Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Before you jump in, heads-up that this is a long post with a lot of information!

Since launching our Patreon campaign just over four years ago, we have been blown away by the board game design community's support. Thanks to you, we have been able to create a lot of things that wouldn't have otherwise been possible:

• A dedicated website at cardboardedison.com. (It's hard to believe there was a time when we only posted on Tumblr!)
• An industry-first survey that informed a series of infographics about licensing contract terms.
• The Compendium publisher directory, which now has more than 230 listings.
• The Cardboard Edison Award, which is now in its fourth year. (Submissions open Jan. 1!)
• Immersed, our upcoming tabletop game design podcast, which we hope is unlike any other gaming podcast you've heard. The first episode is scheduled to drop in the coming weeks!

Every one of these things was done as a direct result of the support we've gotten from you and your fellow patrons.

Four years in, and we're now at a point of change for Cardboard Edison and our campaign:

• Having hit all of our current milestones, we need to settle on some new ones.
• Patreon recently made us stop our monthly giveaways for patrons at the Associate level and up. That was frustrating.
• We've noticed more cases of people backing the campaign and then cancelling their pledge before the charge goes through. That's frustrating too.
• Cardboard Edison is taking up a whole lot of our time. Like, a LOT. As in, almost a second full-time job.

What does all of this mean? We're going to be rolling out some changes to the campaign in the coming months, and we want you to know ahead of time what to expect:

• We will be restructuring our pledge tiers for the first time since launching the campaign. With the loss of the Associate-level reward, we will be "shifting up" the lower-level rewards. The result that will affect the most of you is that the rewards at the Supporter level will go away, and will require a higher pledge. Yes, in effect, we're raising our prices. If you pledge at the Supporter level, we hope that you find enough value in the Compendium, the Award and the other rewards to increase your pledge from $1 to $2. But of course even the $1 pledges are helpful, and we appreciate anyone who maintains their pledge at that level as well.
• Patreon introduced the ability to charge patrons immediately upon backing a campaign. We're told that switching to this method can't be undone, so we have hesitated to pull the trigger until now. But with the rising rate of pledges being cancelled before any charge is made (and those people making use of certain backer rewards that can be obtained immediately) we feel it's necessary.
• Now some good news! We have a lot of new ideas for milestones, and we will be asking our voting-level patrons to tell us which ones they're most excited about. This is what we did right before launching the campaign four years ago, and now it's time for some fresh ideas. Watch for this shortly after the podcast launches.
• Our homepage and video don't convey to potential new patrons the breadth of what we've been able to do thanks to this campaign, so we will be updating it to show off the projects mentioned above that the campaign made possible.

That's a lot of change! We've had many long conversations in recent months about these changes, and to be honest, it's been a scary and hard decision to make. It's always easier to keep doing the same—and safe—thing. After all, it's worked out so far: Just look at all we've been able to do! But we've come to accept that the current campaign structure is holding us back from doing more in the future.

These changes aren't going to happen overnight. It will take us some time to roll them out. And we will keep you updated as they happen.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out and ask.

As always, thank you so much for all of the support you've given us. Cardboard Edison truly wouldn't be possible without it.

~ Chris & Suzanne