WARGAMES ARE STILL ALIVE IN THE AI ERA

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ ║
║ WARGAMES ARE STILL ALIVE IN THE AI ERA ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Hello, I'm rayaseiren.

Today, there was a long discussion about AI and wargames
across WeChall IRC and Discord.

I want to make one thing clear from the beginning.

I do not believe the old era and the current era
are exactly the same.

They are not.

The tools are different.

The environment is different.

The way people learn is different.

The way people compete is different.

And the value of an achievement from one era
does not have to be identical
to the value of an achievement from another.

I can accept that.

What I cannot accept
is the idea that because the era has changed,
everything happening now must therefore be meaningless.

Because this is not a hypothetical debate anymore.

AI already exists.

People are already using it.

Challenge authors are already dealing with it.

Platform administrators are already dealing with it.

Players are already competing in this environment.

This is the reality we have.

So my question is no longer:

Do you like AI?

My question is:

What are we going to do now?


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
01 / I UNDERSTAND WHY THE OLD ERA MATTERS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

There was a time when someone could spend days,
weeks, or even months on a single challenge.

You kept thinking.

You kept failing.

You kept returning to the same problem.

And eventually:

That was it.

I finally understood it.

I did it.

I understand why that feeling matters.

I understand why veteran players remember that era
with pride.

I understand why some people feel
that AI changes something important
about that experience.

And I agree that blindly copying an answer
without understanding anything
is not meaningful learning.

I am not asking anyone
to pretend that nothing has changed.

Something has changed.

A lot has changed.

But recognizing change
is not the same thing
as declaring the present worthless.


╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ 02 / THIS IS NOW A REAL PROBLEM │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

AI is not going to disappear
because we dislike what it changed.

We cannot solve this problem
by repeatedly saying:

AI ruined the fun.

AI competition is meaningless.

Leaderboards no longer matter.

The old days were better.

Those may be honest feelings.

And people have every right to express them.

But they are not solutions.

If we are talking as players,
personal feelings are enough.

If we are talking about the future of a platform,
they are not.

Someone eventually has to answer practical questions.

Do we ban AI?

If so, how do we detect it?

How do we enforce the rule fairly?

Do we separate rankings?

Do we redesign challenges?

Do we accept AI and adapt?

How do we bring in new players?

How do we preserve old-school challenge culture?

These are real operational questions.

Someone has to deal with them.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
03 / PLEASE DO NOT ONLY TELL US WHAT IS WRONG
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This is probably the part
that has frustrated me the most.

I respect many of the veteran players
who have criticized the current era.

I grew up looking at your scores.

I learned from your challenge culture.

I respected what you built.

That is exactly why it hurts
when I repeatedly hear only:

This is not good.

This is not real competition.

AI ruined it.

The leaderboard is meaningless.

Do not take it so seriously.

Then what are we supposed to do?

The people you are saying this to
are still here.

We are still playing.

We are still solving.

We are still writing challenges.

We are still maintaining platforms.

We are still bringing in players.

We are still trying to keep these communities alive.

So if the answer to everything happening now is simply:

No.

Then I have to ask:

What is the alternative?

If you believe the current system is broken,
tell us how you think it can be improved.

If AI should be banned,
tell us how the rule can realistically be enforced.

If leaderboards should change,
tell us what should replace them.

If challenges have become too easy for AI,
then help us build better challenges.

Criticism matters.

But criticism without a next step
cannot maintain a platform.


╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ ║
║ IF SOMETHING IS BROKEN, HELP US FIX IT. ║
║ ║
║ DO NOT ONLY TELL US THAT IT IS BROKEN. ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
04 / I AM STILL HERE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I did not leave.

I did not stop competing.

I did not stop caring.

I was already in the WeChall Top 10
before the AI boom.

I reached the WeChall Top 5
without using AI.

Later, in the AI era,
I eventually reached #1.

I competed against Jinx.

I competed against AACDAI.

I competed against strong players
across multiple wargames.

I rebuilt CodeShell.kr.

I helped build the Raiders.

I continued creating challenges.

And now I am also involved
in maintaining WeChall itself.

So when I hear:

The leaderboard is meaningless.

Competition no longer matters.

The current era has no value.

I cannot hear those words
as an abstract philosophical discussion.

Because I am one of the people
still doing the work.

If the things we are doing now
are truly meaningless,

then I have to ask:

Why are we still being asked
to keep these platforms alive?


───[ 05 / IF YOU TRUST US TO MAINTAIN IT ]────────────

This question matters to me personally.

If younger players are trusted
to help maintain old platforms,

then we also need room
to solve the problems of our own era.

You cannot ask the next generation
to maintain the maze...

...while telling them
that the way their generation walks through it
has no value.

If I am trusted to help maintain WeChall,
then I have to think about WeChall
as it exists now.

