've come up with nothing. The most common form of trading is either on the commodity exchange (CX) or at local markets at prices which are pretty close to CX prices.

So "free", "fixed", or "floating".

[jacob]

I just came across this old post ...

Anyhoo, I'm more likely to spend my time nerding out over complicated flight systems (see e.g. https://chucks-guide.nyc3.digitaloceans ... 0Guide.pdf ) and spending 10 mins doing ramp starts than marveling at the cinematic qualities of the rendering, so I plan to direct at least 1/3 of the "budget" towards building a desk-cockpit with HOTAS, pedals, and possibly MFDs. (MFDs are the multifunction displays, as seen in "modern" glass cockpits).

... and it looks like I finally made it. After spending about 100 hours combined in mid-fidelity sims, namely, first Rise of Flight (mostly flying a Halberstadt), then DCS (flying a Su25), and then IL-2 (flying first a Lagg-3 and then a Bf109e), I've finally "graduated" to a high-fidelity sim: Falcon BMS.

Falcon BMS is based on Falcon 4.0 which came after Falcon 1.0 which I actually played originally (on a 4 color CGA screen) back in the 1980s. This even led me to spend a few years planning to some day become a fighter pilot. It was only after watching a documentary---astutely called "Through the Eye of The Needle"---that I was smart enough to give up on that and aim for something more mundane. First, civil engineer, shortly thereafter, physics.

But by some cosmic karma much of the experience is (sans the g-forces and risk of death) is now available virtually. As a civilian getting into a real F-16 is still off limits. Maybe some day they'll be considered old enough to become available to the public.

BMS is immensely intimidating! The check list for doing a ramp start, that is getting a cold jet started, all systems switched on, and taxiing out of the hangar is 90 (NINE-TY!) steps long. One problem with VR is that you can't really look on your notes, so everything pretty much has to be memorized. This becomes easier when you actually know what the buttons are. The first several times will be spent just looking for the @#$@#$ battery switch again.

High fidelity basically means that (almost) everything is just like the real plane. About 90-95% of the switches are implemented and work the same way. The flight-control software (fly-by-wire) is ostensibly a direct copy of the real thing. The physics is real. The electronics (radar, navigation, etc.) corresponds to what it was sometime in the 1990s, coincidentally when parallel-world-me would have joined the air force.

(Just to give an idea of the level of complexity, the game has (IIRC) 1,300 keybindings! In contrast, World of Warships has about 10.)

I actually attempted a ramp start for the first time last year but after setting the engine on fire a few times, I gave up. (Either there's an error in the check list or I am not reading it right. However, after some "debugging" and burning out few engines more, I figured out what the problem was.)

Basically a high-fidelity sim is also known as a study sim. You need https://cdn.falcon-bms.com/docs/4.37/TO ... %20BMS.pdf and https://cdn.falcon-bms.com/docs/4.37/TO ... %20BMS.pdf and https://cdn.falcon-bms.com/docs/4.37/BM ... Manual.pdf open to cross-reference while re-reading chapters multiple times until things begin to "click". Don't open the links unless you really want to. It's 1400 pages of pdf files describing all the systems you'll find on the jet as most of it was in the late 1990s. Imagine if your car came with that kind of manual and that + a bunch of youtube videos were all you had to learn how to drive.

Well... probably thanks to starting simple (A Halberstadt is basically a kite with a lawnmower attached up front and a sacrificial lamb sitting right behind it---just keeping a level flight requires effort. Trim had not been invented yet) and having done some missions with the Su25 (a mid-fidelity sim with Sputnik era electronics), I have learned how to start, taxi, operate and use the radios, take-off, navigate, and get the F16 landed and back in the hangar again.

Being so focused on all the technical details, I think the coolest take-away is that I can now look at real cockpits for the above mentioned planes and see the 1:1 match between that and the VR experience and more importantly know what and where everything is and what it does. For a flight nerd, it's a richer experience instead of just seeing a jumble of dials and switches. (I called in DW to show it, but she didn't seem all that impressed and after doing a few simulated g-turns, she started feeling sick, so ... it's an experience that's hard to share.)

Add: Chuck'sGuides makes short overviews of the minimal knowledge required to get off the ground and do something. It's focused on DCS but since the simulation is realistic, it works for BMS too. Chuck's do have more pictures for those who just want to see what the cockpit looks like: https://chucksguides.com/aircraft/dcs/f-16cm/

[jacob]

BMS Progress report.

I managed to get VoiceAttack so-so working, which is not an easy thing to do with an old/underpowered microphone (HTC Vive is 10+ years?) and a non-American accent. I better never lose both hands to a freak accident or some kind of nerve disease. Technically it should be possible to control everything by just talking to the computer. Although there's likely a learning curve with me being on the noob-level when it comes to e-noun-cia-ting my wishes, I've managed to simulate the onboard UHF/VHF radio, so now I can say stuff like "Tower, Viper 2-1 F-16s requesting taxi to take off" and have the computer responded appropriately. It's all following a fixed script, but it's still kinda cool and it beats trying to sneak a peak from under the headset to find the T-key and blindly navigating a menu system on the keyboard whenever I need to communicate with air traffic control.

