GopherCon 2020: Alex Stockwell/Kevin Tyers - Building a Game Engine for 300 DEFCON Hackers to Smash

Alex and Kevin wanted to host an event they had not seen before: a narrative-driven capture-the-flag (CTF) game that would immerse the players in its story. Since no platform existed that would facilitate the kind of direct, ongoing player interactions they wanted, they set out to build their own game engine.

They created a platform that enabled players to receive game information, objectives, hints, and scoring, from a semi-automated/interactive entity known as their “Handler”.

But these were no ordinary players: with their booth at DEFCON 26 and a $10,000 grand prize on the line, they had 300+ of the best hackers on the planet motivated to beat their game however they could.

This is the story of how Alex and Kevin built the game engine that would bring their vision to life, and lessons learned from surviving the onslaught.

[deefdragon]

this was a SUPER cool deep dive on ICTF. I look forwards to seeing them in the future.