Designer Diary: Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game Takes on the Supreme Court

We're three siblings from a gerrymandered district in Austin, Texas, and this is the story of how we designed a board game about gerrymandering — and ended up at the Supreme Court with 82 copies of Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game.

We grew up on Catan, Dominion, Tigris, Galaxy Trucker, and dozens of other games. Birthdays consisted of laying out our collection on the living room floor and playing straight through the day. We also invented our own games, pilfering components from different boxes and mashing them together. One of us, Louis, invented Pathwayz at the age of eleven, with the game being published eight years later, but that's another story.

We also grew up discussing politics around the dinner table. In 2017, on summer break from high school (Josh) and college (Becca and Louis), we wondered: Is there a gerrymandering board game? Gerrymandering has all the elements of a game: scheming, strategizing, backstabbing. Even more importantly, a board game seemed like a great way to help people learn and have face-to-face conversations about an issue that isn't discussed enough.

Gerrymandering is when politicians draw their district borders to benefit themselves. Packing and cracking are the main tactics of gerrymandering. Politicians "pack" an opposing party's voters by cramming them all into a single district, so that party will have fewer voters to win other districts. Politicians "crack" an opposing party's voters by spreading them across multiple districts, so that party never has a majority.

Voters from Austin have been cracked into five districts

We wanted to create a game that would be easy to learn and fun to play, not just a one-off political gimmick. We wanted to appeal to board gamers, educators, and gerrymandering experts alike. We'd always loved games with a high depth to complexity ratio; we turned to Knizia and abstract strategy games for inspiration.

We started tinkering. We settled early on the idea of each player as a political party trying to gerrymander. From the first version, the goal has remained the same: Win the most districts.

Early prototypes of Mapmaker, made with components from Catan, Ticket to Ride, Cosmic Encounter, and Othello

We cared about capturing the spirit of gerrymandering, the feel of cracking and packing, more than the precise details. For example, in the real world, districts are required to be approximately the same size, while in Mapmaker, the size of each district varies.

At first, the game was just for two players: Republicans vs. Democrats. Wanting to open the game to more players, we expanded to four political parties: Blue Donkeys, Red Elephants, Yellow Porcupines (fun fact: the porcupine is the symbol of the Libertarian party), and Green Leaves. We kept the symbols — this is, after all, a political game — but avoided official party names so that players could overlook the political theme if they preferred.

We playtested with more than one hundred people over the course of a year.

Just some of the playtesters who helped make Mapmaker better

We experimented with the shape of regions. Squares were too limiting. Classic hexagons worked best.

We experimented with the number of district borders per turn. Three didn't allow players to do enough maneuvering at once. Five led to double guessing and analysis paralysis.

We experimented with the size of districts. Allowing players to close off larger (non-splittable) districts led to wacky shapes, capturing the bizarre extremes of gerrymandering.

At first, the number of borders and size of districts per turn varied based on player count. Biasing for simplicity, we went with four per turn regardless of player count.

Tie-breaking was our biggest breakthrough, including creating swing counties for players to fight over and making whoever closes a tied district choose the winner. Natural politicking ensued.

We also designed a solo version.

Left: three swing counties won by a narrow margin; right: a game won with a 12-county district

Wooden prototypes of Mapmaker, laser cut at Stanford's Product Realization Lab

We'd heard about plenty of Kickstarter fulfillment nightmares, so we reached out to Go! Games, the company that had published Pathwayz, and they partnered with us to publish Mapmaker.

Here we are playing Mapmaker soon before the Kickstarter

Fast forward to the Kickstarter campaign in mid-2018. We had no idea what to expect. Neither us nor Go! Games had ever done a Kickstarter before. We knew about the importance of day one funding and building momentum. Despite research and pre-Kickstarter marketing, we worried that no one beyond our family and friends would back Mapmaker.

The campaign began, and to our delight, people began backing right away. We'd set up the Kickstarter to have several levels, including:

• State Pack, which would send a copy of the game to your governor or state legislator, in addition to getting one for yourself
• Supreme Pack, which would get you copy while also sending a copy to each of the nine Supreme Court Justices
• Super PAC, which would send five copies to you, nine to the Supreme Court Justices, 32 to the governors who have veto power over gerrymandered maps, and 37 to the state legislatures that draw maps

We didn't think anyone would actually order a Super PAC — but a few hours into the campaign, funding shot up $3,000 with a Super PAC pledge, and Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted his support.

Thank you, @MapmakerGame! What a fantastic, fun way to educate people about gerrymandering. I pledged and can't wait for my game (and the ones that will be sent to leaders around the country)! Join me and let's #terminategerrymandering: https://t.co/aqTkCvkDvj
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) July 10, 2018

Then he did it again two weeks later:

Pumped up to get my prototype of @MapmakerGame to play with my team! Much better than a smoky backroom where politicians scam voters. Get yours now and support these great, engaged students who are educating people about gerrymandering! https://t.co/KIRDLdIEvb pic.twitter.com/3d4eWqKooR
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) July 25, 2018

Mapmaker ultimately ended up on NBC, NPR, Ars Technica, and The Washington Post. And thanks to 1,468 backers, the game became a reality.

Meeples at the factory

Backers ordered 82 copies of Mapmaker for the Supreme Court. On March 26, 2019 during the "Rucho v. Common Cause" case, we delivered them ourselves, with a "Gerrymandering Is Not a Game" proclamation in each box. One of us (Josh) gave a speech on the steps of the Supreme Court.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger after an anti-gerrymandering event in Washington, DC

With 82 copies of Mapmaker in front of the Supreme Court

One of the coolest full-circle moments was watching The Dice Tower review the game since we'd originally discovered many of our favorite games through them.

Throughout this journey, we've especially loved seeing students play Mapmaker and learn about gerrymandering in classrooms.

Mapmaker can now be played for free online at Board Game Arena (tell your friends, families, and Civics and History teachers), in addition to being available on Amazon and directly through our local publisher.

The next round of redistricting is starting, and will determine our maps for the next decade. We hope you enjoy playing Mapmaker, and remember that gerrymandering is not a game.

Becca, Josh, and Louis Lafair