Gen Con got a short mention in an Indianapolis Business Journal article about summer conventions and their prospects this year. One of the people quoted had an interesting idea.

Here's the part that talks about Gen Con:

"Gen Con, the city’s largest regular summer convention, draws about 70,000 people downtown each year. Its organizers have not said whether they will modify plans. Representatives for the organization did not respond to repeated requests for comment."

Kimberly Hoffman, president of the Indiana chapter of Meeting Professionals International, said Gen Con could 'get creative' with its activities, by spreading them throughout downtown.

"'I think there’s a really great opportunity for restaurants to become gaming space, and some of the city’s non-traditional venues to absorb a little bit of that traffic' to accommodate social distancing, Hoffman said."

Also if you start mixing in restaurants and such, you introduce alcohol to the mix and alcohol produces anything but social distancing.

The big obstacle I can see is the amount of buy-in required from the restaurants. Indy loves Gen Con, sure, but will the restaurant owners be okay with tabletop games taking up tables that could be used for customers, especially if those gamers aren't ordering anything more than a drink?

I don't think Gen Con will draw anywhere near 70,000 people this year for the simple reason that many people will be afraid of getting sick.  Attendance could easily be down 50%.  That would make social distancing easier, but it would also totally change the economics of the event.

Great point

8 hours of Arkham horror and the table orders two sodas, two iced teas, and 58 waters.

Do you tip 700% to be nice to the establishment and waitstaff?

what about miniature gamers?  Four tables to fight a 3000 point 40 k fight?

I’d hate to be the person that accidentally scoops up someone’s venerable dreadnought and puts it through the dishwasher....   

Spreading it out broadly could help, but it would need to be organized well with an easily accessible (and rapidly updated) online portal.

Say a Restaurant can safely hold a dozen tables of 4-6'ish players. Probably less, maybe some can do more, but let's call it 50'ish people. You'd need hundreds of them lined up to put more than a small dent in even a fraction of the demand for play space. Now imagine game groups wandering from location to location in the July/August Indiana heat. How many would go to a handful of locations before giving up and just hanging wherever they weren't being thrown out of? There are a good number of hotels and restaurants downtown for sure, but players would need to know where there was space to go, and it would need to be updated constantly to reflect people coming and going.

Basically, it'd be a huge amount of infrastructure work to realistically balance the load across the downtown core, rather than just having everything in a couple of blocks swarming with people and things a bit further out empty. If a given stretch of restaurants/hotels could support hundreds of people in well distanced spaces, if thousands of people all show up we've just moved the same problem from the convention center to other venues, which now have the unenviable task of enforcing the rules.

Note, I'm not saying it's impossible. But for it to actually contribute extra space in a safe manner consistent with CDC guidelines, it'd probably need a very robust way to keep everyone in the loop at a glance (and that's for people who do have an internet capable phone and a data plan for the area, before someone jumps on me for not respecting those who rely on non-smartphone technology).

I mean, if travel and tourism are still mostly in the gutter, the hotels might even be eager to play ball and make this happen. But ~2.5 months out isn't much time to build and test a robust enough system to keep people spread out and avoid major bottlenecks.

Also, since most events are book-ended by meals, the restaurants could get creative and try to capture a food order from the table during the hour before or after the game.  That would beat standing in line at a food truck, imo.

What about when your game session is ending and the check is delayed (or paying the check) so the next group is delayed on starting?

Restaurant gaming is good as a side quest, not as the main event.

I don't think Arkham Horror or 40K would be restaurant suitable games. I would like to think maybe some of the conference rooms in the hotels with reduced amount of tables overall in the room would be good for them. Likely have to put 2 hour games there if they even do restaurant games. 

I also imagine attendance will be down this year (assuming it still goes) so space may not be as cramped as it has been in the past. Our group has dropped by 20% already regardless of how things shake out for example. 

https://411mania.com/movies/san-diego-comic-con-hints-online-at-home-edition-2020-convention/

Unlikely what GenCon could or should do, but I hadn't even heard they cancelled it already and it was only scheduled a few weeks before GenCon.

I wonder if these convention organizers are trading notes on what could work, what's been rejected as out of hand, and why they went the route of cancelling already.

About 3 miles from me we have the biggest fair in the Northeast called the Big E in September.  3 weeks, 175k people a day, shoulder to shoulder thru 1000s of vendors, replica state buildings, exhibit halls, farm exhibits (its roots are an agricultural fair), midways, 100s of food trucks/trailers, and they going thru the same pains here and while the owners don't want to cancel (only been cancelled during WWI and WWII) there is an expectation they will cancel pervading the air.  Its impact on the economy is huge from people renting out their lawns as parking to all the hotels in the area.  Currently the fairgrounds are being used as a COVID-19 testing site.

Of course, that also raises the question of if it's even possible for the event to remain profitable on a fraction of attendance. If it needs to run at 60% (hypothetically) to avoid hemorrhaging cash, and they only have 50%, then doing the usual plus all the costs that might be associated with spreading things out broadly could make it a non-starter.

Note, I'm not saying that Gencon needs to open their books or anything, it's certainly none of my business. I'm just trying to note that having a reduced attendance could solve one problem, while creating another. If their business model expects a certain number of attendees, and vastly fewer than that are able to make it (by choice or due to their state/country making it difficult or impossible), we hit another loss condition for Gencon 2020. Just something to mull over that occurred to me.

I took a course on risk management last year, so it kind of comes naturally to weigh out potential vulnerabilities and threat vectors. Financial is one such matter that's behind the scenes but could impact the con all the same.

I get the feeling the idea of doing it over the internet is making the rounds. 

There may be more people that attend Gencon "on the cheap" this year due to less than ideal recreational funds (assuming Gencon is held, even if postponed). 

The fact that we have no event list (and even worse, no update on even WHEN an event list will even be released) is the real teller of the tale...

G
 

The worst case scenario is that the event goes on as planned (talking about GenCon here too) with nothing really changed other than masks, hand sanitizer, room limit counts, etc and go with whatever crowd shows up (say 40,000 comes).   Gaming is on a popular uptake to the casuals playing board games, and a major infection hot spots develops.  GenCon would then get a reputation as unsafe, irresponsible, and get mentioned just like Biogen's conference in Boston as a major outbreak center.  That would not be a good look for gaming as a whole.