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Hacker Arcade

On the surface the Hacker Arcade is simply a place to chill out and play some games. But look a little deeper and you'll see there's a purpose to all this brain cell killin. Prizes. Some of the games are old retro games with a few twists added, some are games you've probably never heard of or seen, some you'll only recognize dazed on a couch with chip crumbs piling up to lethal levels around you. Even if you're not in it for the prizes, check it out you might find it a great way to relax and kill some time between talks.

For the Players

Already solved the stego puzzle? Or has rooting boxes with exposed USB ports gotten old? Maybe you just need a break from pelting real life targets with shmoo balls. Well, the hacker arcade might be just what you're looking for. Grab a few quarters and come to the ShmooCon Hacker Arcade.

Play to Win

Well sort of, there's a step in between that's missing. You wanna win prizes, you've gotta bring a USB dongle to store your winning tickets on. Think of all those games you played at Dave & Busters when you were a kid. What, you were just there yesterday? Ok, well think think of all the games there that spit tickets out when you won. The Hacker Arcade is set up the same way, except those paper tickets you win are electronic tickets that get written to your USB dongle.

1. A user steps up to the arcade game, puts in a quarter, and plugs in a USB dongle.
2. User plays game
3. When the game is over, some tickets are written to the USB dongle based on how well the user played.
4. ????????
5. Profit!....err, Users redeem tickets for prizes at the prize kiosk

Tickets and Prizes

Tickets are unique cryptographically signed and secure tokens, that can only be redeemed once. Players can trade tickets as much as they want, but copying them won't work (many have tried, none have succeeded). If you manage to copy them, we'll delete all of your tickets, even the legitimate ones (this is for a charitable cause, after all).

After collecting some tickets, bring your dongle to the Kiosk. This is where you can see what prizes you can afford with your tickets. I know you really want that pair of Hello Kitty underwear, well start practicing your Galaga skills cuz that prize is at the top of a lot of people's lists (or so we've heard). (Note: Because the prizes are provided by the sponsors, it's hard to predict what they'll be (there might not even be any Hello Kitty underwear *gasp*), make sure you check the kiosk when you get to the con for an update.)

For the Game Contributors

The Hacker Aracade can't succeed without your help. We're depending on you to make the event more successful than....well, ever of course, but we'll settle for last year's. That's not gonna be easy to do, though. Nearly all of the entrants, with the exception of Deviant's NES/Snes emulator and Johnny's Vectrex system, were able to generate tickets. This year almost all of those entries will be returning with a few new additions and changes. So, if you want to contribute something get started now and send us some info.

A Few Rules

No one really likes to hear about rules, but we need to establish a few for the entries. Rule 1 is pretty much non-negotiable (arcade=games). The rest are more like guidelines.

1. Entries must be a game. Even if you can't follow the rest of the rules, we would like folks to at least bring in their modded console games (PS2, Xbox, N64, MAME, etc) in so that we can have some games in the chill out room. At least that way we'll know for sure who the baddest ass digdug player is.
2. Entries must take 1 quarter to play. As we're trying to raise money for charity, your game should require insertion of a quarter before play is allowed. Tip jars next to your game will work, but we won't be happy about it. Honestly, there's nothing like the beepBEEPBlip of a quarter going into a Galaga machine.
3. Entries must be able to run Linux/FreeBSD and have a USB port. This is the big one. We'd like to be able to have scale of difficulty that you can enforce and issue tickets based on the final score of the player. Ticket creation code will be provided. Your job is to determine the score, determine the number of tickets to give out (we'll work with you on this), call our code to issue some tickets, then write them to the USB device. Simple, right?

Say for instance you have a wrecking ball game where you smash stick figures (that somehow bleed) for fun (we really do have one of these, btw...) a score less than 50 may be worth no tickets, 50-75 is worth 1 ticket, 75-100 2 tickets, and over 100 is 3 tickets. After the score is determined, call the tagmoney program (see the link at the side of the page) to generate the tickets, and then write the tickets to the USB drive. During the arcade setup Shmoocon staff will be available to assist with this setup.

The Security

We care about your stuff, no we really do. Some of our own stuff is there too, so staff will be on hand to keep an eye on everything. But we know there's gonna be devices with lots of cables/controllers hanging around. We suggest either a) staple the controllers to the box or b) be prepared to write off any losses.

The Proceeds

We're not in this to make a profit, so all proceeds from arcade machines will go to a charitable cause.

Prizes for the Entrants

The entry deemed "most 31337" will get an awesome prize.

The Judging

At the end of the con, we'll judge the arcade entries and decide which was the best. In years passed there's been talk that the judgement was purely subjective, well I'm hear to tell you that this year things will be exactly the same. So get those checkbooks out and look for gdead and Logan at the con. Seriously, the judging is pretty simple: The more parts of Hacker Arcade (see those "guidelines" above) you implement, the better off you'll be.

Don't worry, there are some bonus points to be had:

• Bonus points for presentation. The better (or crazier) a game looks, the more points.
• Bonus points for hacker themes. Even more points for the car door from DefCon 5.
• Bonus points for a Galaga mod. (No bonus points for Logitech Controllers.)
• Bonus points for skee ball. We love skee ball!

A bit of background on last years winner: Simon...the game, new housing, a working slot for quarters, and a USB port. It even hooked up to the wireless LAN to update high scores. It's gonna be back this year, with some improvements. So, the bar is set pretty high. Can you beat it, we think you can.

There may be other prizes for other entries. There may be spankings for those that just bring in an Xbox and a TV. So if that's your thing... Well your course of action is clear.

Questions?

Anyone interested in entering a machine (or two or three) into the hacker arcade, there are bound to be questions (including transportation, setup, tear down, etc...) should email us at arcade@shmoocon.org.