Green, or greenwashing? A climate scientist reviews EBR’s production

The following post is copy & pasted from my original review, posted on BoardGameGeek.com on 2/9/24. I haven’t had time to make all the formatting here as pretty as it is there, or implement the pretty pictures. But, hopefully, you get the idea.

Paper stickers, FSC-certified paper, oh my! As Earthborne Rangers reaches a wider audience and closes in on a $1M Gamefound campaign, we “ooh” and “ahh” over its sustainable production. NPI featured Earthborne, and sustainable production in other games, as their gaming “Fad of the Year.” But is it just that – a fad? Smoke and mirrors that make you feel warm and fuzzy about your latest purchase, hiding the ugly truth of environmental sins? Or is Earthborne Rangers truly an improvement on the status quo, a project deserving of its praise? Let’s discuss.

A brief preface

It’s time that we push the boundaries on what board game reviews can and should be! If you’re looking for analysis of game mechanics or replayability or other such traits, the rest of this amazing community will have you covered1. Stick around for something a little off the beaten path.

Ethos

I think it’s terribly important that someone double-check claims of sustainability. Who’s doing that for board games? I’m looking around, and I’m not exactly seeing a ton of watchdogs2. So, here I am. I am a climate scientist. I specialize in extreme heat and its impacts on human health. I am not a materials scientist, nor a decarbonization expert3. But I do love board games, and I do think about this intersection of my interests a lot. So, there you have it – unless we all start caring enough about this that someone else can get paid to do it, you’re stuck with investigative journalism from an overworked 24-year-old kid who “thinks about this a lot.”

It should be said that I have yet to finish my EBR campaign or get very far at all4. I have, however, followed EBR closely throughout its production. I’ve listened to every single episode of the Earthborne Games podcast, as well as followed the developers’ appearances in other podcasts, for more than a year now. That’s maybe about ~100 hours of content. Plus, I hang out in the Discord server every day. So, while I cannot speak on the arc of the campaign, I hope to synthesize production information from across the podcasts, Gamefound updates, and Discord to provide you with a reasonably informed opinion.

Listening to ~100 hours of the EBG podcast creates a conflict-of-interest worth noting. I hear the dev team chat about their children or whatever random video game they played last week. That doesn’t make the dev team my friends. My primate subconscious, however, has no way of knowing that. I therefore cannot pretend I am unbiased, but I’ll strive to be as objective as possible.

The Status Quo

Before we can compare EBR to the rest of the industry, we have to first get a sense of the rest of the industry. Let’s talk about some common “environmental sins” our beloved board games often commit:

• Plastic. It’s easy to think of those dastardly “fossil fuels” as only the gas we put in our cars or the coal we burn for electricity. What you might not realize is that plastic is made from fossil fuels. Besides that, plastic remains in our environment for hundreds or thousands of years. Let’s not think about what microplastics are doing to your body5.
• Card coatings & cores. The luxurious snap and shuffle of your favorite cards did not come straight from the tree. Card “cores” that lend cards structural integrity are often plastic. All cards have some variety of coating, and most of those coatings contain plastic. Most cards in the hobby are likely not recyclable and will persist in the environment long after your grandchildren throw away your collection.
• Packaging. We’re about to stop harping on plastic, I swear! But shrink wrap is worth mentioning, as is the overblown size of most boxes. Unnecessarily large boxes reduce the efficacy of shipping and use more materials.
• Paper sourcing. Deforestation is largely frowned upon by environmentalists. How were the trees chopped down? Were they replanted? Were the people who did that harvesting paid fairly? How far did the wood have to travel to make it to the factory? Generally speaking, if paper isn’t FSC Certified, it’s hard to say how kosher it is.
• Transportation. The vast majority of games are printed in China and probably took a long journey to reach you, emitting carbon all the way.
• Energy. Selling games keeps the lights on for your favorite publisher. What powers those lights – the sun, or fossil fuels? Developers working from home will have a smaller footprint here than publishers at a brick-and-mortar location. I would guess, though, the bulk of the contribution here will be from the factory that makes the game.

