Our Game On! Grant application is now open until March 1. This year we are excited to announce that the award amount has doubled to $2000 thanks to a generous donation from Cards Against Humanity, who also launched their CAH Loves Libraries website last year. Eliot Weinstein, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, shared some thoughts about why libraries are important to the CAH team.
What inspired CAH to support the GameRT Game On! Grant?
By attending the ALA’s Annual convention as a company for the first time this past June, we were able to see for ourselves the great work GameRT and the other divisions of the ALA do! Unfortunately, the idea of libraries as a place of intellectual growth, the safety and livelihood of librarians, and the freedom to read itself, are all currently under attack in many parts of our country. There’s no better time to send a message to librarians (and the organizations that support them) that we’ve got your back.
What advice would CAH give to other game publishers/designers who are curious about supporting libraries?
Tabletop and board games, just like comics and graphic novels, were once the target of a moral panic that led to widespread censorship, bans, and interference by local governments and activists in decisions that should remain between parents, teachers, or librarians and the children under their care. The notion that ideas and information can be exchanged to mutual benefit even without a price tag attached, an ethos that helped create the internet and the open-source software revolution, which in turn led directly to the creation of Wikis, GitHub, and other key pillars of our current digital age, is also an idea that has been enormously beneficial for tabletop and board game creators.
From the concept of a “homebrew” addition you make to your favorite role-playing game, or a now-popular one that––like Cards Against Humanity––started by giving away free versions online you can print yourself, these “create, share, and learn” values are taught and nurtured every day in libraries. Libraries protect the freedoms and ideas that make our hobbies and careers possible.
What would CAH say to libraries that may be reluctant to start a board game collection?
Games are a phenomenal resource for community-building and education, two things we always love to see more of! At Cards Against Humanity, we value libraries and the community-building that they inspire, and we’ve found that adding board games into the mix increases the already endless opportunities that libraries offer.
To date, we’ve donated over 5,000 games to public libraries around the world, and we have no plans to stop. Our policy is that any librarian who contacts us can secure a free copy of Cards Against Humanity Family Edition (8+) and/or Head Trip (ages 17+). It’s our goal to get our games played as much as we possibly can, by offering them to libraries free of charge.
Does the CAH team have favorite library memories they’d like to share?
We’re old enough to remember the dark times before Netflix and reliable Internet, where, if there was a movie or music album you couldn’t find otherwise…you could get it from your local library!