Why military equipment personalisation is not like computer games.

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Hello and Happy Thursday. This week’s column is based on a reader’s question from a few months back:

How much are soldiers allowed to “personalize” their kit and weapons the way that modern FPS games emphasize (funded as they are now by cosmetics and loot?)

It’s a great one that I’ve been looking forward to tackling. The short answer is “not very much,” which may not be much of a surprise to civilian readers. The long answer (which, lucky you, you get to read below) is that some personalisation actually happens, but it’s far more subtle than what you see in video games:

I spent fifteen years in the army, and not once did I personalise my weapon. I don’t think I’m unusual in that respect.

I’ll start off by talking about the video game model, in case you’re not familiar with it. Custom character and weapon appearances are a pretty important part of many multiplayer games, usually as a way to extract more revenue from players. Then I’ll talk about the reality of military life and how one treats one’s weapon. I will discuss the subtle ways in which soldiers do sometimes customise their own weapons and equipment before finishing.

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1. Video game weapons are a canvas

Modern firearms are precision machines. They channel incredible energies through tight tolerances with astounding reliability. And they do this in extremely adverse conditions. If you’re privileged enough in your profession or place of habitation (ahem: USA, I’m looking at you) to have access to firearms, then you don’t need me to tell you how much power they give you, both physically and psychologically.

It makes you feel superhuman, or, as Homer Simpson puts it:

Unless you’re playing a video game, in which case guns are a disposable item. Pick it up, flake off a few magazines, then throw it away when you pick up another, better one.

It’s a little bit like the opening scene of Enemy at the Gates, itself a bit of a stretch:

There’s one way to buck this trend of disposable weapons in video games, and that’s to do a bit of personalisation. Want to upgrade your optics to double your magnification? Fancy adding a laser dot pointer? Or maybe you just need a sexy paint job on your rifle?

Personalising and modifying weapons are big parts of the experience for many video games. It’s an even bigger part of the studio’s revenue model: starting from about a decade ago, in-game transactions and subscriptions overtook direct product sales as the chief source of revenue for many games. For Activision Blizzard, the people behind the aforementioned Call of Duty franchise, these types of transactions brought in $5.9 billion in 2022 against $1.6 billion in product sales.

Another big draw from a studio point of view is player retention. Every game has natural lifespan where the player goes from obsession to apathy, often quite suddenly. By dangling achievements in front of them (some of which cannot be earned by cash, only through obsessive play or “grinding”), the game can engineer the player to keep playing long past the point at which they naturally would. More play means more in-game transactions, of course, but it also contributes to the positive network effect of having a vibrant multiplayer environment which, in turn, draws and retains players.

There are two broad categories of game where this is common. The first is the multiplayer shooter like the Call of Duty series referenced above or Battlefield:

The second category is your role-playing game (RPG), where you build a character and their skills and equipment over the course of the story. Each tweak improves some attribute of the weapon or its bearer, sometimes by trading off against some other attribute.

If you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons, you’ll be familiar with this. The most recent game in my rotation which features this was The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt:

There’s an aesthetic aspect to this too, but it’s secondary. And it’s not just fantasy games either. Deus Ex, the classic cyberpunk RPG from 2000, featured weapon upgrades along with the character skills and cybernetic enhancements which made the game such a classic:

How realistic is all of this? Let’s discuss this in the next section.

2. In real life they’re a tool

We’ve all seen Full Metal Jacket, but the Marine Corps Rifleman’s Creed is a real thing:

Stop sniggering down the back. The United States Marine Corps have probably earned the right to be this earnest due to their, you know, combat proven lethality and all that. Let them have their creed.

Besides, it’s something that all militaries inculcate in their troops, albeit usually in a less corny way. Because there’s some truth to the statement: your rifle is nothing but a tool. And it’s the single most important tool that the soldier has. Without it, the soldier ceases to be.

Woe betide the raw recruit who misplaces their rifle or allows it to be stolen from them while they’re sleeping—a common trick which instructors will play. The unfortunate victim won’t get their rifle back straight away but will have to carry a wooden replica¹ until they’ve earned the right to their weapon again.

