Eric Zimmerman

Gaming the System

GAMING THE SYSTEM is a bitterly playful critique of broken democratic systems. It is a series of digital “Handbooks for Cheats” - each with practical instructions about how to cheat a particular government rule system - such as Gerrymandering voting districts or exploiting campaign finance laws. The project brings together journalists, designers, and policy experts to produce three Handbooks on three topics over a 9-month period, supported by online and social media and culminating in a public event. Leveraging familiar concepts from games - cheats, loopholes, exploits, rule-breaking - Gaming the System applies critical design thinking to real-world systems, to surface issues of structural inequity. The Handbooks are practical guides to actually exploiting these systems and in this way Gaming the System is evidence of the problem, even as it is also part of the solution.