You're pledging to donate if the project hits its minimum goal and gets approved. If not, your funds will be returned.
Metagame is a conference for designers, players, and appreciators of games of any form. It consists of talks by guest speakers, gameplay demos and sessions, networking events, and freeform conference time.
The original goal of Metagame is to create a unique, kind of weird experience that blends together thinking about game design and game playing. The goal is to have challenges at all layers of the convention; last year we had a megagame and a metagame being played by the attendees at the same time alongside individual bespoke smaller scale games. Ideas are sourced from a wide variety of experts in game design, usually attendees as well, and are implemented by staff and volunteers.
Metagame is small by design, which means the tickets are priced accordingly. Donations help lower the ticket cost, allowing more people to enjoy the conference.
The Arbor team, Ricki Heicklen, Brian Smiley, and Metagame project lead Brendan Hurst. Our track record consists of producing last year's inaugural instance of this same conference.
The most likely cause of failure is a lack of ticket sales caused by insufficient advertising reach. In the most likely case, we have a smaller con and lose money; in the unlikely case that we massively undersell, the conference is cancelled to the disappointment of what is necessarily a small group of people and we lose a lot of money.
No money has been raised yet for Metagame 2026, except for a handful of initial ticket sales. A few conversations have started with prospective sponsors.