You’ll notice something else about the clip above: the Marine was stripping and cleaning his weapon on a cloth mat with parts outlined and labelled². There are no optional accessories or custom designs on the weapon grips. The only thing that could be non-standard is the blue insulating tape near the butt (seen in the clip where he’s firing). This probably isn’t “personalisation,” per se, but a squad or platoon colour coding.

There is tape on the optics (the sight on top of the weapon), but this has a function, which is to block light going into the sight and making the reticule too bright. There’s no aspect of this weapon which is personal to the firer. And that’s perfectly normal: soldiers are expected to use the weapon they’re issued. If you don’t like something about it, tough. You get used to it. It’s (almost) literally beaten into you.

There are several obvious reasons for this:

• Cost. Militaries buy stuff in bulk for economies of scale. It doesn’t make sense to add a bunch of options to suit the preferences of soldiers³. This goes for all equipment, including weapons.
• Training. It doesn’t make sense to tailor-make a training curriculum to cover different modifications or accessories on the standard rifle. One course, one syllabus, one test, one range practice, one stick to beat your troops with.
• Interchangeability. If everyone has the same training on the same weapon, then I can fire yours or you can fire mine. Sure, it won’t be zeroed⁴ properly, but it will do in a pinch.
• Logistics. As an army, you don’t just buy a weapon, you buy the extended system of spare parts, gauges, tools, and workshops needed to maintain and repair them. Modifications would increase this complexity enormously.

So yes, my weapon is my own and it’s personal to me, but, as the Marine mantra says, “there are many like it.” Apart from the serial number, it’s the same as anyone else’s in my unit. Why the hell would I modify it and draw attention to myself? This would go against the prime directive for a soldier: don’t stand out from the crowd.

Having said that, there are a few tiny little things you might start to notice when you’re close enough to it. Let’s talk about those next.

3. A very limited amount of personalisation happens

When you get very close to something for a very long time you start to notice small differences. Even in the dark (and there’s nothing so dark as a coniferous forest on a cloudy night) I could recognise anyone from my own section (9 people) based on features like the camo pattern on the back of their helmet or the way their backpack sat on them. I’d have at least a 50/50 chance of identifying anyone in the wider platoon (30 people) as well.

Given this level of obsession, you inevitably notice things about your own weapon which identify it as yours. The length of the sling is an obvious one. Magazines are another. They take a battering over the years and accumulate distinctive dents and discolourations and holes and strips of tape which set them (and therefore their weapon) apart. With the newer optics, there’s an obvious tell based on where they sit on the Picatinny rail:

I had one classmate who bought his own three-point sling because he was unsatisfied with the performance of the plain old fashioned two-point harness with its brass buckle. So, he stood out as a result. Not that it did him any good—the minute any instructors saw it they made him put back on the issued sling. Uniformity triumphed.

I’ve never seen someone use their own optics on an issued weapon. Assuming you were flush enough to buy your own (rifle sights can be as expensive as the weapon itself), and you were senior/brazen enough to wield it in the open, you’d be relying on your own knowledge and skills to zero it properly, since an armourer wouldn’t touch you with a three-foot barrel clearance gauge.

There is one type of modification that I’ve heard of. And I must stress that this is based on rumour and hearsay, not anything I’ve witnessed personally. It was done to weapons which were used in the inter-unit firing competitions. All units aspire to win these annual tests of marksmanship: trophies, pennants, and most importantly of all, bragging rights flow to the winning team and unit. To get an edge in one such competition, teams were known to have filed down the “sear” of their machine guns. This component is linked to the trigger and is what controls the moving parts of the weapon, in turn determining if it fires or not.

In other words, by filing down the sear just a bit, the firer can lighten the trigger pressure and bring the weapon into action quicker in a competition where fractions of a second count. Now I should stress that this is extremely dangerous. Firearms are high-pressure machines with tight tolerances, and deliberately interfering with a crucial safety and control mechanism greatly increases the likelihood of negligent discharge (the military euphemism for firing a round when you’re not supposed to). Do not ever try this trick at home.

This type of mod, though highly illegal, also wouldn’t be much good in a video game. The attribute it improves (trigger pressure) isn’t something that’s replicated in a game. Moreover, the modification is purposefully hidden from view: you don’t want the armourers or range officers to see what you’ve done. Not a great reward for hours of gameplay or an in-game purchase.

