funny-shaped dice wrote: laocain wrote:It'd be very interesting to see how much of the available capacity is being devoted to exhibitors, vendors and sponsors.
(For context: My assigned access time was 10:49PM EST. I feel your pain laocain; not trying to be dismissive or flippant)To what end? Regardless, we all know that demand *far* outstrips supply. If it is less desirable for vendors, exhibitors, staff and GMs to put on the con, there won't be a Gen Con. If one demographic (e.g. "loyal attendees") is favored over another when assigning portal access times to attendees, we risk turning off new blood, the con "grays out" and eventually dies.
Complete, blind, randomness for access time is about as fair as it gets. Releasing more rooms from the reserved block is likely to have a very minimal effect on the problem; publishing that data is likely to lead to resentment.
The resentment is there already, simmering under the surface. I wouldn't expect them to release that data for exactly that reason. I was more wondering out loud, as I already am pretty sure of the answer.
Within our local gaming community, we've discussed how to approach this problem. Most of us have given up on the housing block entirely. Some are considering Origins, Pax, or some other con instead. All of us are frustrated.
In specific response to what you said, I would put the game masters, VIGs, vendors, etc in the same lottery pot as everyone else. Make it--as you said--complete, blind randomness.
As a thought exercise, we even considered what city could better house the con, and could not honestly find one. Indy is a great city, and Milwaukee wasn't working. Finding another city to house the con would be an unenviable job, just as likely to turn people off.
Bottom line is that I don't expect it to get better, unless some part of the system drastically changes. Whether it is availability of hotels, moving the "staff" block out of the downtown area, moving to a new city with more capacity. As it stands right now, the effects of the most recent changes are not convincingly positive. Anecdotal evidence of an improved system is not real improvement. If the downtown housing block lasted an hour longer than usual, but they drastically cut the number of people with access times during those few precious hours, then there was no improvement at all. They just made it feel better to those "winners".