About the Gameboard

Developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Gameboard is a flexible web platform that provides game design capabilities and a competition-ready user interface. The Gameboard explains how to implement it when you want to run your own cybersecurity game.

Gameboard Concepts

User vs. player vs. competitor: A user is the real person who has an account on Gameboard (this requires a person to log into the Gameboard application using their Identity account). Players, participants, and competitors are users who are enrolled in a game. "Competitor" is not a term that appears in the Gameboard UI.

Enrolled: As a user who will play, compete, or otherwise participate in a game within the competition you must "join" or enroll in a game. When a user enrolls in a game, they become a player of that game.

Participated vs. played: These terms are interchangeable -- a user who has enrolled in a game and launched a challenge has participated or played.

Sponsor: Describes the organization a player is associated with. In a government-sponsored competition like the President's Cup, a sponsor may be a department (e.g., Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense). In a school-sponsored competition, you may choose to have different universities represented as sponsors (e.g., Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh).