Weapons Gamification: From Console to Battlefield

By. Olivia Bush-Moline

DOI. 10.57912/31399308

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Shedding the classical conceptualization of war waged for ideologies, traditional imperialism, and the methods of traditional warfare, “war” has gained greater definitional flexibility and taken on new characteristics in the modern age. The post-Cold War “new wars” shift towards a redefinition of the concept and practice of contemporary warfare, spurred by the development of technological advances that create greater distances between war-wagers and war-experiencers, has undeniably changed the face of warfare—from remote-piloted drones to long-range missiles, face-to-face combat fought on delineated battlefields has become dated. War has taken on a new face, one that needs neither a singular, concrete opponent to target nor a traditional battlefield to operate upon. 

Within this war metamorphosis, a pattern with growing significance and a number of ethical concerns has emerged: the gamification of weaponry. As technology acts as a growing barrier between armed forces and their targets, the process of dehumanization has taken on a disturbing gamified character. First demonstrated in drone warfare and now increasingly applied into other weaponry, this strain of dehumanization presents a modern ethical dilemma that lies at the crux of military strategic advantage, technological innovation, and human rights. The integration of game-like qualities into weaponry represents a fundamentally unethical developmental shift that subverts the seriousness of warfare, likely leading to greater disregard for human life in combat contexts. In the face of these developments, the international community must reject this push towards gamification and ensure a respect for human dignity remains present—even in contexts of war.

While the dehumanization concern is nothing new in the discussion surrounding drone warfare, overtly embracing the gamification of warfare is a rather novel development. Standing at the forefront of the modern drone warfare revolution, Ukraine has pioneered the new era of drone warfare in its war against Russia; from AI integration to its groundbreaking Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine’s rapid advancements stand as the cornerstone for the future of drone wars. Along with these technological advances, Ukraine’s military introduced a computer-game style attack system that awards points to drone piloting teams for successful strikes. Dubbed the “Army of Drones Bonus System,” 400 drone teams competing for points killed or wounded 18,000 Russian soldiers in September of 2025 alone, and similar programs are being adapted for reconnaissance and logistics operations. With points earned from successful strikes, operators can buy more than 100 different drones, autonomous vehicles, and other drone war resources from an “Amazon-for-war” online store called Brave1. Brave1 also features a leaderboard for top-performing teams, underlining the competitive nature of the system that incentivizes the killing of as many enemy troops as possible.

As described by Ukraine’s Minister of Defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, “there’s competition for the points, for getting these drones, electronic warfare systems, and other things to help them in warfighting. The more infantry you kill, the more drones you get to kill more infantry. This is becoming kind of a self-reinforcing cycle.” It is clear that desensitization is built into the system’s design, with the Ukrainian cabinet designating various point prizes for certain acts to reflect strategic objectives, such as winning 25 points for killing an enemy drone operator. According to Federov, the Ukrainian cabinet is now “pretty much emotionless” when putting a price on human lives in the form of points. 

While this popular competitive system indeed successfully motivates Ukrainian troops, it also shifts the stoic tone of wartime combat into a gamified cycle built upon a foundation of death. Glorifying and quantifying death with a point-based system invokes a sense of playful competition that is duly unrepresentative of the true brutal nature of war and the deep tragedy that follows in its wake. No longer is a strike ordered for the sole purpose of combat objectives, but for personal gain in the form of points that feed directly back into the system of killing. Despite the claim of gamification being downplayed by some Ukrainian drone operators, the very existence of the competitive system itself presents a conflict of interest and an additional layer of desensitization created by likening wartime combat to video games. This sentiment is echoed by a few dissenters within Ukrainian forces, with one soldier claiming that due to the system’s implementation, units have become overly preoccupied with attempts to claim each other's hits or deliberately attacking already disabled Russian vehicles in order to earn more points. 

Furthermore, in December 2025, a game titled “Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator” was released on the major game platform Steam, described by its developers as “created by instructors, engineers and drone pilots for effective training.” With both a casual version available on Steam and a professional military edition, the game’s website claims that its integration into training centers has led to over 5,000 drone operators trained and over 100,000 threats neutralized. The strategic and human impact of this program as a whole speaks for itself: according to the Ukrainian government, 820,000 Russian targets were hit by drone strikes in 2025 alone, including 240,000 enemy personnel killed or critically wounded. 

However, Ukraine is not alone in seeing the value of war gamification—there is an undeniable strategic advantage in the application of gaming skills into warfare. Even years prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Ukraine’s subsequent development of the Army of Drones Bonus System, the United States had set its sights on recruiting gamers. Since 2018, the United States military has pumped funds into using gaming as a recruitment tool to target young, tech-savvy individuals for military service, seeking the gamers’ easily transferable skills for combat initiatives. According to a U.S.Army Captain, the top drone pilots who “are learning the fastest, able to fly the most controlled, fly the fastest, and very accurately,” are gamers. Even on the game development side, the relationship between the gaming industry and the military is quite symbiotic, with the military loaning funds and resources to game developers in order to ensure that pro-military narratives are woven into their games. This recruitment effort has gained significant opposition from concerned veterans who see it as deeply unethical to gamify war and market it as such, creating an organization called Gamers for Peace to advocate against such recruitment.

While the U.S. military’s efforts to incorporate gaming have largely been recruitment-based in the past, the newest addition to the growing arsenal of gamified weaponry saw its debut this January: an army tank driven by a video game controller. Introduced at the Detroit Auto Show and representing the latest evolution of American battlefield technology, the M1E3 is a massive rework of the Abrams tank lined up to replace the cancelled M1A2 SEPv4 upgrade. Although numerous alterations are present in the M1E3’s design to reduce weight, integrate internal protection systems, and adapt faster to new threats, these developments are eclipsed by the model’s unique steering wheel: a Fanatec controller, commonly used for immersive sim racing on PC and consoles. According to a U.S. Army engineer, the decision to utilize a gamepad reflects the necessity of nimbleness in the nature of today’s combat scenarios. This application of gaming hardware into war technology further evidences the growing phenomena of war gamification, and the likely expansion beyond drones in the near future.

As war takes on this greater gamified nature, it is essential to push back against the fundamental devaluation of human life and disregard for the true brutality of combat. The simultaneous glorification and gamification of war create a dangerous environment conducive to unnecessary destruction, disproportionate killing, and human rights violations. The international community must balance the endless pursuit of strategic technological advancements in warfare with an enduring commitment to preserving the dignity of human life and reducing needless deaths. This responsibility falls on both multilateral and independent parties such as the UN Human Rights Council and International Committee of the Red Cross, to investigate war gamification in the context of International Humanitarian Law and jus in bello standards. With technology acting as an ever-growing barrier between all human interaction, including combat, there must be a stringent examination of the ways in which this distance alters our perceptions of one another, lowers the threshold for war, and leads to greater harm for all involved parties.