Not only as it existed ten years ago.

That means preserving the past.

But it also means dealing with the present.

And preparing for what comes next.


┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PRESERVE THE OLD CULTURE. │
│ │
│ ACCEPT THE CURRENT REALITY. │
│ │
│ BUILD A FUTURE THAT CAN CONTAIN BOTH. │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
06 / AI DID NOT MAKE ME A TOP PLAYER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I was already a top-ranked player
before I began using AI.

That matters to me.

Not because I need to prove
that AI is weak.

AI is not weak.

It is an extremely powerful tool.

But there is a difference
between having access to a powerful tool
and actually reaching the top of a competition.

There are many AI users.

Only a small number of them
become top players.

Why?

Because competition still requires things
that cannot simply be purchased
with a subscription.

Persistence.

Judgment.

Curiosity.

Experience.

The ability to recover from failure.

The willingness to continue
after everyone else has stopped.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
07 / MY RIVALS WERE NOT FAKE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Jinx.

AACDAI.

And me.

We competed for a long time.

Jinx chased me.

I chased AACDAI.

Sometimes they passed me.

Sometimes I passed them.

At one point,
I fell from second place to third
and genuinely wondered
whether I would ever reach #1.

They pushed me.

I pushed them.

That competition mattered to me.

AACDAI is good at using AI.

That does not erase
the fact that he is persistent.

It does not erase
the fact that he was already
a strong wargame player.

It does not erase
the pressure he put on me
as a competitor.

I do not look at him and think:

fake player

I think:

rival

The same is true for Jinx.

And I refuse to pretend
that the months we spent competing
suddenly became meaningless
because the tools of the era changed.


╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ ║
║ MY RIVALS WERE REAL TO ME. ║
║ ║
║ THE COMPETITION WAS REAL TO ME. ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
08 / AUTOMATION DID NOT BEGIN WITH AI
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AI did not invent the idea
of using tools to amplify human ability.

Strong CTF teams automated workflows
long before modern LLMs existed.

They wrote scripts.

They built infrastructure.

They automated repetitive work.

They optimized collaboration.

They used every legitimate advantage
available under the rules.

Of course modern AI is not identical
to traditional automation.

It can perform much more of the reasoning process.

That difference matters.

But that also means
we need better rules and better challenge design.

It does not mean
we can simply pretend
that tool-assisted competition itself
began yesterday.

If powerful tools change the game,

then challenge design,
rules,
and platforms
also have to evolve.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
09 / THE OLD WORLD WAS NOT PERFECTLY EQUAL EITHER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AI introduces new inequalities.

Better models matter.

More tokens matter.

Money matters.

I accept that.

But unequal access
did not begin with AI.

Players have always had different access to:

time
hardware
knowledge
language
documentation
teammates
communities
information
automation

And WeChall itself
was heavily centered around Europe
for much of its history.

Players from Asia
and many other underrepresented regions
were rarely visible
at the very top.

I am not saying this
to invalidate the old leaderboard.

Quite the opposite.

I still respect it.

I spent years climbing it.

My point is that
different conditions did not make
the achievements of that era worthless.

So different conditions today
should not automatically make
our achievements worthless either.

Different eras can have
different kinds of value.


╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ 10 / DIFFERENT DOES NOT MEAN MEANINGLESS │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

This is the distinction
I want people to understand.

The old era was different.

The current era is different.

I accept that.

Maybe an old-school solve
and a modern AI-assisted solve
should not always be treated
as exactly the same accomplishment.

That is a reasonable discussion.

But:

different value

does not mean:

no value

And:

changed competition

does not mean:

fake competition

The people competing today
are still spending their time.

They are still failing.

They are still learning.

They are still building.

They are still becoming rivals.

They are still creating memories
that will matter to them
years from now.

Please do not take that away from them
simply because their era
does not look exactly like yours.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
11 / RULES NEED TO BE REAL
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Every platform should decide
how it wants to handle AI.

Ban it.

Allow it.

Separate categories.

Create AI-resistant challenges.

Use whatever model
fits the purpose of the platform.

I can accept all of those approaches.

What I cannot support
is a rule that exists only in theory.

If AI use cannot be reliably detected,
then enforcement based on suspicion
creates another problem.

Eventually:

He solved too fast.

Maybe he used AI.

His score increased too quickly.

Maybe he cheated.

Then trust disappears.

That is why I keep returning
to the same principle:

clear rules

realistic enforcement

better challenge design

less moral accusation


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
12 / BUILD CHALLENGES THAT FORCE US TO ADAPT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

One of the best things said today was simple:

create good challenges
that AI struggles to solve

That is a direction.

That is something we can actually work on.

If AI changes how players solve challenges,
then authors can also change
how challenges are designed.

We can build problems
that require observation.

Interaction.

Repeated experimentation.

