GenCon coming to Las Vegas...NOT
March 26th, 2015 at 7:08:50 AM
permalink
The GenCon organization, which runs what is now the largest gaming (not gambling, but board games, role-playing games, etc.) convention in North America, held every summer in Indianapolis, released a statement saying that it will consider leaving Indianapolis if Indiana's governor signs the "religious freedom" bill passed by the state legislature. The fact that the bill may not do what the doomsayers claim it will do (e.g. make it legal for any business to deny service to homosexuals, which would be about as legal as denying services to blacks under the claim that "black people bear the 'mark of Cain' ") notwithstanding, there has been talk about GenCon moving out of Indianapolis for years as the attendance has far outgrown the capacity of the hotels anywhere near the convention center. (In fact, this was what caused GenCon to move to Indianapolis from Milwaukee in 2003.) Almost needless to say, when "convention center" and "lots of hotel rooms" are put together, one of the first cities to be named is Las Vegas.
However, there are (at least) three major problems that will almost certainly prevent Vegas from being overrun by, depending on how you look at it, game players, or "a bunch of idiots in fantasy costumes who probably think Harry Potter/Star Wars/The Lord of the Rings were/are real".
First of all, the vast majority of these people live in, or near, the New York / DC corridor. GenCon has tried conventions out west, but they were shadows of the eastern ones. Another national gaming convention (which concentrates on boardgaming more than role-playing, while GenCon is the opposite), Origins, has been in Columbus since 1996, after 20 years of moving around the country. The last place anybody wants to hold either of these conventions is anywhere in the Pacific time zone.
Second, the numbers would overwhelm the bus system. You thought it was bad trying to get a Deuce/SDX bus on the Strip in the afternoon or evening now?
Third, a significant number of attendees are under 21. Now, let them loose on the Strip on a Friday or Saturday night, and hope that the clubs can spot all of the fake IDs. Oops - one slipped through, and whoever had it got drunk, or worse, drugged and raped. That hotel is going to have to sell a lot of $50,000 bottles of Cristal in its clubs to pay for that lawsuit.
Side note: here's how bad the hotel situation in Indianapolis is. First of all, the affordable (i.e. $200/night or less) rooms in all of the hotels within anything resembling walking distance from the convention center are bought by GenCon in advance, and made available to attendees through an online reservation system. In 2014, it worked like this: at an announced date and time, the portal was opened, and you just had to keep refreshing the page until the server made a connection or the rooms ran out. There were so many complaints about this "lottery system" that it was changed in 2015; now, you had to have a convention attendee badge (cost: $80) just to be able to access the portal, and when you logged in for the first time, you were assigned a random time of day; the latest I heard was about 4 hours after the portal opened. If you didn't get a time that was within 90 minutes of the opening, you would discover that all of the "walking distance" rooms had been booked. There is a shuttle bus service that serves the outlying hotels (which are something like 10-15 miles away), but the 2014 service had problems - mainly, they ran once an hour, and if your hotel wasn't at the beginning of the route, you got a lot of, "Sorry, this bus is already full - wait for the next one (an hour later) Sorry, this bus is already full - wait for the next one (another hour later) Sorry, this bus is already full - wait for the next one (finally, in desparation, grab a taxi) That'll be $25") - and the 2015 system will require reservations in advance, which is a problem if you're in an event that has a second round depending on how well you do in the first round, so you don't know your schedule in advance, not to mention that it's $6 per trip. On top of that, if you are running an event, you can't keep your event materials in your hotel room until just before the event begins, then bring them back after it ends, but you end up carrying them with you all day.
However, there are (at least) three major problems that will almost certainly prevent Vegas from being overrun by, depending on how you look at it, game players, or "a bunch of idiots in fantasy costumes who probably think Harry Potter/Star Wars/The Lord of the Rings were/are real".
