So here’s some advice for Cardboard Edison, who royally screwed the pooch when they awarded the 2024 Cardboard Edison Award to Myles Wallace’s Crowded Frontier.

Crowded Frontier is a game based upon an at-best naïve view of the concept of Manifest Destiny, which was used to justify taking land from the indigenous people of North America and happens to be the mindset from which stem other atrocious things the United States did, like overthrowing the government of Hawai’i to claim a new state.

By the way, indigenous people still exist in the Americas. Even the parts that are currently called the United States. They are still here. Do not say they aren’t. Do not erase them from history. Do either and you’ll look like an ignorant fool.

Now, in case Cardboard Edison does not grasp the enormity of who they just screwed over, here is a non-exhaustive list:

  • everyone who ever won the Cardboard Edison award.
  • everyone who ever submitted to the Cardboard Edison award.
  • everyone who won or were runners-up for this year’s award.
  • BIPoC and especially indigenous board gamers (yes! we do all exist. Yes, indigenous board gamers exist!)
  • anyone who ever relied on Cardboard Edison to choose games to buy.
  • the board game industry if you handle this poorly when it hits the wider news audience.

Cardboard Edison, did you not give guidance to Myles Wallace? I don’t know him, so I’m not just assuming he’s being knowingly racist, but if nobody gave him feedback on the questionable nature of the theme, you are in large part responsible for torpedoing any potential career for him in this industry – and maybe even other industries! – into the ground.

If you don’t care about anyone else you hurt, you probably should at least care about that person.

You did nobody any favors in your carelessness.

And if you try to spin this in any way that doesn’t involve the designer willingly withdrawing from the award, if you try to rely on audience complacency to not even start to do the hard things you need to do to make this right – you will have permanently damaged your award and prestige. And the results of this contest will continue to harm you and everyone else for years.

Your avenues to fixing this are all difficult, and that is frankly your own fault.

Your avenue to ignoring the problem and letting this harm remain in the community is quite easy.

I am too sick and too weary to actually do much more than this post. There are a lot of younger people who feel similarly to me and whose voices are carrying to you similar messages. They are the future of board gaming: future designers, future developers, future publishers, and the audience from now to the future.

If you don’t want to get left behind and don’t want 2024 to be your legacy, take the hard path to fixing this.

Because that’s going to be a whole lot easier for you in the long run.