I've been going for about 20 years. This would be the first GenCon I've ever missed and it was a hard decision, but they need to cancel, and soon. Ultimately they will appreciate the amount of time and energy, and money saved by cancelling now and starting the refund/reimbursement process. Even if they run it, they're going to lose a lot of attendees anyway. It's just a sad truth. This is the perfect place to refuel a pandemic.
You're talking tens of millions if Gencon just cancels. So no, your not talking about "Money Saved" by canceling. You're talking about the risk of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.
Some good news. The bed usage in the Indiana hospitals for Covid has not increased in over a month. It still hovers around 17% used.
The percentage of people over the last two weeks testing positive has gone down. Granted it isn't perfect, but it has gone down.
Yesterday as really good in that 6667 patients were tested and only 511 tested positive. That is a record day for testing and the numbers didn't grow much at all.
Now for the last statistic, and I don't want to downplay anyone who dies as it is very serious; the death rate for people under 50 is around 3%. I don't know the physical condition of those people that were in that 3%, but I can assume that a percentage of them had some pre-existing condition and a note that this demographic of <50 makes up around 60% of all those tested and confirmed. Again I don't want to downplay anyone who dies, but I just want to put it out there that those under 50, which is not me by the way, appear to recover quite well according to the statistics. Now all this needs to factor in that Indiana just started to open up last week, so we will need to look for any changes to this data over the next couple of weeks, but in my opinion this looks promising.
So here's my issue/question. We've repeatedly been told the official answer is nothing has changed, the con will indeed happen. What we haven't been told are any of the social distancing steps that will be in place for the con. Last year I came home with a light case of con crud, and to be fair I didn't go to many events. I mostly sat at a single table in the hall playing Battletech in the grinder event they run. Yes, I walked the dealers hall some and played a demo of a game I hadn't seen before, even stood in the packed line to get in two days in a row but my interactions with the crowd were honestly fairly minimal. If I could catch con crud from that I certainly can't imagine they can hold the con the exact same way with no changes with something more infectious than con crud.
I have 3 weeks left to cancel my rented house for the weekend of the con and a complete lack of social distancing guidelines makes me nervous and far more likely to cancel altogether. Not out of fear of the Covid or anything like that but simply out of unease with the fact the staff seem unable to provide even a statement that social distancing plans are underway and once they are finished more information will follow. All it takes for this to blow up is either they do nothing at all and people get sick or enough sponsors and companies decide to pull out because of either a resurgence in the virus or simply the same lack of faith in the GenCon staff that I'm feeling and is discussed in this thread. A good faith "we're working on something" would go a long way to preventing at least one of those reasons for a full cancellation.
I was doing a little Google'ing on the topic of COVID in Indianapolis, and don't believe I've seen this shared here previously;
https://www.icclos.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Mitigation-Plan.pdf
The Convention Center's current (and obviously subject to change) COVID plan. The Event section talks about a highly limited capacity restriction based on an expectation of physical distancing.
Makes for some interesting reading, or at least it was for me. It'll be fascinating to see how it shifts, should the state and city successfully cross the benchmarks that allow for transitioning to further steps on the recovery plan in the weeks to come.
Force Majuro sound like the name of a cartoon character from the mid-80’s...or a terrible rock band from the same time period.
That being said, I’m still trying to picture how a single gaming table set up would have to work. Say you have to social distance at the 6ft. measurement (which it looks like ICC policy dictates currently). So, for a 6-player, 1 GM game of Star Frontiers or some board game or whatever, how does that happen, exactly? I facetiously posted a few days ago about players sitting along the walls of a room yelling stuff out to the lone GM at the table in a single-table room, but wouldn’t that kind of actually be how the logistics would need to play out to ‘meet guidelines’? Would that be fun? I mean, I would find it fun in it’s own absurd way, but I’m sure even the novelty of that would wear out before too long.
How about miniatures games? Do players use pusher sticks like some kind of WW2 movie war strategy session? Again, kind of fun in a ridiculous way, but you’d be covering a lot of floor space for every game.
I have no doubt that the Indiana Convention Center and various hotels would let them out of their contracts regardless of the current state of opening by the Governor's Office. Why? Its bad for business otherwise. While gaming is still a niche, a LOT of celebrities have been forthcoming in the last few years on their love of gaming and D&D and such and the negative backlash from social media would be amazing.
This even happened in wrestling (another niche) when WrestleCon had to cancel in Florida for WrestleMania weekend in April and the backlash from fans, social media, celebrities was such that the hotel refunded everything.
https://411mania.com/wrestling/chris-jericho-wrestlers-show-support-wrestlecon-cancellation/
If that can happen in wrestling, the gaming community backlash would be intense. Again, Indiana and Indianapolis would like to keep the gravy train that is GenCon for years to come. So I have no doubt in my mind they would do the right thing.
Which means that they are not just letting them out of their contract.
At this point badge refunds are done until June 14 as per our polices. Hotel June 8th.
You can also refund you badge to system credit without a return fee. It is non-transferable or refundable but can be use at anytime in the future to purchase either badges or event tickets.
I encourage you all to wait. You have plenty of time to make these decisions still.
Mike
We have an email from your address on record from 2015 but no others. Not in our spam folders either. Please resend!
I'll be looking for it personally.
That being said, Force Majeuere sounds like a combat sport maneuver.
Today's numbers in Indiana continues the good news.
566 people tested positive out of 4697. Continues the good trend. ICU bed usage continues to be exactly the same for a month of 17.3% So even though a lot of people are being tested positive fewer are requiring ICU. Deaths of people below 50 years old is still under 3%. People 50-60 remains at 5.8% again.
Also per MSM, it appears that you can't get the virus multiple times. This is perhaps the best news of all.
Another very good day for the numbers.
Please check out this case study from an office building in Korea: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1274_article One infected person without major symptoms infected 94 coworkers in one week. Gencon is much more crowded and fluid in movement of people than an office building, and given the incubation period people infected on Tues-Wed will likely be shedding virus by the weekend. I don't see any reasonable way for Gencon to lower the risk of a major outbreak to an acceptable level.
It sucks, but this is the first year I am not going in about a dozen straight.
One of the things that my gaming group were discussing the other evening that I don't really recall seeing discussed here in too much depth is how will a possibly lowered con attendance effect the basic requirement of volunteers? We had seen the news regarding Nascrag pulling out of the events back a few weeks ago when it first happened, but we personally didn't really think too much about it because we've never participated in those events so we don't really know the numbers. But we did see in the post it was because a large portion of their volunteers had already said they weren't going or were uncomfortable going. And then someone in our group went 'guys... how many volunteers do they need to effectively run True Dungeon?' which are events we do participate in, so now we had a base line to compare and think about.
I don't figure that Nascrag is an isolated incident, there are plenty of areas and events throughout the entire con that require volunteers to stay running, and if even half those volunteers have already backed out or said no way then things get even more complicated (one of our group posited the thought that was the main reason the event registration has been pushed back was because people have been left in a scramble and the events just aren't coming together like in years past). We can talk social distancing and sanitation until the cows come home, but without the people to help run the show the ship kinda grinds to a halt. Especially a convention that is known for going twenty four hours a day for four days. The first logical thought is that instead of volunteers you move in to the realm of paid temporary employees but then you instantly think about how many people that would require and that Gencon is probably going to be hurting in some financial this year to start with and it just isn’t feasible.
I wonder how long the will call line would be if everyone had to stand 6 feet from the next person.