Yeah I know there are surely real logistical reasons behind capping attendance at some of these, ironically, more "popular" (in the sense of people knowing about them) conventions, but to me it just indicates they are either using the wrong spaces or not charging enough or something.  It would be soul-crushing if Gen-Con could sell out in that sense.

SDCC, and similar cons, cap attendance due to pesky issues like "fire code" which prevent them from expanding. 

GenCon is fortunate to have such a HUGE amount of space available in Indy that it doesn't need to cap attendance.

There is no other city in existence right now which has as many advantages of Indy, including hotel space.

Moving out of Indy would drop attendance down and negate the purpose of needing extra space, plain and simple.

The last time I went to Gencon, in 2004, I remember I booked the hotel in, like, November 2003.  I guess I was that paranoid about getting a room.  It was downtown, although I can't remember where.  It was close enough that I could walk most of the way there just via the skyways.

This year, I got my lodging way back in the 2nd week of October.  That was the apartment I leased 7 miles from the convention center after relocating to Indianapolis :P

I don't really understand what the problem is.  Why go through Gencon's housing portal?  If you're attending, just use the numerous travel sites out there.  It's probably too late by now, since anything downtown is going to be super expensive.  But like I said, you can reserve hotel rooms WAY in advance.

A proper shuttle service to/from hotels outside of downtown would ease this. 

The demand for rooms being higher than the number of rooms available isn't a result of any system they put in place. People who have always gotten rooms downtown including the past three years were just lucky. The convention doubled in attendance between 2010 and 2015.

San Diego Comic Con has a 24 hour shuttle running to all their hotels including the ones fairly far out. I wonder who organizes that and how it's paid for.

You only had the same odds this year as you did last year if every single person with a badge logged in when housing went live.

Every. Single. Badge. Holder.

Clearly everyone did not log in, and if they did log in they wanted to do so immediately when housing went live to minimize their chances of losing a room to someone who had a later log in time than they did (on the off chance that they had an early log in time)

This means that people who did go through the housing rush absolutely had a significantly better chance of getting a room downtown last year compared to this year. There is no disputing this. You were competing against a smaller pool of people last year- Gen Con could have actually LOST attendees this year and you still would have better odds last year.

This year if you had a time after 1:30-2:00 you was out of luck. Last year you may have had a 4:00 time and had a good shot of still getting a room downtown. If I remember right my time was 4:30ish last year and I stayed downtown...we actually had a choice between three different hotels!

I get that people think that participation trophies are fair. I get that people say it was too much for the servers- to which I say they should be upgraded every year anyways and the mad rush for event registration this year went off relatively well. But anyone who has been doing the housing lottery for the past few years who missed out on staying downtown this year should be clamoring for housing to go back to the way it used to be.

Regardless of if EVERYONE logged in the servers were still crashing.  So that's a bit of a moot point.

I learned pretty early on that if you had to have a downtown hotel you didn't use the housing block. It's just a no-brainer.  I wasn't using the housing block back in the Milwaukee days.  You had to be a bit sneaky about it if you go far enough back (the hotel would refer you to the housing block if they discovered you were going to Gen Con and calling them privately), so I'd always have a cover story.

For everyone complaining... there's no more 'fair' process than a lottery and if you HAVE TO HAVE a downtown hotel then you shouldn't be using the housing block.

I honestly  don't even understand why the hotels even bother giving rooms to Gen Con.  They KNOW they are going to sell out.  I applaud Gen Con for even continuing to make the effort.

Ya know when I make my hotel reservations?  51 weeks in advance.  Either it's worth it to you or it's not.

I really don't see the benefit.  The hotels WILL sell out, so there's no need for them to negotiate.  You really don't get much of a discount  Gen Con has to deal with the process and catches the flak every year from unhappy people.  Again, I applaud them for their efforts, but unless there's something I'm missing I'd be seriously tempted to wash my hands of it if I were them.

Everyone complaining about missing out on housing this year that would have gotten it this year under the old system, would be replaced by complaints from people who didn't. You haven't actually solved the real problem: There are more people who want downtown housing than there is downtown housing available.

They have more incentive to stabilize their servers than they do to arbitrarily give some people an advantage at getting housing. They really have no incentive to do the latter.