The United States, Britain, Canada, and Israel all use drones — unmanned aerial vehicles — for border protection, law enforcement, spying, and precision military strikes.
The drones are controlled from remote sites, sometimes half a world away. Operators control the drones in a sophisticated, game-like setting, in some cases delivering ordinance to targets much like “playing” a video game. Hence the word: gamification.
This word is entering the security dialogue a lot these days. And I’m fairly sure that we’ll all be saying gamification for a long time to come.
IFSEC’s Rob Ratcliff wrote a very interesting piece some months ago about gamification in the security industry, calling it “the single most important ongoing innovation in the security technology industry.”
I have to agree. There are few topics more on the tip of the tongue these days.
Brazil World Cup
Indeed, it was at the core of a recent discussion with colleagues in Toronto about the future of our industry.
Avid football fans, we were talking about the security and planning challenges facing Rio de Janeiro as it prepares for the FIFA World Cup next year. Rio’s traffic is already nasty and planners are expecting the population of areas hosting games to triple during the World Cup. Throw in legions of “well-refreshed” international football fans in various vehicles and you have a traffic nightmare.
But maybe not, thanks to gamification.
A Canadian technology company called Fortem has designed a traffic management program that will move vehicles more efficiently in and around the city, thus reducing the risk of car-jacking (for which Rio is unfortunately infamous) while FIFA fever is in the air.
Gamification comes into play here in the traffic control centres, wherein security personnel use joy sticks in monitoring real-time, 3D views of the city’s traffic grid. They can control the lights and/or dispatch traffic management police accordingly. It’s a blend of audio, visual, and real-life action.
First-person shooters good for multi-tasking
Thinking about this example raises some important questions about gamification for security professionals.
For example, does the heightened audio-visual sensory stimulus generated by game-like security interfaces make surveillers even more alert, thus decreasing response times in critical situations?
An answer to this question may be found in a Forbes magazine article published earlier this month. It referenced a study suggesting that playing first-person shooter video games improves a person’s multi-tasking capabilities. To quote from that story:
What they found was interesting. Consistently, the group of subjects that were playing games showed significant improvements in performing the intermittent, secondary tasks without compromising their ability to perform the constant, primary tasks.
Or consider the converse — will gamification de-sensitize security professionals from the actual dangers from which we’re meant to protect our clients? It’s not, after all, a video game. It’s often life and death.
Ongoing innovation
What does this mean to the people that we hire and contract in designing, installing, and monitoring integrated security systems? Does gamification require an extensive re-training of existing staff? What skills are needed to excel in this brave new world, and where do employers and job-seekers go to get that training?
In considering these questions and other questions I agree with Rob that gamification is the most important ongoing innovation in security.
And that word ongoing is critical.
The fact is that gamification is a nascent trend and its influence is evolving asymmetrically across the sector. Or, back to my football story, the opening whistle just blew and the fans and players are fired up, but the match is really just getting started.
Yet it’s also true that gamificaiton is trending up in step with PSIM, about which I wrote last month. And for every conversation I have about PSIM these days, I’m also having conversations about gamification. I am sure to have many conversations on this topic when I attend the ISC West Security Conference in Las Vegas next month.
Now, if only the word were easier to say.
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I write so many articles, I forgot about this one. Thanks for your nice feedback, Colin. Yes, ongoing is certainly the most critical word in the sentence. Apart from gamification, of course!
@Robert Brown: Why do you say so Rob ? Any specific reason for that ?
Because we really are just at the start of it, and I do think it’ll be something that expands more and more over the coming years.
There is on going debate about how violent video games affect behavior and whether they contribute in some way to the violence we see in tragedies at high-cshool and mall shootings. I guess the link is not a mere suggestion.
Colin, thanks for raising an interesting subject. Looking at the Rob’s cited piece again it seems that my post at that time didn’t get carried over. So I think it warrants raising again. I think ‘gamification’ is in danger of being misused by manufacturers in the security industry, as many words and phrases do, in their efforts to get ahead of their competitors. Can’t blame them for the latter, but the ‘gamification’ needs better explanation. By simply referring to Wikipedia (fallible, yes, agreed!) we can see that game theory, points scoring, reward, player ranking, team play, etc., are the distinguishing… Read more »
Really good point, Simon, and I think I agreed with you at the time that my original use of the word ‘gamification’ wasn’t strictly correct. The only thing I can think of is gaining CPD points from attending talks and training!! Not really gamification.
I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m part of the Playstation Generation, but I just think it’s rubbish. There’s always someone to blame: movies, books etc. Video games are just the latest in a long line of scapegoats, for me.
No clients have yet tasked me to propose gamification ideas for security applications, Rob. Wouldn’t it be great if someone did? What about: scoring, levels achievements, badges, transferable currency earned, etc., from useful activity, e.g. missing persons found on CCTV, intrusion patterns recognised in alarm reports, errors rectified in access control databases? These are nothing more than ideas that I’m shooting straight from the hip here! Nonetheless, creating systems that facilitate and reward useful behaviour are surely an interesting area for development, especially in those tasks where a human still has capabilities way beyond those of most machines, e.g. person… Read more »
Interestingly, this plays well into the current and next generation of end users. As the people who operate these systems were raised on video games, it is only natural to design systems to play to their strengths. We routinely design systems with workstations controlling multiple (2-4) monitors and joystick as well as on-screen controls because younger security guards and operators seem to use them very effectively. While I may have trouble concentrating on that many images, many do not. Similarly, their peripheral vision and perception of slight changes is remarkable. I know I generalize, but watch younger end-users in action… Read more »
@Robert Brown: Yes indeed and it should be. If not it will not look good in the part of technology for sure. I think we too have to play a major role in this and taking it to the next level.
There was a story (relatively) recently about a police officer who was hailed as a ‘human CCTV’. (Ah, here it is, found it). He’d be great at this game. In a nutshell he used to memorise all the mugshots and recognised various criminals when he was just out and about. Amazing, really!
Robert, Yes great point. Personally, I quite like being surrounded by a bank of screens if possible! It certainly makes sense to take plays from computer games and other systems like Apple etc. as many have done. So many video management systems I see these days look so much like an iOS device it’s a wonder someone hasn’t stepped in. I suppose Apple and Samsung are too busy suing each other constantly.
It’s funny you make that comparison, as we’ve received that feedback often from clients. When we are working with a client to help them select video management software, there’s often three categories that separate the various user interfaces; “techie,” “standard,” and “iPhone.” Interestingly, there’s no right answer here. One of the things we like about the video management software offerings today is that there are a variety of user interfaces available, all with pretty rich feature sets. Personal preference can play a stronger part, now more than ever.
So you mean with regard to user feedback of systems so that we get something closer to what we’re expecting? I’d say this is happening already, as when i look at systems now I see my devices interfaces in them in many ways.
Indeed. I still remember the Avigilon Xbox Kinect experiment (linked to in my original article that Colin mentions) where they tried to make a ‘Minority Report’ style interface controlled by movements and speech. It was a bit clunky and no match for a kayboard/mouse/joystick but it was a nice idea. Think that was the point of it: a demonstraton of what they could do if people wanted the features.
@Robert Brown: Yes indeed it’s happening for some time but if we use it more effectively we can get better results. I feel we are not using it to a major level at all right now.