Real verification.

Understanding state.

Following misleading information.

Recovering from false assumptions.

AI does not have to mean
the end of challenge design.

It can become pressure
that forces challenge design to evolve.

That is much more useful to me
than simply hearing:

AI is bad.


───[ 13 / CODESHELL.KR ]──────────────────────────────

That is also why
I made my decision for CodeShell.kr.

I will not separate
AI users and non-AI users.

If you want to use AI,
use it.

If you do not want to,
do not.

Instead,
I want to create challenges
that still require a player
to observe,
verify,
adapt,
and continue.

I do not want
one button to produce one flag.

If AI becomes stronger,

then I should become
a better challenge author.

That is my answer.


┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ CURIOSITY │
│ │
│ + │
│ │
│ PERSISTENCE │
│ │
│ + │
│ │
│ ADAPTATION │
│ │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
14 / TO THE VETERANS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

To the veteran players:

I respect you.

That is why your words matter to me.

If random people told me
that everything I was doing was meaningless,
I could ignore them.

It is harder
when those words come from people
whose names I once looked up to.

I am not asking you
to love AI.

I am not asking you
to pretend the eras are identical.

I am not asking you
to abandon the culture you value.

I am asking for something much simpler.

Please do not only tell us
why our era is worse.

Help us figure out
what our era should become.

If you believe something is broken,
help us repair it.

If you believe a rule is necessary,
help us make it enforceable.

If you believe challenge design must change,
help us build better challenges.

If you want the old spirit to survive,
help us find a form
that can survive in the present.

Because some of us
are genuinely trying.


╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ ║
║ WE ARE NOT TRYING TO ERASE YOUR ERA. ║
║ ║
║ WE ARE TRYING TO CONTINUE AFTER IT. ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
15 / TO THE YOUNGER PLAYERS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

To the younger players:

Your era is coming.

Respect the people
who built the paths before you.

Learn from them.

Understand why they cared.

But do not believe
that you have to recreate
their exact conditions
for your own effort to have meaning.

You are going to face
different problems.

Different tools.

Different expectations.

Different competitions.

Your job is not
to become a copy of the past.

Your job is
to become good enough
to carry what matters forward.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
16 / I WILL KEEP GOING
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

No matter how many AI users join,
I intend to keep defending
my position at the top.

Anyone who wants to take my place
will have to work incredibly hard,
whether they use AI or not.

That is enough for me.

I still want rivals.

I still want newcomers.

I still want veterans.

I still want people
from regions that were barely represented before.

I want someone to look at my score
the way I once looked
at the scores above me and think:

Can I reach that?

And then try.

If they eventually surpass me,

good.

Then the leaderboard is alive.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
17 / SO WHY SHOULD WE CONTINUE?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This is the question
underneath everything I have written.

If the current leaderboard is meaningless...

If current competition is meaningless...

If AI-era challenges are meaningless...

If the way younger players learn is meaningless...

Then why should we continue?

Why should we maintain the servers?

Why should we write new challenges?

Why should we bring in new players?

Why should we build teams?

Why should we preserve old platforms?

Why should we spend another ten years here?

I do not believe the answer is:

We shouldn't.

I believe there is still something here
worth preserving.

That is why I am still here.

That is why I still compete.

That is why I still build.

That is why I still care.


╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ ║
║ WARGAMES ARE NOT DEAD. ║
║ ║
║ THE ERA HAS CHANGED. ║
║ ║
║ THE PROBLEMS HAVE CHANGED. ║
║ ║
║ SO OUR ANSWERS MUST CHANGE TOO. ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝


To Bolo, AACDAI, bashrc, wekito, Jinx,
and all the players I have competed with:

I often admire the strengths you have,
especially the qualities that I lack.

By competing with you,
I learned where I was weak.

Because of you,
I grew little by little.

That is why I still believe
competition has meaning.

And to the veterans I respect:

I am not asking you
to agree with everything I believe.

I am asking you
to help us find a way forward.

Because we are still here.

And we are still trying.


━━━━━━━━ KEEP THE WARGAME ALIVE ━━━━━━━━

RESPECT THE PAST.

ACCEPT THE PRESENT.

PROPOSE SOLUTIONS.

BUILD BETTER CHALLENGES.

LET NEW PLAYERS ENTER.

KEEP THE LEADERBOARD ALIVE.

KEEP CLIMBING.

— rayaseiren
WeChall World #1
CodeShell.kr
2026

Hey rayaseiren,


I think you debated alone on that subject, we don't really care about all this, we just find this meaningless to train multiple AI to solve the challs the fastest possible way.

What do you think of someone solving 25 challenges in 10 minutes ? Maybe you think he's pretty good with AI, for me he's just someone rushing to have a better rank, which will mean nothing because he didn't learn anything, probably didn't even read the challenge description, and will not be able to talk about his achievements with someone.