Big thanks to the Green Games Guide for providing a primer on much of this.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is exhausting, isn’t it? If thinking about that made you feel a little sad about your own board game collection, you’re not alone. People who want to sell you things generally hate when you start googling words like “degrowth.” Rather than think about all that, how do we get you back into the unparalleled heights of unboxing the latest and greatest Kickstarter, as quickly and efficiently as possible?

Greenwashing is the practice of making a product appear green – the “smoke and mirrors” I alluded to earlier – even though the product is not really green. Have a sampling of greenwashing tactics:

• Lack of proof. A company might sound like they’re doing some amazing things! Is it too good to be true? One study from the European Union found that 53% of green claims on products and services make “vague, misleading, or unfounded” claims, and 40% have absolutely no supporting evidence.6 Yikes!
• “Green” materials. The word “bioplastic” sounds nice, doesn’t it? But at the end of the day, bioplastic is still plastic, and likely more impactful than a paper-based alternative. Be careful to consider whether green-sounding materials are making much of a difference.
• Donations. “A portion of proceeds goes to <environmental nonprofit>!” Sure, this does do some good in the world. We can charitably assume that whatever nonprofit a company is donating to is doing amazing work out there. However, this donation likely has nothing to do with how the product itself is produced. The donation is not an equal and opposite force to the supply chain that brought you the product. My favorite recent example is this commercial for Kim Kardashian’s new bra. A more relevant example is the game Canopy planting a tree for every copy of the game sold (no shade – see footnote!7).
• Green imagery. Putting trees in your marketing does not make your product friendly! For example, this Lorax-themed commercial for a car that still burns gas. Much more common and effective than you’d think.
• Difficult recycling. If folks have to go to a special drop-off point to actually recycle the product, that triangle icon means very little.
• Carbon offsets. Imagine I killed someone, and then when asked about it, I said, “No it’s cool I paid this other serial killer to not do a murder, so it all works out8.” This is the logic of carbon offsets9. I do not like them. What I want is for you to decarbonize your own supply chain -- not for someone else to capture some amount of pig farts equal to your own footprint.
• “Net zero” pledges. A “pledge” is a promise of things yet to come and implies no present-day improvements. Most pledges have few tangible plans of how to actually arrive at “net zero.” Likely, as self-imposed pledge “deadlines” approach, companies will turn to carbon offsets to keep their promises, rather than genuinely decarbonizing their own operations.

Thanks to the folks at UL Solutions behind the “Sins of Greenwashing” for ideas presented here.10

. . . Now, dear reader, you’re a savvy customer who can spot dastardly advertising techniques a mile away! So let us move on and explore the Valley with this context in mind.

The Earthborne Way

Let’s see how Earthborne stacks up to this business-as-usual. Time for me to roll up my sleeves and get to the bottom of Earthborne’s production! What dastardly secrets are hiding beneath that green façade? What might I uncover with my hard-hitting, independent journalism?

. . . What’s that? Someone’s beaten me to the punch! And – what’s that? It was Earthborne Games themselves?! That’s right – listeners of the podcast know that CEO Andrew Navaro once thoroughly compared EBR’s first printing to the best practices outlined in the Green Games Guide. Hm!

Regardless, I think this review is still worth doing. Maybe the podcast episode is “hard-hitting” and/or “journalism,” but it’s not “independent.” There’s still plenty of untrodden ground here, and perhaps my opinions won’t line up with Navaro’s. Only one way to find out.

We’ll start with materials. In the case of Earthborne, we’re mostly looking at paper, mostly in the form of cards. I’ll touch on the lack of cores in the cards. There are a few other things in the box, though, including the coatings on the cards and the paper stickers that seal the box. Moving out of the core set, we have some pewter miniatures, wooden energy and ranger tokens, and rubber playmats.

Then, we’ll cover manufacturing and distribution. Where was the game made? How far did the materials have to go to travel to the factory? How far were the backers from the factory? What did distribution impacts look like?

