Hacker Video Games Are Experiencing a Renaissance
Why do people love to roleplay as a hacker, and what do these games teach us?
Dave Kennedy once broke into a bank vault with a password he found in a worker’s desk drawer. The desk was locked, but picking it was trivial, and it took about 30 seconds to get the code that would give him access to safety deposit boxes and bags of cash. “Unfortunately,” he laughs now, “we had to give it back.”
Kennedy is a security consultant and co-founder of the cybersecurity firms Binary Defense, which defends against hackers, and TrustedSec, which simulates their attacks. “We get to be simulated bad folks but we don’t have to go to prison,” he says. “Which is awesome.”
Given the enjoyment he finds in playing at someone he’s not, it’s not surprising that Kennedy, now 36, is a lifelong video-game player. As a kid, he learned how to code so that he could run his own text-based online multiplayer game known as a Multi-User Dungeon, which later helped him get his first job in cybersecurity for the Marines. Kennedy thinks that video games could help people develop skills needed to meet the growing demand in the cybersecurity industry, especially now that so many games are designed to make the player feel like a hacker themselves.