In terms of "flight school", I'm getting more comfortable with TACAN and using the autopilot to appear over a very specific point at a very specific time. Turns out that 4th generation air war is very much about delivering boom-booms at a precise location and time in coordination with other assets. Quite a change from the "free hunting" of WWII and WWI. I'm also sticking the landing on a consistent basis complete with aerodynamic braking.

Next lesson(s). Formation flying. Apparently TACAN also works in air-to-air mode. More reading to do. So much reading...

[Ego]

Real world application...

https://kyivinsider.com/ukraine-is-turn ... the-price/

From places like Bristol, UK and San Diego, California and Nashville, Tennessee, some of west’s best video gamers are building a an elite Ukrainian drone force. An innovative program has been bringing gamers volunteers to Ukraine for a 3-week drone training course, with results devastating for the Russian military. Armed with fast reflexes, FPV goggles, and precision-built drones, these volunteers are being transformed into some of Ukraine’s most effective battlefield assets.

What began as a wartime adaptation has become a central element of Ukraine’s modern military strategy. The country has embraced a new combat reality—where agility, precision, and creativity outpace traditional heavy firepower.

[jacob]

@Ego - Also see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -teenagers ...

Personally I've never seen any such recruitment efforts, but I stopped playing FPS games 30 years ago after getting my ass handed to me by a bunch of 12yos. The shame!

Of particular note from that article is

Virginia-class attack submarines use Xbox controllers to operate photonic masts, and some combat vehicle controllers resemble Nintendo 64 controllers. Then there is the obvious parallel between combat drone piloting and gaming. While drone pilots often reject the comparison (primarily due to the psychological toll of operating a real machine that remotely kills people), research does show that gamers excel at this work.

Scientific research has consistently shown that video games do not make people more violent. Playing games can, however, improve perceptual and cognitive functions, says Dr C Shawn Green, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Office of Naval Research funded Green to research how certain games (mainly shooters) improve warrior performance. “These games have lots of speed in them,” he says. “There’s lots of what we call ‘transient events’ – things pop up on the screen and disappear.” He says this can improve basic visual perception as well as heighten levels of cognition (such as working memory).

There's some test, which I unfortunately forget the name of but some football teams use it for recruitment. The test shows a bunch of red balls bouncing around on the screen. For a brief second some of them turn blue and then back to red. The challenge is to follow those balls as they keep bouncing around and then point out which ones turned blue. Turns out that only two kinds of people are really good at this: Team sports athletes and certain types of gamers.

I've talked about World of Warships (Wows) before above. This is likely more relevant for this skill set than BMS which is more like trying to fly a plane while operating the menu system of four different flip-phones and keeping track of a couple of old-school PDAs (basically, the "nintendo controllers" of the 1990s). Wows, which is a team vs team slow-shooter, keep track of 3 stats for each player: Win-rate, total damage/game, and number of kills/game. Turns out that you can conclude a lot about someone's play style from just those three numbers.

Out of the three, the win-rate is the most important. The win-rate of the average player is 48%. This means that if you got an average player on your team, the expected chance of winning instantly drops below 50%. There are really bad players with a win rate of, say, 43%. Statistically, a literal potato (the edible tuber) will have a win-rate of about 42%. IOW, a win rate of 42-43% corresponds to being AFK or functionally not helping the team at all; something that a (literal again) potato can do just as well. Conversely, there are also really good players with win rates over 60%. If you get a couple of those on your team, your odds of winning just improved markedly---they raise everybody up. Damage-dealing and kill-shots do not necessarily improve winning---maxing out those w/o a corresponding win-rate usually means a player hiding in the rear and not contributing to the objective leading to their eventual demise and the shame of being the last one on the losing team to die.

(Note that average win rates never go much beyond 60% regardless of how good someone is. It's simply impossible for 1 or 3 players to consistently dominate an opposing team of 10-12 players no matter how good and respectively bad they are.)

Now, what I find most fascinating (and infuriating when I get teamed up with them) is that there are people who have played thousands of matches, yet maintain a win-rate of 42-44%. Wows deliberately does not show win rates before the match starts, because this would not surprisingly lead to a very toxic chat exchange during the game (as far as I know, this has been tried and quickly abandoned). It's only after the game is lost that one can verify that e.g. the losing team (players are assigned randomly) ended up with several potatoes ... and the other lucked into several unicums.

Two things:

First, win-rate can be improved by deliberate practice. I also find that the meta-skills transfer over to similar games and presumably real life military or sports tactics(?). Over about 800 hours of "training" I've improved the 90-day moving average of my win-rate from about 46% to about 54-56% depending on which type of ship I play (I get ~60% in my two favorite ships). This basically shows that such skills/cognition can be trained/improved and that there are probably methods to do so.

Second, as noted above, though, there are also people who just never improve their game. They are effectively untrainable. And keeping them on the team increases the chance of losing. Such people consistently provide a negative contribution to the team. No matter how good they are at dealing damage or finishing enemies off, including them on the team makes the team more likely to lose! Insofar a military (or sports teams or corporations) can figure out how to change their recruitment to prioritize or deprioritize recruits based on whether they have a "win-rate" equivalent over 50%, they hold an advantage.

Given the current generation/form of warfare, I suspect this is why there's priority on recruits who are practiced in real time coordination of multiple factors---especially in coordination with other humans---as opposed to previous generations where being good at wrestling or being able to do a lot of pushups or hit a fly from 100 yards was more useful.