Finally, I’ll touch on transparency, and how I was able to get this information in the first place.

Paper

We know that the paper used in Earthborne Rangers is FSC-certified, mixed-grade. What does that mean? Whoof. Explaining FSC certification in detail is beyond the scope of this review. Suffice it to say, though, that FSC certification is probably the best bet we have when it comes to guaranteeing ethical sourcing. FSC certification makes me a happy camper.

Now – what’s this about “mixed-grade?” EBR isn’t made with 100% fully recycled paper – rather, some blend of recycled and virgin paper. Here’s how the FSC’s website describes the certification:

Quote:

The product is made with a mixture of materials from FSC-certified forests, recycled materials, and/or FSC-controlled wood. While controlled wood doesn’t come from FSC-certified forests, it mitigates the risk of the material originating from unacceptable sources.

This “mixed-grade” is in comparison to two other possible FSC certifications -- one for products sourced with 100% FSC-certified forests, and one for products made with 100% recycled material.

In the GGG episode of the podcast, Navaro defends the “mixed-grade” choice by calling into question whether or not recycling is as environmentally friendly as we think it is. He mentions the large amount of water that goes into recycling, how chemicals that were banned decades ago can persist in recycled paper unregulated, and some other points. I’d encourage you all to give it a listen and form your own opinion. As for me, I’m not wholly convinced – most sources I looked at said that recycled paper still has a much lesser environmental impact than virgin paper. But I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on recycling.

Perhaps there’s a different reason Navaro reached for mixed-grade paper. Does the quality and feel of the cards degrade with recycled paper? I looked at my own collection, but I don’t think I have any fully recycled cards to compare to. Most of the things I can think of that are 100% recycled paper are, like, napkins. That doesn’t exactly make me hopeful for the quality of 100%-recycled cards. If anyone has experience here, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Verdict: FSC certification is great. I think mixed-grade paper is fine. I’d prefer to see 100% recycled paper, but I’m not broken up about it. My understanding is that this is all good stuff, and it might be uncommon, but not groundbreaking.

Cores

Let’s talk about what’s not in the cards – cores. Have a quote from Andrew Navaro:

Quote:

Some complain that [the cards are] "too thin," but what they're really perceiving is the fact that they're not cored. Technically speaking, the thickness is on par with your average CCG.

Card cores, from what I understand, are made of plasticky adhesive and lend stability to the cards. The plastic involved makes card cores antithetical to EBR’s plastic-free aspirations. I respect that they went coreless. I still think the cards feel great. Not the best cards ever, but certainly still great.

Some folks disagree, and some even argue that a lack of cores leads to sleeving, making the whole plastic-free shtick a wash. I’d give that argument more weight if I thought all backers of EBR would finish one or multiple campaigns. The sad reality is that many copies of EBR, like many other board games, will sit unloved and unused on shelves. So, I don’t agree that a lack of cores somehow leads to less sustainable outcomes.

Verdict: I understand that most cards in the hobby are cored. EBG choosing to forego cores is novel and exciting to me. This is plastic-free praxis. Good on them!

Card coatings

Cards need to be coated – it’s unavoidable. Without a coating, cards would feel like a print-and-play prototype. EBR eschews common, cheap, plasticky UV-protection card coatings for a water-based coating.

. . . Okay, so it’s water-based, but what else is in the coating? What else are we holding in our hands? I asked Navaro. To my surprise, he didn’t know either!

Apparently, formulas for coatings and the like are proprietary. Unless a company is obligated to make that information publicly available, why would they? It might not be that there’s anything nefarious going on, or even that folks are trying to protect trade secrets. It’s just something that takes work to do. Why would they make the effort to communicate this stuff if no one’s interested?

Navaro sent an email on behalf asking about the composition of the coating. I’ll report back if that gives us any more intel11. It’s pretty baffling to me that even Andrew doesn’t know what he’s holding in his hands here.

Anyway, the cards aren’t luxuriously glossy, but they still give me tactile satisfaction. And while I can picture EBR being played outside more than other games, I don’t think many people will miss the UV protection.

