Gen Con By The Numbers

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While flying home from Gen Con on Monday, the convention released its attendance numbers for the Best Four Days In Gaming. If you were there at the convention, you knew there were a lot of people there. The place was busy, there were big crowds lining up at the door each day to get in when the exhibitor's hall would open up, and sales are off the charts. Paizo sold through their run of Starfinder on the first day (by 2pm I have heard). Green Ronin sold through their daily allotment of the D&D 5E setting books made in conjunction with Geek And Sundry's Critical Role channel every day. By Saturday, Modiphius had sold through their copies of ENnies Award winning game Tales From The Loop. Everyone that I spoke with had great sales throughout the weekend, although a few did suffer from being in the hinterlands of a much larger than before exhibition hall.

The layout of the exhibition hall was different this year. The walking areas between booths was wider, but not overly wide as I have seen at some comic conventions of late, which meant that there was a better flow of traffic over the dealer room floor. According to Gen Con there were 500 exhibitors in the hall, and while a few (like dicemakers Gamescience and Chessex) had multiple booths, I don't know if those counted as one exhibitor or if they counted by booth space sold. Studio 2 had an enormous, and always busy, area shared with a number of the publishers that they work with. IGDN (the Indie Game Developers Network) had a good sized cooperative booth that serviced a number of indie game publishers.

Over the course of the four days Gen Con had 19,000 ticketed events, which includes games, panels and seminars. There were also a number of unticketed events like the Gen Con Museum and the Games Library, both out on the floor of Lucas Oil stadium. Lucas Oil was also the home to the games being run and sponsored by ConTessa. ConTessa also ran a number of seminars and panels, I got to be on a couple of them (which helped lead to my loss of voice).

The official overall numbers, from the Gen Con press release, "Gen Con celebrated its 50th convention with its ninth consecutive year of record turnstile attendance, reaching 207,979, an approximate 4% increase over 2016. The convention also sold out of all attendee badges prior to the show for the first time in its 50-year history. For the third consecutive year, Gen Con targeted an approximate attendance of 60,000 unique attendees."

Regardless of how you look at it, or what sort of gaming you enjoy, Gen Con was a huge event and a huge success for everyone involved.

 

[Mistwell]

Hotel space isn't an issue in Indy. See, they host this really big, really famous, race each year that draws way more people than GC. And they all fit for a few days.... So if you can't get a room? It's because you weren't looking/were unwilling to stay somewhere other than within walking distance.

The city of Indianapolis, and the convention center, and GenCon, all admit hotel space is an issue. You're in denial if you think it's not. It's a major issue. They've been struggling with shuttles, which they had to cancel, which has been a controversy for years.

Nor is the Con confined within the walls of just the Convention center (& hasn't been since they moved to Indy). Events are spread between the ICC, at least 4 hotels with all their meeting spaces on multiple floors, the Union Station center, & now the football stadium.

That has zero to do with what I am talking about. The Convention Center is only permitted, by law, a maximum 60K people. That's it. That's why they only sell that many tickets, and that's why they report every year now their unique visitor number is 60K. It's a ceiling number - beyond that, and they lose their license and the fire department shuts them down. No matter how much space they acquire, the regulations limit them to 60K visitors. Period.

If they plan to keep using the football stadium they'll have to make sure not to overlap with a Colts pre-season game though. (wich'll be too bad as sometimes I get a Colts game along with my D&D)

I'm positive there were more than 60k people there this year. But we were never tripping over each other, not even on Sat in the dealers hall.

Then you are positive the convention is lying and breaking the law.

They're not though, because you're wrong. They reported the correct number like they always do - 60K. They sold out of tickets - it's not like they printed more tickets than their capacity allows. Are you claiming some mass forged tickets or something? That's the only way you get more than 60K unique visitors.

Cost? Don't know anything about that. But space wise GC is fine.

Nobody mentioned convention space. I mentioned max visitors of 60K and hotel space. Their costs go up every year. For example, you mentioned they expanded to the stadium which costs them more - but they still only had 60K paying visitors because that's still the number they are allowed. Which means they made less money per visitor. Their costs go up, their revenue is flat, this is a losing proposition. They will either need to increase the ticket cost, or split the convention into two conventions, or move. There isn't really another option I can think of other than those three. You cannot grow a convention without raising prices and without growing visitor numbers. Something has to give in that scenario.

