Leading up to this Winter term’s “Up in the Air”, here’s a different way to talk about flying killer robots. “Bycatch” is a card game for 3 to 5 participants, played with paper cards and your own mobile phones. You get a lot of points for successfully killing a “terrorist” and only a few minus points for offing the wrong people. So the incentive is to just go for it. That sounds terrifyingly realistic. You can use your phone to photograph your opponent’s cards and use this surveillance to judge whether to strike or not – you get one blurry snapshot and that’s all. Yes, it’s cynical and not too subtle, but it also sounds promising – just ordered a copy for our upcoming seminar.
https://bycat.ch/
https://www.wired.de/collection/latest/bycatch-macht-den-drohnenkrieg-zum-kartenspiel/
https://boingboing.net/2015/08/20/bycatch-card-game.html
I’m curious as to what the effect of playing really is – does it work? Is this a viable way to “get” the mechanics of contemporary warfare, as exercised by the West?
What I know is that humor is often the only way to confront a terrible reality. It distances you from it, and from that perspective allows you to see it for what it is. How fitting for a game about drones.