Verdict: We may not know everything about the coatings, but we’ve been assured that the game is 100% recyclable and compostable despite them, which is a win in my book.

Stickers

Games need to be sealed to be distributed. Can it be done without shrink wrap? Did EBR do it without plastic?

Hmm. Well, there was an attempt, at least – the stickers here are paper. But what about the adhesive on the sticker? I don’t really know what adhesive is made of, but it sure doesn’t seem natural. Cursory research seems to implicate plastic in many adhesives.

Again, I asked Navaro what the adhesive is made of, and again, he wasn’t quite sure. He asked about this in his email to the factory, too, so we’ll report back with any updates.

I feel a tiny bit conflicted about this. I don’t even really mind that there’s plastic in the adhesive. I don’t think any sticky residue left behind is enough to render the game unrecyclable or un-compostable. Maybe the stickers themselves aren’t recyclable – I’ve heard anything smaller than a Post-It note or postcard isn’t big enough to be recycled. I’m not bothered by that, either.

The reason I feel conflicted here is because, maybe, technically speaking, this makes EBR’s claim of being “plastic-free” a lie. Ugh! That feels so silly. It’s truly a miniscule amount of the game by weight. Arguing about this has the same energy as arguing that EBR isn’t plastic-free because someone probably worked on it using a keyboard with plastic keycaps.

Verdict: Are the stickers plastic? Maybe. Am I going to raise a big stink about greenwashing over this? No. It’s unavoidable. Maybe encasing the game in a paper sleeve could work, but then, how would you seal the paper sleeve? I think they’re using the best technology they can here. EBG can have a little plastic, as a treat.

Reclaimed pewter

Why aren’t more people doing this?! I adore my pewter EBR miniatures. Sustainability considerations aside, they’re just really cool.

Okay – that said, back to business. The reclaimed pewter is sourced entirely from scraps from a variety of other sources. It’s great to know they’re using material that would otherwise go wasted. The miniatures here are manufactured in the UK, which is close to the rest of the production in Germany.

My concern here is more to do with the carbon footprint. I’m thinking about how plastic bags actually have a lower carbon footprint than reusable bags, unless you use your reusable bag a shedload of times. What on earth is the carbon footprint of manufacturing a pewter miniature? I haven’t the foggiest clue, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s larger than that of a plastic miniature. It actually looks like pewter and the plastic used in 3D printing have similar melting points, so maybe the energy used in the molding isn’t too different? But the pewter is noticeably heavier, and it takes more energy to ship heavier things.

Verdict: I like how this material is sourced, and it feels much better to me from a “persisting in the environment” standpoint. I don’t have enough information about the carbon footprint, though. Comparing environmental toxins to carbon footprint can often be apples to oranges.

Wooden bits

Not too much to say here that isn’t covered by our earlier discussion regarding paper. The wood is FSC or PEFC certified. I’ll leave the differences between these certifications for the interested consumer’s further reading. We’ll delve further into where the wood and paper come from in a couple of sections.

Verdict: Both certifications are similar and good, and I am content for the wooden add-ons to be certified by either. Certainly, an improvement over plastic alternatives without sacrificing tactility.

Playmats

From the Gamefound:

Quote:

Made with a polyester blend laminate over natural rubber.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Polyester is plastic. There’s no getting around that.

The distinction of natural rubber is important – this is in comparison to synthetically derived rubber. Rubber is a plastic, but in this case, a naturally derived one. That feels wrong to say. I typically conceive of plastic as something only humans make. I suppose many of our best ideas come from nature, though.

