So you’re probably aware that the Bundle of Fate 4 contains Elysium Flare. Hurray! These bundles are always good sellers and they give 10% of proceeds to a charity. Hurray! They don’t make a ton of money but they do generate a lot of units sold, and I always hope that some percentage of those will result in play, reviews, and on a really great day, investigation of other VSCA products. Hurray!
This Bundle’s charity is the EFF. Hurray!
You probably guessed from all those hurrays that there’s a dark cloud behind all that silver lining. Well not really, but sorta. There’s a cloud of drama. So I want to clarify what happened as far as I care (that is, I know things that are not interesting to my decisions and are private to individuals and I think they should sort that shit out, but it is not my place to do so) since you maybe got a whiff of it.
When I got notification that the Bundle was ready to roll with Elysium Flare in it I was told that the charity would be ConTessa, which I was stoked for. ConTessa is a well organized con-within-a-con that floats to various conventions and prioritizes games by women about women for women. At least that used to be the case. Now they have become move diverse, embracing LGBTQ and people of colour as part of their mandate. Awesome before, awesomer now. ConTessa is a whole bunch of people organizing well for a good reason and getting shit done. I am onside.
When I got notification that the Bundle was live, the charity was the EFF. All cool, I thought, something fell through, and now it’s EFF and not ConTessa. Honestly I was not interested in why that happened — there are a lot of people involved in organizing these things and I am just not going to stick my head in a bee hive any more. I’ve been there, been stung, got no honey. Both good charities, so whatever.
After that I got word that there were some screw ups. Someone objected to ConTessa, ConTessa got informed before the thing was finalized, and the Bundlerizer was in the unenviable position of having to either lose an important contributor or back out on a deal with ConTessa. And then they maybe could have handled that better. All in all there was a lot of poor communication resulting in a lot of unhappy people and some old grudges re-stoked at second and third hand since the first hands don’t talk. I was very disappointed. I feel like we should be past this sort of thing now. We’re not.
Anyway, I’m not going to point fingers. I think it was a clusterfuck and as with any clusterfuck, there’s plenty of blame to go around. I wish all would just own up to the disaster, apologize, find a way to repair relationships and move on. I am not holding my breath. Not my problem, though.
What is my problem is that ConTessa got screwed out of a decent donation. So if you buy the Bundle of Fate 4, you should at least know that half of the VSCA profits will got to ConTessa. If you have already chosen a side in this, I would beg you to reconsider. There are no teams here with clean hands. Declaring a side would mostly be in the same category as wearing your football team’s shirt: good for your cheering section and choosing who to beat up after, but of no particular value for solving actual problems. This problem does not need anyone cheering it on from the sidelines.
So please, buy the Bundle. Buy it even if you disagree with the charity change. Buy it even if you agree. You could choose to notice that if you have chosen a side then now, with my action, buying it benefits the other side. You could also choose to notice that now it benefits everyone.
It’s on you now.
brad j. murray 