First of all, the vast majority of these people live in, or near, the New York / DC corridor. GenCon has tried conventions out west, but they were shadows of the eastern ones. Another national gaming convention (which concentrates on boardgaming more than role-playing, while GenCon is the opposite), Origins, has been in Columbus since 1996, after 20 years of moving around the country. The last place anybody wants to hold either of these conventions is anywhere in the Pacific time zone.
Second, the numbers would overwhelm the bus system. You thought it was bad trying to get a Deuce/SDX bus on the Strip in the afternoon or evening now?
Third, a significant number of attendees are under 21. Now, let them loose on the Strip on a Friday or Saturday night, and hope that the clubs can spot all of the fake IDs. Oops - one slipped through, and whoever had it got drunk, or worse, drugged and raped. That hotel is going to have to sell a lot of $50,000 bottles of Cristal in its clubs to pay for that lawsuit.
Side note: here's how bad the hotel situation in Indianapolis is. First of all, the affordable (i.e. $200/night or less) rooms in all of the hotels within anything resembling walking distance from the convention center are bought by GenCon in advance, and made available to attendees through an online reservation system. In 2014, it worked like this: at an announced date and time, the portal was opened, and you just had to keep refreshing the page until the server made a connection or the rooms ran out. There were so many complaints about this "lottery system" that it was changed in 2015; now, you had to have a convention attendee badge (cost: $80) just to be able to access the portal, and when you logged in for the first time, you were assigned a random time of day; the latest I heard was about 4 hours after the portal opened. If you didn't get a time that was within 90 minutes of the opening, you would discover that all of the "walking distance" rooms had been booked. There is a shuttle bus service that serves the outlying hotels (which are something like 10-15 miles away), but the 2014 service had problems - mainly, they ran once an hour, and if your hotel wasn't at the beginning of the route, you got a lot of, "Sorry, this bus is already full - wait for the next one (an hour later) Sorry, this bus is already full - wait for the next one (another hour later) Sorry, this bus is already full - wait for the next one (finally, in desparation, grab a taxi) That'll be $25") - and the 2015 system will require reservations in advance, which is a problem if you're in an event that has a second round depending on how well you do in the first round, so you don't know your schedule in advance, not to mention that it's $6 per trip. On top of that, if you are running an event, you can't keep your event materials in your hotel room until just before the event begins, then bring them back after it ends, but you end up carrying them with you all day.
March 26th, 2015 at 7:21:17 AM
permalink
What I would like to know is how big actually is this thing. I lived in Milwaukee from 1997-2005 and I never once heard of this thing and Milwaukee is a town that if something big is in town, people hear about it. It's not a place like Chicago where there are 20 other events being held every weekend
A flute with no holes is not a flute, a donut with no holes is a danish
March 26th, 2015 at 7:25:20 AM
permalink
Around 50,000 attendees.
I dont recall when it left Milwaukee. I suspect it was smaller back then.
Never attended... or anything like it.
I dont recall when it left Milwaukee. I suspect it was smaller back then.
Never attended... or anything like it.
"Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither eaten, slept, thought nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup at trente-et-quarante" - Honore de Balzac, 1829
March 26th, 2015 at 7:44:41 AM
permalink
Quote: Gabes22What I would like to know is how big actually is this thing. I lived in Milwaukee from 1997-2005 and I never once heard of this thing and Milwaukee is a town that if something big is in town, people hear about it. It's not a place like Chicago where there are 20 other events being held every weekend
It usually got 20-25 thousand in Milwaukee, although it got as high as 30,000 in 1995. The big jump seems to be in recent years; from 2010 to 2014, the estimated attendance was 30,000, 36,500, 41,000, 49,000, and 56,500. One reason for the jump is, Origins moved from late June to mid/early June (2015 is the weekend after Memorial Day; 2016 and 2017 will be on Father's Day weekend), and a lot of people couldn't attend it any more for various reasons ("I'm/my kids are still in school" seems to lead the list), so they switched to GenCon. Ironically, the overcrowding situation has more and more people saying they will ditch GenCon for Origins next year.