I don’t know about this one, folks. Surely someone could make a fully plant-derived, plastic-free alternative here? I personally haven’t invested in an EBR playmat12, although they are beautiful. But what about cotton, or hemp, or something like that? I realize squishiness is a defining feature of playmats, and we also want the printed imagery to be sharp. I don’t know if plant-based materials can achieve this, or if anyone’s even tried.13

Verdict: They’re probably doing the best they can here, with the natural rubber, but I think I have to give this a thumbs-down. I don’t think anyone is a bad person for buying a playmat. They look sick. I own two amazing neoprene playmats myself. But ultimately, I don’t think a playmat is necessary for the enjoyment of the game. It’s just a little too plasticky and extraneous for me to give it good marks. Ah, well. At least it’s generating them some extra cash. And I should note this is the one thing I didn't have time to speak to Navaro personally about before this goes live, so maybe he can offer a clarification.

. . . Okay! We’ve spoken of the stuff EBR is made of. Let’s talk about how it’s made. More specifically, how the first printing was made.

The factory: Ludo Fact

This is where things get interesting!

The entire first printing of Earthborne Rangers, aside from some printing done by localization partners, was completed at a factory in Germany called Ludo Fact. Right out of the gate, the fact that this is happening outside of China is a huge surprise. To my knowledge, the vast majority of board games are printed in China.

The most ideal situation, in my mind, is for the game to be printed as close to backers as possible. Materials are important, of course, but as a climate scientist, my primary concern lies with greenhouse gas emissions. The farther a game has to travel, the more greenhouse gasses – plain and simple.

North American printing was a stretch goal for EBR’s first Kickstarter campaign, and honestly, it was a big reason I backed that campaign in the first place. NA printing ended up falling through, and I was pretty damn disappointed about that, but it’s all right. After listening to the podcast and hearing Navaro talk about the situation, I understand why it happened. The number of factories set up to print something like EBR in the states sounds like it’s very small, and things just fell through with the factory Navaro was in talks with.

Printing everything in Germany was the next-best thing, and in my mind, it’s still leaps and bounds better than printing in China. The Atlantic is smaller to cross than the Pacific, and Germany’s practically next door to a great portion of backers. I’m desperate to try to figure out what the difference in the carbon footprint is here – but that’s a post for another day!

Okay, so I like where the factory is located – but what about the raw materials? How far are the trees from the paper mill, and the paper mill to the factory? Another excellent answer here: it’s all German. 100% of the paper used in EBR was sourced from German forests, and the paper supplier is German, too. In contrast, think about American FSC-certified paper being shipped around the globe to China to print a game that makes its way back to the states. That thought makes me cringe, and regrettably, I imagine it happens a lot.

What about the energy used to power the factory? Well, wouldn’t you know it! At least one of the facilities involved in the printing is solar powered! Mind you, this is just one of Ludo Fact’s factories, and the website says that the solar panels cover only 70% of that factory’s electricity demand. But, hey, I’ll take it. I’m not sure what’s being done to power the rest of the factory. Germany’s electricity generation portfolio isn’t the worst ever, but it looks like a good chunk of it is still coal.

Hey – remember what I said about carbon offsets? It’s time for their entrance in our story. Ludo Fact’s website claims carbon neutrality. There is some amount of information here about what programs they’re investing in to offset their carbon. These programs seem to be through a carbon offset company called Planetly. Googling Planetly seems to bring up results about it being bought in 2021 and shut down in 2022, so I don’t really understand what the full story is here. I would’ve done more digging if I had the time, and if I had a higher opinion of carbon offsets more generally. I’ll leave further research to the interested consumer.

Verdict: Well, it’s not North American printing, it’s not multiple localized printings, but otherwise? This is a home run for me. No factory is going to be perfect, but Ludo Fact is checking a lot of boxes as it makes boxes. Big, big win, and largely “groundbreaking” in my opinion – though it’s not like EBR isn’t the first game Ludo Fact has ever printed.

Distribution

I’m not going to spend a ton of time here. This is a much harder topic for me to get a handle on. EBR isn’t really handling distribution themselves – they’re working with distribution companies that handle the logistics of getting the game into customers’ hands. EBR chooses who those distributors are. Presumably, some of those distributors make better environmental choices than others. I don’t have the bandwidth right now to research every possible option they had, or even the distributors they chose.