 

[coz]

Um, if they're limited to 60k people why did they report a unique attendance two years ago of 65k? What about when the NRA had their con in the ICC that had greater than 80k unique attendees? There were definitely more people there this year than last year and they reported 61k unique attendance for 2016. It was literally impossible to cross the ICC from the gaming rooms across from the dealer's hall to get to the smoking area at the front of the building on Saturday, and let's not even talk about the mens room situation - there are often lines in the mens room at GenCon, but nowhere near as bad as they were this year especially on Saturday.
I believe they may have capped 4-day badges at 60-70k, but likely sold 5k single day badges each day on top of that. Not to mention, that if there really was a hard cap of only 60k allowed by law you would not have seen basically every publisher looking for GMs in trade for a 4-day badge even as late as early last week.

 

[AriochQ]

Do you have a source for the 60k max number? I know there are occupancy limits set by fire codes, but I would think when they spread the convention out and add square footage (e.g. Lucas Oil Stadium) that it would also increase the occupancy limit.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

So how far in advance should one start looking for hotels? I need to talk to my gaming group but doubtful any of them will go, Cheap bastards.

 

[AriochQ]

So how far in advance should one start looking for hotels? I need to talk to my gaming group but doubtful any of them will go, Cheap bastards.

You can reserve outside of the housing block starting about now, but the downtown rooms are fairly pricey. The housing block gets you a better rate, but you are not guaranteed your first (or second, or third, etc...) choice.

Some people make a refundable reservation outside the housing portal then cancel it if they get better during the housing lottery.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Anyone who has been to GaryCon and GenCon give me pros and CONS of each.

Pros and Cons...I should go into stand up.

 

[AriochQ]

Anyone who has been to GaryCon and GenCon give me pros and CONS of each.

Pros and Cons...I should go into stand up.

I went to Gary Con last year for the first time, I have been to Gen Con multiple times. Gary Con has a small con feel and is much more of a "gamer's convention". Gen Con is a great time, but it has become so much more than gaming.

My family enjoys Gen Con since my daughter does cosplay and my non-gamer wife can always find something of interest and enjoys shopping the exhibit hall. My son and I can play any number of games and there is unique stuff going on like the auction or this years Horticultural Hall exhibit. Basically, Gen Con has a TON of stuff to do. On the downside, it isn't cheap.

Gary Con is slightly more reasonable when it comes to badges and lodging. Tickets seem not to matter much. Events are free but a ticket guarantees you a spot if you arrive on time. It is easy to walk up to a table and find an empty spot. I played a game of Dawn Patrol last year. One of my fellow players was Skip Williams (co-creator of 3rd edition) and halfway through the game Mike Carr (the creator of Dawn Patrol) stopped by to see how things were going. Both were very laid back and approachable.

If I could only pick one, I would be hard pressed to make a choice. I enjoy the spectacle that is Gen Con, but I also enjoy the old-school convention feel of Gary Con.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Cool. It seemed like GenCon is a lot of spectacle. But as long as that doesn't start to push out the gaming its cool.

 

[Lanefan]

Does anyone think they will move again? THey probably have a list of criteria that determines that , ie distance from airport, number of hotel beds in an X number of blocks around the location.

That's been discussed to death over the years, particularly on GenCon's own forums, and the general conclusion always comes down to that while there's a few other cities* that could handle it - particularly hotel-wise - none are as accessible and-or central as Indy, which is within a long day's drive (or a short-haul flight) of an awful lot of people.

* - Las Vegas and Orlando are the most frequent suggestions that come up.

They're contractually locked into Indy through at least 2020. After that? I'd say it's highly unlikely that it goes anywhere else.

1) Register for your badge & at least some games on-line & have your stuff mailed to you. This'll avoid standing in the Will-Call or Registration line altogether. Order about 10 generic tkts on top of everything else.

Note this only works if you live in the USA. They won't mail tickets outside the USA so if you're coming from anywhere else you have no choice but to go through Will-Call. That said, even though the Will-Call line looks dauntingly long when you get to it at 2 p.m. Wednesday afternoon it's really efficient, and you'll usually blast through in 15 minutes. And then there's...

If you do end up selecting Will-Call to pick your badges/tkts up on site? Arrive on Wed if possible. The later in the day, the longer the line. (we walked into the Convention Center @ 2:30ish Wed & had a massive 6 minute wait).

...this, where it sounds like it was even better this year.

But yes, can't emphasize enough the idea of arriving on Wednesday...or even Tuesday if you can swing it. Also, put off leaving until the Monday if you can; particularly if you're driving you'll want that good night's sleep on Sunday night.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Um, if they're limited to 60k people why did they report a unique attendance two years ago of 65k?

That's easy: if you only go on Thursday and I only go on Saturday we add up to two unique attendees.

So, they could in theory report 240K unique attendees if they sold 60K one-day badges each day and no individual went for more than one day. But there'd still only be 60K active badges for any given time, to suit the ICC limit (which I also have to question; not that the limit exists, but that it ignores all the supplemental spaces nearby).