Gen Con By The Numbers

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.


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.
 

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JediSoth

Voice Over Artist & Author
Attendance will probably be down a bit next year... and there will be hundreds of posts screaming about how the convention is dying (and the industry, too).
 


soulcatcher78

First Post
I was surprised to see Paizo sell through their Starfinder stock during the show. The pop up store experiment they ran by the Sagamore Ballroom helped them by having 2 areas (one right by the game space) to sell from. One of the GMs I spoke to said that they were surprised by the rate of sales (expecting to spread it out over the weekend) and I never even got to check out their pop up store (it was broken down by Friday morning I believe when I passed the area it was in).

I will likely be skipping next year to go to smaller cons but this one was fantastic all around and I can't wait to get to my next convention.
 



Lanefan

Victoria Rules
So is this so big that you spend a lot of time just in line?
Depends what you're trying to do.

For popular game demos or steal-of-a-deal sales yes, you'll spend time in line. To get into any of the eat/drink venues near the ICC yes, you'll spend time in line. If you're "flying standby" at an event hoping a ticketed person no-shows then yes, you'll wait around a while. But for a great many things (far too many to count, and obviously including your pre-booked events) you don't need to spend time in line at all if you don't want to.
 

Flexor the Mighty!

18/100 Strength!
Depends what you're trying to do.

For popular game demos or steal-of-a-deal sales yes, you'll spend time in line. To get into any of the eat/drink venues near the ICC yes, you'll spend time in line. If you're "flying standby" at an event hoping a ticketed person no-shows then yes, you'll wait around a while. But for a great many things (far too many to count, and obviously including your pre-booked events) you don't need to spend time in line at all if you don't want to.


Thanks. Going to do a gaming con next year and thinking of this, but part of me thinks this may be too much spectacle and GaryCon could be better. Plus probably a better chance of some 1e tourney gaming at GaryCon. But GenCon is to gaming what Wacken Open Air is to heavy metal festivals and I feel I must make my pilgrimage once.

On a related note, does tournament style D&D gaming even happen anymore or is it all AL stuff? I need to check an event list if they still have it for this past con and see what all was going on.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Thanks. Going to do a gaming con next year and thinking of this, but part of me thinks this may be too much spectacle and GaryCon could be better. Plus probably a better chance of some 1e tourney gaming at GaryCon. But GenCon is to gaming what Wacken Open Air is to heavy metal festivals and I feel I must make my pilgrimage once.
I've been 6 times but didn't make it this year. Still hoping to make it to GaryCon one of these years.

And I see you're in St. Louis so you've no excuses based on travel distance to Indy! :)

On a related note, does tournament style D&D gaming even happen anymore or is it all AL stuff? I need to check an event list if they still have it for this past con and see what all was going on.
Whether AL or not, D&D games in general* always seem to sell out on the first day of event registration. 1e games are the hardest to book, largely because demand crushes supply by a big margin.

* - except 4e, some years

I'm not sure how much tournament play happens any more, if any.

Lanefan
 

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