To be frank, I’m not sure sustainability was at the forefront of EBG’s mind when it came to distribution. Due to some production snafus, the first printing suffered a significant delay. EBG needed distribution to happen as quickly as possible. I recall at least one change in distributor was made solely to get the game distributed sooner in some region, though I forget which.

More on this topic in a minute.

Verdict: Whatever choices EBG made here, they did so to survive. I can’t fault them regardless of what happened, so I’m not going to sweat this one too much . . . this time.

On Transparency

One of the greatest strides Earthborne Games has made has nothing to do with anything we’ve discussed so far. To write this review, I didn’t have to parse some vague “mission statement” into tangible facts. All this information was simply readily available to me at the press of a few buttons, or readily supplied to me by Andrew Navaro himself.

Earthborne doesn’t shy away from talking about any facet of their production, or, in fact, much of anything. Anyone can join the Earthborne Games Discord server, ask the devs a question, and nearly always get it answered semi-instantly or in the next episode of the EBG podcast. When it comes to their own production choices, they seem happy to talk about anything15. The nice thing about producing a sustainable game is that you have little to hide.

Does every single game designer need to host a biweekly, two-hour podcast and be constantly active in their official Discord server? Perhaps not. But if I want to know what went into creating any given game on my shelf, I’d probably have to do some pretty serious digging. I’d likely be at the mercy of the publisher and whatever they’re willing to tell me. And I wish that weren’t the case.

There’s not a great way for me to fact check any of the information Navaro has doled out. I asked Navaro if there’s any way a consumer could figure out who EBR was manufactured by without asking EBR – e.g., does Ludo Fact make any such records readily available? Or some abstract trade-governing organization? Navaro said, “I don’t think so,” and my cursory look didn’t reveal anything to this effect. He did provide me with a “Declaration of Conformity" certificate for the core game, which apparently declares the core set safe for children, according to EU standards – but I couldn’t easily fact-check this either, because it was in German!

I thought about digging further, but I felt it would be bothersome to email Ludo Fact asking for any such records when I do ultimately trust Navaro. I felt like digging around would be a little insulting to Navaro, too, after what effort he’s made at transparency. It would truly be a Herculean effort on his part to make all this stuff up. He just gives off honest vibes. But maybe that’s the parasocialized part of my brain that’s listened to ~100 hours of his podcast talking.

. . . Did you make it this far? Kudos.

So . . . green, or greenwashing?

I hope you have the information you need to form your own opinion here, but I'll give you my two cents anyway. Taking everything into account, I really do think there’s a ton of good here. A lot of the production is truly going against the grain of industry standards. Earthborne claims to have “groundbreaking” production and that EBR is “plastic-free.” I honestly think those statements are basically true, playmats and (god forbid) sticker adhesive aside. They’re not making claims they can’t back up, and as far as I can tell, Andrew Navaro is not a liar.

Thus, without further ado . . .

The verdict: Green, or greenwashing?

By the power invested in me by the label of “climate scientist graduate student,” I hereby decree that Earthborne Rangers, in its first printing*, is, in fact, Green, and displays a lack of common greenwashing tactics. Hear ye, hear ye!

*See below for comments on the upcoming second printing.

The second printing: The specter of China

You might’ve noticed EBG’s little $700k+ Gamefound campaign. Notably, EBG hasn’t chosen where they’re going to print this time around. It sounds like they’re getting a number of quotes from a number of places – including China! Perhaps that revelation made you gasp with shock and revulsion. I did, too, until I thought about it a bit more. We’ve spoken a lot about potential environmental impact here, but what impact does sustainable manufacturing have on EBG?

Sustainable manufacturing is more expensive, which is the primary reason it doesn’t happen. Aspiring game designers with no published titles to their name likely do not have many resources at hand. I would encourage an indie designer to print their game in China! I love games, and I might love your game, and I might never see it if it’s too expensive for you to print it sustainably. My tune changes when we’re talking about larger entities with plenty of resources. I’m looking at you, Asmodee.

