"Stay on target. News about other events is not Gen Con specific. Other conventions sure. Save your at large discussion of other events for your social media channels."

Mike Boozer
Customer Service & Event Team Manager 
Gen Con LLC

In over three decades I have missed GenCon once.  The first year it moved to Indianapolis.  For about a decade my buddy and I have split a VIG package every year.  (Mostly for the hotel room, but we definitely enjoyed the other perks.)

This year, there is no question that given how callous and irresponsible it would be to willingly become a link in the chain of disease that is so very dangerous I will not be attending GenCon. 

The only thing I am left pondering is whether GenCon will drive me away forever by encouraging thousands of others to engage in an activity I view as deeply immoral.

I believe it was mentioned before but I couldn't find it. In the event that the convention is cancelled will our hotel reservation be rolled over to 2021? I understand that the badges would be.

Edit: it also might be nice to have a faq that has current status, what would happen in the event of a cancellation and what would happen if it isn't cancelled

If Gen Con goes off, I will be there. I'll take pretty much whatever precautions that they ask of me; I'm a high product touch "essential worker" at an eCommerce company (not that one, but close. Think furniture.) so pretty much anything they can throw at me is my day to day. Limited entrance, daily temp check before I can enter my building with wrist band for proof of compliance, mandatory masks, maintain 6 feet from coworkers pretty much at all time.

I know my opinion won't sway things one way or the other, but I kinda need something to make all the work I'm currently doing to feel worthwhile. Otherwise, what's the point of it all? 

Does anyone know how many companies have cancelled events and/or dropped out of GenCon already?

To me there are a few things that if they are a policy deemed as necessary the Con should not consider going on.

-Social distancing, Even with far less attendees social distancing and board gaming do not go together. Board games are a social event. distancing yourself 6 ft from every other human would be impossible.
- Restrictions on the number of people in the event hall. This needs to be open to come and go as everyone with a badge pleases. Even though i suspect new games to be rare even if the Con happens you cannot create another "Lottery" system for times to enter the con.
- Mask requirement. You simply cannot created an environment where 50k people walk around in covered up, this is simply asking for WAY to much trouble.
- Cash not usable as a currency. 

These four are probably the largest game breakers for me. dont know if any one else has others they may add.

easy solution.  Summon Great Cthulhu.  Every round he snatches 2d4 convention attendees in combat and devours them.  

small problem when combat ends.  But on average that’s 5 attendees per round so let’s say 13,000 rounds of combat.  So you have about 21 hours for combat to resolve & get clear of the ICC / Earth...

Glancing at the tracked list of convention cancellations/postponements, it seems that things are almost entirely closed or put off until about 8 weeks out. This by no means is indicative of what Gencon may have as a final "go/no-go" call date for an event that massive, but in aggregate I would at least use that to manage my expectations.

Basically, it won't surprise me if getting to late May/early June is when we start seeing a pile of July events/conventions have to start making that call. Some are doing it much further out, but those holding on (because of optimism or contractual necessity or whatever) are performing a very tough juggling act of doing what is right for the community versus the demands of the city/state and their contracts with vendors, to what will let them survive to 2021 and beyond (financially and otherwise).

The ICC listed some rules/expectations for events, and glancing at their listings coming up, all but 3 of their events in June have been cancelled, and the July ones haven't been officially shut down.

I don't think it's more about companies/people waiting to see where the state of the State is in June than anything.

gen con is still more than 2 months away. In florida we are at 50% restaurant occupation, gyms are open, so are the beaches.  All the roads and expressways are full, yet our cases are still dropping, the hospital beds are more than plentiful.  we all practice 6 foot distances, wash hands often,
and basically are carrying on with our livelihoods.  where will we be in 2 months? who knows but we have very little virus in the heat of florida.
High in the mid 80's everyday. 
So let us wait and see where indianapolis is by July 1. That is 6 weeks away. A lot happens in 6 weeks in the fight against the virus. I would not be surprised if some of these cons realize too late that 
they should have not cancelled so far ahead of time.  I go to gencon for the vendor hall. Hope it works out to have it.

Again. Lagging indicators.

We'll find out in a week or two how successfully states that have relaxed their restrictions are handling things. It was unlikely to be a "restrictions relaxed, 24 hours later there was a 4,000% spike in cases and triple the usual death toll" situation.

Also, comparing non-adjacent states isn't necessarily going to mean much. Florida might have things well in hand. As I noted recently, Indiana's numbers have been basically holding steady for a good month or so, with the (densely populated) county where the ICC is representing 30% of cases despite only having 10-15% of the state's people in it. The adjacent counties add something like another 50% to those stats.

And as has been brought up, the problem is that many people might well pay increasingly substantial penalties for attempts to change or cancel travel bookings. The current hotel registration setup shifts from a $50 fee to 'one night' as of June 8th, as has been discussed. Especially for some of those downtown rooms, that's a substantial bump.

It's the push/pull of things. Vendors and attending companies are going to want to know the likely attendance to quantify the risk/reward potential. Attendees want to know who is showing up to make the same calculus. Gencon seems to be held waiting to see what the city/state are doing, and they (the state/city officials) seem to be content to wait it out. Which is nice for those who still wish to see the convention happen, but also draws out the process of something many view as inevitable.

Hypothetically, IF this does have to cancel, the distinction between them doing it in early June versus early July could be massive, not just in costs to potential attendees, but to vendors trying to shuffle their bookings around, local businesses abruptly having the rug pulled out from under them as they struggled to try to work out how they might safely cover attendees, etc. Edit: not to mention the risk of potential impact to reputation. Fair or not, people will react not just to actions taken/not taken, but the time line in which they were taken.

An event of this size has thousands of moving parts. "Let's just sort it out a couple of weeks beforehand" is not going to see things smoothly come to a halt if necessary. 4 weeks from showtime might seem like a lot, but it's a lot more than just having to figure out what to do with the hotel portal and some people needing to contact their airline of choice.

I just want to know if they will update us before the June 14th deadline for cancelling tickets.  One would think that would be necessary.