Conviction: The Card Game

On the 4th of July, we passed our crowdfunding goal of $25K. We were happy to have hit the goal thanks to support from the community and our friends and family.

At the same time, we quickly realized "Christmas is coming" and we had a lot of yet ahead of us to finish the game, create all of the art, playtest, manufacture, etc.

It was go time!

After working through some initial game prototypes and finding some great artists to help with the project, it was time to start to gauge interest in the concept.

We kicked off the crowdfunding of the project on Generosity.com as a way of checking for interest in the game while also raising some funds to help.

We chose Generosity.com rather than something like Kickstarter given that Generosity was specifically setup for "community good" projects and they also only charged the typical credit card transaction fee (and not any extra). Unfortunately, Generosity.com was being run by Indiegogo, but has now been rolled into GoFundMe.

After the 2016 election we found ourselves oscillating between scared and angry -- but mostly frustrated. As President-Elect Trump started discussing his cabinet picks, supreme court appointments, policy agenda, and white house advisors it became clear that this was not a nightmare, but a reality that we were going to be dealing with for the next four years or less (Come on emoluments crew!). We shared articles back and forth with each other in exasperation and searched for an outlet for our frustration.

We created the game to channel our energy into something positive, while doing so we found ourselves reading even more current events, policy briefs, tweets, and blogs. Conviction is a lot of fun, and it’s been quite educational for players as well. We also realized that we didn’t want to profit from the mess in D.C., so we decided to donate the proceeds where they’re needed. And thus, El Pen was born, the company we formed to fund causes that are under attack by Trump.