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Program Wars is a web-based educational card game that teaches the basic concepts of computer programming and cybersecurity.
After watching his sons play Pokemon, Dr. John Anvik thought about developing a card game with the same combat idea, but that taught the fundamental concepts of programming (statements, loops, functions and variables) without using a programming language. The physical version of the game was created by himself and his two sons over a weekend. However, it was soon realized that to create an effective game would require a physical deck that was large and unwieldy.
A logical next step was to create a web version of the game that would remove the physical limitations and allow for distribution to a wider audience. A web-version of the game was created as a course project of a software engineering course at the University of Lethbridge from January to April 2017. From May-August 2017, Vincent Cote brought the game to state where it could be used for a pilot user study in Fall 2017. Based on feedback from the pilot study and other ideas for improvements, Jace Reihl further improved the gameplay in May-August 2018 with more cyberattack and cybersecurity cards, a revised scoring system and a number of UI improvements.
J. Anvik, V. Cote, J. Reihl; Program Wars: A Card Game for Learning Programming and Cybersecurity Concepts; In Proceedings of SIGCSE Technical Symposium (SIGCSE’19); pre-print