Rig It! Win elections through manipulation in a new game from the creators of Bad News, Harmony Square, and Cat Park

After Go Viral!, Bad News, Harmony Square, and Cat Park, Dutch design studio Gusmanson has added another game to its portfolio of interactive educational software dedicated to developing skills for recognizing the techniques characteristic for information manipulation.

Rig It is a free, browser-based game with no advertisements. It can be played in under 10 minutes and does not collect personal or identifying information from individual players.

The gameplay demonstrates how modern influence campaigns work by putting the player in the role of a political candidate during an election campaign. As expected, the main character’s primary task is to win the election. To do so, however, the player must learn how to make effective use of a system designed to reward manipulation.

Using fake images, bot networks, and other real-life tactics to manipulate public opinion increases the candidate’s popularity, but also carries the risk of eroding public trust. In this way, Rig It! makes it easier to understand how contemporary influence campaigns operate and how easily people can be swayed, profiled, and manipulated.

By taking on the role of individuals with political ambitions, players build resilience to the very techniques that shape the behavior of internet users every day. This method of learning — developing “resistance” by playing the “bad guy” — applies inoculation theory, a well-established concept in social psychology.

This is the same scientific approach that underlies the games mentioned above — Go Viral!, Bad News, Harmony Square и Cat Park. Among them, Bad News, developed in collaboration with the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab at the University of Cambridge, has gained particular popularity.

Unlike Gusmanson’s previous games, Rig It was developed with the help of artificial intelligence. Tools such as ChatGPT and ElevenLabs were used to create the game’s text content, visual design, and voices.

All content was created under the concept and supervision of GLOBSEC — one of BROD’s partner organizations — and DROG, a community of practitioners, scientists, artists, technologists, and donors who apply their model for interventions against disinformation (DIM).