Where does that put Earthborne Games? Hm. A tricky case study. We’re not talking about noob game devs in a basement here. The masterminds behind EBG are highly prolific and successful ex-Fantasy Flight Games employees. The original Earthborne Rangers Kickstarter raised ~$450,000, an impressive figure. Most other indie game studios couldn’t hope to reach that number with their very first campaign. However, we must note that EBG is still an indie game studio fulfilling their very first campaign. So with this in mind, here are some quotes from Navaro’s recent appearance on the Team Covenant podcast (edited very slightly for clarity). This is a fascinating interview, and I’d encourage the interested reader to listen to the full episode.

Quote:

The lure of going to China is real. I can see why people make the decision, right? It’s straight economics. It makes all the sense in the world if what you care about is maximizing your revenue. I’ve got quotes on the second printing from a bunch of different places, including Chinese manufacturers, and, uh – it’s way less expensive. Like, less than half of what it costs to do elsewhere. It’s wild. So, when I start to look at those numbers and be like, okay, well, if we went to China, we’d be able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars – should we do that? [. . .] But when it came down to it, I just felt, like, yeah, we could make more money, but did I found this company to maximize profit? No. I did not. I wanted to try to do things differently, so we’re going to continue to try to do things differently.

Quote:

The amount of stress, and pressure, and strain that is put on you – just, by being, is incredible. It’s like, I feel like I’m not getting anything done, but I’m trying to just will the company to success through my thoughts and intention, and I’m exhausted. It’s wild.

Quote:

My original plan, based on my math, put us needing to go back to crowdfunding to get another infusion of cash in the spring of last year. And I think that, you know, based on our estimates of when the game would be done, we thought that was probably going to be the case. But as soon as we encountered a hiccup in the production and needed to reprint a bunch of punchboard and repackage everything, augh [. . .] It just took forever, and meanwhile, I’m just watching our bank account dwindling down to nothing.

I cannot imagine how stressful this process must have been at times.16

It’s easy for me to sit up on my high horse and waggle my finger about sustainability. I would love for them to print as locally as possible, as sustainably as possible. But there were serious financial and mental-health trade-offs. Given how much effort it was to make this first printing happen, should I always expect the team to pull it off again, or do even better? Wouldn’t it be easier on a repeat printing? But how many more people could this game and its message reach if the team printed in China? Is it more important for the game to reach a broader audience, or for Navaro to retain his sanity?

I’m still grappling with some of these questions. I don’t have a good answer for you, and I probably won’t until I finish the campaign and the second printing finishes. Let’s keep talking about it while decisions are being made, and have another debrief once the dust settles, eh?

The only complaint I can make is that I wish production decisions could’ve been outright promised to meet or exceed the production of the first printing. With how successful the Gamefound is, and especially hearing Navaro’s recent interview on the Team Covenant podcast, I would be shocked if the second printing manufacturing didn’t meet or exceed the bar set by the first. But even the faint specter of a Chinese printing makes me shudder. EBG built a reputation by printing with Ludo Fact the first time around. Some of the current backers might’ve backed because of that reputation, and a Chinese printing might feel like pulling the rug out from under them.

That’s a nit-picky comment to make. I’m complaining about a hypothetical that I highly doubt will come to fruition. But it is worth analyzing Earthborne with a fine-toothed comb simply because they have promised sustainability – anything else would sting of hypocrisy and greenwash. One day, though, we should be criticizing all games against these standards, whether or not their developers promise us sustainability, whether or not trees feature prominently in the game’s art.

A drop in the bucket

You might be wondering if I hate fun. Look at this idealistic kid, preaching about “sustainability!” The greater powers of the fossil fuel industry are surely more deserving of her time and energy. The board games industry is a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things.

One could first point out that the board games industry is growing rapidly, and all these problems will compound into larger damages over time. This is a fair enough argument, but if we continue to compare to the fossil fuel industry, we still likely won’t hold a candle to their damages. So, why should we care to do better?

I can’t make up your mind about that. Maybe I still haven’t made up my own. When I decided to become a pescatarian, I originally did so simply to “walk the walk” as a climate scientist – not because I thought it would make a difference.

