Badge Games and Ninja Hackers

DefCon is the world’s largest hacker convention.

For this year’s convention, elite hacker gang, the Ninjas, have created an interactive role-playing game that is played through specially designed badges, distributed only to those invited to their private party.

One of the most exclusive venues for fraternizing at DefCon is the Ninja party. To attend the party attendees have to know one of the Ninjas and they have to give them a badge.
In years past, a Ninja would give a party attendee a sticker or a paper invite that would get them in to the party. Last year the Ninjas took the party invite to the next level when they created their own custom badge for their party attendees. This year, badge designers Amanda Wozniak and Brandon Creighton decided to take the badge to the next level, and then some. What started as a sketch on a napkin ended up as an amazing hacker gaming and development platform.
(Via Wired)

The badge combines an old school look and feel with cutting edge features, such as the ability to wirelessly communicate with other badges.

In order to fund these extravagant badges, Ninja got funding from Facebook and Lookout:

In order to test the game while the badges were being developed, the Ninjas used the iPhone app SDK:

And to top it all off, the badge comes with an instruction manual that almost exactly mirrors the original NES manual:

All of this makes my “Adventurer” badge on Foursquare seem pretty.. dated.

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