Penalties for dangerous modifications such as this are, of course, very severe. Any modification of your weapon or equipment is risky, though, since you’re positively inviting the quartermasters to hit you with the famous double jeopardy fine. This is the uniquely military system where you pay for the item you’ve broken/lost, as well as the cost to replace it.

Makes sense? No, me neither. This is some Catch-22 logic and instructor bluster at play here, of course, but “Kit Deficiency” is a line item on one’s payslip that every soldier has seen at some stage or another. Hopefully not too often, though, and hopefully not too steep. Because no matter what an instructor or quartermaster might threaten, you’re unlikely to ever pay close to the market value for damage done in training, even if it was your fault.

A soldier might have to pay the occasional bit of damage, and they might buy some nice upgrades to their sleeping bag or gas cooker or utility knife. What you won’t see is them shelling out on their own custom rifle or a fancy set of optics or a laser aiming module, despite what video games think.

Conclusion: Video game personalisation has nothing to do with military culture

The kind of personalisation you see in video games like Deus Ex or Battlefield misunderstands the military. There might be good reason for this, in that Deus Ex (or any RPG) is focused on a character rather than a unit and that same character tends to be someone operating alone or at least not as part of a military unit. So different rules apply, and properly so.

The same might hold true for some of the multiplayer shoot-em-ups too. The extreme weapon customisation and prestige skins make no sense if you’re thinking of the players like a cohesive military unit.

But most of these games involve nothing like cohesive military unit tactics, as you’ll know if you’ve ever played them. There’s a loose objective and even some incentives to work together, but most people are trying to rack up as many enemy kills as possible, ideally using cool platforms like armoured cars or gunships.

The above setting makes no sense as a military simulation, but it does make a bit more sense if the soldiers are mercenaries or terrorists. Or, indeed, if we’re trying to replicate a pre-industrial society where citizen soldiers are expected to furnish their own weapons and equipment when they go to war. If you want to know more about that, then I recommend ACOUP’s current collection on pre-modern armies.

That’s not to say there aren’t games which accurately portray green field tactics. They may also limit the player to a single weapon choice for extra realism. I wouldn’t know: I’ve never played a game like that, and I don’t think I’d want to. After all, it’s much more fun to trick out a machine gun with a gnarly scope and funky paintjob, all the better for your friends to realise who’s dealing them death on the battlefield⁵.

What do you think? Do you prefer when games give you the option to customise and personalise your weapons and kit? Or do you think it’s a cynical way to squeeze more revenue from customers? Would you rather play a more gritty, unit-based, and realistic shooter experience, or are you happy with the individualistic chaos of something like CoD or Battlefield? Let me know in the comments below.

That’s all for this week folks. Remember to subscribe if you haven’t already. Thanks again for reading and see you next week.

Cover picture: Call of Duty: Warzone artwork from Battle.Net store.

1. On one memorable occasion, we were in the field when this happened and the lad who lost his rifle had to craft a makeshift bow and arrow before we marched out of the patrol harbour. ↩︎
2. To which I can’t help but say: Pah, fancy! In my day/army, we had to learn the names of the parts and use our own memory to learn where everything sat. Because, of course, there was still one right way and a great many wrong ones. ↩︎
3. This was true even for left-handed rifles when I was in training, although the Irish Army eventually caved to popular demand and bought some convertible weapons, since Steyr make it easy to convert their AUG to left-handed firing. Until then, however, and when I was in training, the expectation was that citógs/left-handers would just stop moaning and learn to fire with their right hand. After all, unless you’ve grown up shooting guns (which most Irish folk haven’t), it’s a new set of muscle memories anyway, and you can easily train to fire using your non-dominant hand and side. Is this true? Maybe. I had the good fortune to be a conformist right-hander. It didn’t stop me being issued with a left-handed weapon one time on the range, however. Long story, but I was given a last-minute weapon swap and only realised it was a left-handed variant when the spent cartridge ejected into my eye. ↩︎
4. “Zeroing” is the process of firing a small number of rounds on the range and adjusting the optics on the weapon until it hits where the firer is aiming, within the limits of their own marksmanship. Everyone holds the weapon slightly differently and the anatomy of their heads, shoulders, and eyes varies, so it’s an important step in matching the weapon to the firer. ↩︎
5. I might be exaggerating slightly. I was never a great FPS player, even at my peak, which was about 2006. ↩︎