Submit your events by March 10

All event details are due by March 10, so there are just under two weeks remaining to confirm your plans for the convention this year. Don't forget this is also the deadline to confirm details if you want to rent space to be able to run demos.

If you have any questions about the event submission process or aren't sure how to enter an exciting event idea you have, just ask in our EO/GM forum or events@gencon.com and we'll help get you squared away.

It is important to get your event in before the deadline - we do continue to accept late events, but those are not guaranteed to be reviewed or placed before event registration opens on May 6 and that can have a huge impact on your final attendance, as that is when lots of attendees lock in their schedules. Anything submitted after the deadline is reviewed if/when we have the time to do so and may not be ready in time for event registration opening.

If you aren't sure what to run (but you know you want to run something), you might want to check out the list of high demand games from 2017. That is always a good place to start.

How late can a person/company submit events?  I see the form is still available.

There was a bit of confusion in the EH policies book, which had both 6 weeks & 30 days before the con as a late submission deadline.  Either way, probably too late now, only 3 weeks out, but if the form is still there, send events@gencon.com a mail and see if they'll still accept it, before you go through the trouble of writing up the full event description.

The submission form remains up through the show, but that's mainly to accommodate last-minute changes or ad-hoc events that are set up onsite that need to be tracked.

We're going through late events, now, but at this point I would only recommend submitting events if:

1. It's for a game that is otherwise sold out.
   
2. You have a way to let players know and organize them, usually as part of a larger gaming group or company.
   

We're close enough to the show that it's impossible to guarantee we'll have the chance to review and place events at all, let alone in time for attendees to find them in the event schedule, so it's only worth it when there's pent up demand and/or an existing infrastructure that can organize players directly.

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Derek Guder
Senior Event & Program Manager
Gen Con LLC

Thanks for the info!

Hi Derek (and all),I was scrolling through the events for Gencon 2019 and noticed there is no tournament for Super Smash Bros 64 which was disappointing, so I decided to try to submit my own event (tournament). I have never done this before and am not affiliated with any special licensed gaming company/group. Are there any rules or concerns that I should be aware of before submitting the event? Am I even allowed as a random person to do so? Is there a FAQ available somewhere or more details available for me to read up on submitting events? Am I too late and wasting my time?  Thanks and super excited for Gencon 2019!

Event Host Policy

Yeah, you'll want to refer to the Event Host Policy, as buffythecatslayer posted.

There aren't any special rules about running an event when you aren't associated with a company or anything, but video games present some very specific challenges for independent events.

For independent board games, for instance, we can just provide a table to play on and the event can operate great. For a video game, it needs a console/computer, TV/monitor, and power, almost all of which are tough to provide to something that isn't stationary and running all weekend.

Honestly, a one-off Smash Brothers tournament may be impossible to accommodate, particularly this close to the show: we can't easily provide a TV for a single event and even if you had your own, there isn't really a convenient place for you to set up and access power.

I suspect you'd be better off thinking about doing something in 2020, seeing if maybe you can work with some friends to get together and try to get enough people to run events across the whole weekend, raising enough money to pay for power and whatever equipment rental you might need. That's easier to accommodate, ultimately.

If you have other questions, just shoot us an email to events@gencon.com. For 2020, it's best to start that conversation in September.

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Derek Guder
Senior Event & Program Manager
Gen Con LLC

What, you can’t just fire up a portable generator in the middle of the ICC?  Such restrictive policies....