Practical Lessons from Creating the Control-Alt-Hack Card Game and Research Challenges for Games In Education and Research

We designed, produced, distributed, and evaluated Control-Alt-Hack™: a recreational tabletop card game intended to promote a casual awareness of high-level computer security concepts. Our experiences throughout this process gave us insights and opinions regarding the creation of games, their role in educational or outreach contexts, and opportunities and challenges for the research community. In particular, we: (1) provide a logistics-oriented reflection on our experiences, including a list of the work roles that were involved in producing the game and a timeline of the creation process; and (2) step back to consider higher-level issues for the community, including the role of games in the classroom and the challenges behind conducting and publishing evaluations of game-based learning.