The mark you leave on WeChall will not be your rank (it'll change one day or another), but the recognition of other users, the hints you left behind you, and the way you help this community, so there's no rush.



To be honest I didn't read all your post, because 1000 lines of AI generated text is exactly the wrong answer to this subject =)

Hi all,

I've also thought about this a fair bit. I used to value the leaderboard - up until the rise of AI it used to mean something, but now not it feels kinda arbitrary. I think the reason that Raya comes off as so polarising is that he constantly proclaims loudly how he is the #1 player in the world, etc, etc. This is not so much an achievement now as it once was, and I think that clearly the old-skool leaders like Caesum, dloser, jusb3, tehron and others had a lot more hard-earned practical knowledge than the new breed. From memory it took me around 6 months to grind out the last couple of thousand points to take dloser's crown.

I removed myself from the leaderboard because it started to feel pointless, but it doesn't need to be. Careful thought should be put into how to provide stats that are meaningful to the people who want to see them, and the current leaderboard is not meaningful. For a start, just show a breakdown of most points in the last week, month, year (like other sites such as MysteryTwister already do). Have the option of flagging whether you are a manual or AI competitor (obviously this requires self-introspection and may not be accurate, but who cares). Allow people to hide themselves from the main leaderboard but still see their individual site completion percentages. There will be other better ideas than this I'm sure... hell, use AI to come up with them if you must.

Raya should be applauded for stepping up to the plate and taking on the challenge of helping to bring WeChall forward (as well as running his own site on the side!). Let's hope there is a way to keep it fun, collaborative and collegiate.

Happy challenging!

I have been thinking about how AI is going to impact challenge authors. Some challenges I've seen over my time working on wechall sites have clearly had a LOT of work put into them by the author to make them both challenging and enjoyable for the person solving. A lot of those challenges, however, relied on being a bit of a marathon to solve in terms of the amount of effort you have to put into them (some good examples of what I'm talking about right now are Dante's Inferno on DtW, the later challs on ae27ff, and most of the challs on Ma's Reversing), so what happens once AI becomes advanced enough that users can solve those challenges in minutes without paying much attention or putting in much effort? These challenges are quite old and were made before LLMs became viable for solving, so it's only a matter of time (if indeed it hasn't already happened) until LLMs become so strong that they can solve these challenges with very little user input. My question, then, is this: is it fair to the challenge creators who put hours into making these challenges in the hopes that people would put effort into them, learn, and have fun that now the whole challenge can be effectively skipped? Just something to consider.

You looked l-o-l

Quote from tehron

Oct 04, 2026 - 10:21:33

Click for spoiler

That one was actually pretty funny lol.

I am a university student studying computer science, and I have recently become interested in cybersecurity. I have played GFL (GemForgeLabs) using AI tools. Although I have some background knowledge in computer science and cybersecurity, I found it difficult to solve highly ranked challenges.

This experience reminded me that, even in the AI era, the skills and experience required to solve difficult wargame challenges are still important. I understand that some people are concerned that AI might harm the wargame ecosystem. It is true that some challenges can now be solved too easily with AI.

However, in cybersecurity, I have always seen the same pattern: whenever there are people who try to break into systems more easily, there are also people who work to make those systems harder to break. I believe the same will be true with AI.

In the end, I think what matters most is not simply whether someone uses AI, but how they use it. The skill, knowledge, and judgment of the person using AI are still important.

Quote from katLu

Oct 05, 2026 - 06:58:29

I am a university student studying computer science, and I have recently become interested in cybersecurity. I have played GFL (GemForgeLabs) using AI tools. Although I have some background knowledge in computer science and cybersecurity, I found it difficult to solve highly ranked challenges.

This experience reminded me that, even in the AI era, the skills and experience required to solve difficult wargame challenges are still important. I understand that some people are concerned that AI might harm the wargame ecosystem. It is true that some challenges can now be solved too easily with AI.

However, in cybersecurity, I have always seen the same pattern: whenever there are people who try to break into systems more easily, there are also people who work to make those systems harder to break. I believe the same will be true with AI.

In the end, I think what matters most is not simply whether someone uses AI, but how they use it. The skill, knowledge, and judgment of the person using AI are still important.

That is a very valid point.
I am well aware that many people feel frustrated because traditional wargames can often be solved relatively easily by AI.

However, I believe your perspective may change if you experience GemForgeLabs, Hack n Roll, and CodeShell.kr firsthand.
These platforms contain many highly challenging tasks—some difficult enough that even security researchers on my CodeShell team and DEF CON finalists struggle to solve them.

I understand that some of the older generation have concerns, but I will not engage with generalizations about modern wargaming based solely on results from classic platforms without first experiencing newer platforms for yourselves.
If you want to criticize them, please try them first.