My latest conclusion is that, if you have the choice to do something in either a sustainable or a harmful way, why shouldn’t you choose sustainability every time? “Choice,” here, is the loaded word. Maybe we all “choose” how to produce our games, but for a tiny, independent game developer with a tinier budget, there isn’t much of a choice to be had. But if sustainability is within your means, well – why not?

Through great effort, persistence, and courage, EBG managed to budget for sustainability and pull it off. And if they can do it as a team of just four full-time folks, with only one of them doing much of the work of production decisions, well – I’m not sure major industry players have good excuses anymore.

Cheers, to a brighter and greener gaming future. Thanks, Andrew.

EDIT: Wohohoho! This review was just featured on No Pun Included! Thanks for the shoutout, Efka!

Wanted to pop by here and mention that I have more plans for climate-relevant board game coverage coming down the pipe. Doing a PhD unfortunately takes up the bulk of my time, but I find so much joy in this writing! You can follow me here on BGG. I've also just hastily published my unfinished website for you to bookmark. Expect updates and more content . . . soon!

https://haleystaudmyer.com/

Cheers!

Credits

A special thanks to the following people who helped with this review, whether they knew it or not!
• The team at Earthborne Games, for their transparency, accountability, and courage to do things differently.
• The creators behind the Green Games Guide. Their document is perhaps the only of its kind for the industry to learn best practices from. Clearly, it was an inspiration for this piece.
• Dan Thurot of Space-Biff! Dan, your kindness and writing prowess are unmatched. Thank you for your words of wisdom.
• The Earthborne Games Discord community. It’s a joy to hang with y’all every day. See you on the trails!
• My fiancé and dog, Gaia. I love my little family.

Footnotes

1Check out reviews by Stidjin Plays Solo and Toby, for example.
2If you know of anyone, let me know. I try to limit my time on BGG (you know, for the sake of my PhD), so I might’ve missed something.
3I almost didn’t want to put my career in the title for this reason, but after my Daybreak review got such a good response, I guess I’m trying to build some “brand recognition!”
4Specifically, I’ve played some on TTS, a one-day mission, and only through Day 2 of the campaign. It turns out getting four graduate students together is a nigh impossible task, and I unfortunately spent my holiday season grieving.
5But dang, aren’t those minis cool!
6See report here. It’s presently unclear to me if this is a 2023 study or a 2023 document using data from another study.
7I still endorse Canopy! They clearly made an effort to de-plastic their game. I haven’t researched its production much, but I once played it nearly all day while on hold with JetBlue Airlines for eight hours. And I realize that it was made by an independent designer local to the PNW, who likely had few resources. More thoughts on this topic later.
8Analogy taken from a PSA from the Climate Ad Project.
9There’s a lot more to be said about carbon offsets and the various types that exist. Some are better than others, it’s a debated topic, but I personally find them mostly fundamentally flawed. Others may disagree. For more information, check out this guide from Watershed, but it’s not the end-all-be-all.
10If you want to spend an hour of your life truly baffled by greenwashing efforts, I highly recommend the 2011 documentary Greenwashers.
11Under other circumstances, I would’ve waited to post this until after I got the information, but it’s my priority to post this before the Gamefound ends!
12For my birthday this past year, a friend of mine got me a big ol’ square of forest-green felt the exact shape of my table, because he knew how excited I was about EBR. I’m sure that felt has plastic in it.
13Googling ”plant based playmat board games” just brought up a lot of playmats for Earth14.
14WHY haven’t I played Earth yet?!
15I have seen them shy away from other controversial topics, e.g., I believe they declined to comment some months ago when folks were discussing the decision to sell the publishing rights to EBR to a Russian company in the midst of the Ukraine situation. But I realize they gotta pick and choose their battles. Sustainable production is already controversial enough in the board gaming community.
16See Navaro’s latest appearance on the One-Stop Co-Op Shop podcast to hear about the joys of taxes.

Please keep an eye on the comments in case any corrections get made!