CDS MESS
A CARD GAME ABOUT FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS, 2015
DEREK CURRY, JENNIFER GRADECKI, DEVIN WILSON (US)
CDS Mess is a card game that teaches players how Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDO) and Credit Default Swaps (CDS) were used in the subprime mortgage crisis. In 2010, Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki founded Bankster Games, an initiative that makes digital and analog games designed to teach players who lack expertise in finance how complex financial instruments work and how they are used (and misused). Bankster Games uses play to facilitate experiential learning so that players may better understand financial fraud and complex financial instruments with the goal of increasing the possibility of public oversight in the highly technical realm of finance. CDS Mess is their first analog game.
The basic gameplay of CDS Mess is similar to the game Rummy. The instructions have several variants that mimic proposed regulations of credit default swaps that were never enacted, so that players can experience the impact regulations can have on how financial instruments affect society.
Bankster Games is premised on the idea that future financial collapses are preventable if the public can better understand how finance works to advocate for change or intervene in the process.
BIO
Bankster Games is an initiative founded by Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki in 2010 as they were completing their Master of Fine Arts programme at the University of California, Los Angeles. In response to the 2008 financial crisis, Bankster Games creates digital and analog games that illustrate aspects of financialisation to people outside of finance in a way that is fun and accessible. Derek and Jennifer are artist-theorists completing their PhDs at SUNY Buffalo, and both are assistant professors at Northeastern University’s College of Art Media and Design. Derek and Jennifer created CDS Mess with Devin Wilson, an artist-theorist completing his PhD at Georgia Tech.