"For events with a final cost equal to or greater than $20/2 hours, an additional fee may be applied. The Gen Con base price is effectively increased by an additional 10% of the final event cost in order to cover credit card and processing fees. The final event cost will remain the same; the additional fee you requested will be reduced.

"Example: A 4-hour LARP would normally have a Gen Con base price of $4. If you submit an additional fee of $36, then the final price of the event will be $40. That is equal to a cost of $20 per 2 hours, so instead of getting $36 for each ticketed player you had, you would only get $32: $36 – the $4 admin fee (10% of the final event cost). If the final event cost had been $38, there would not have been a fee."

  A loyalty program that lets old timers have an advantage in the housing lottery would shut out new attendees. Gencon has said in previous versions of this discussion that anything that shuts out new attendees is a total non-starter, and that makes total sense to me. We don't want to shut out the new people. Plus, we are all gamers here, that would be ripe to game the system.

  As for the Vegas suggestion, Vegas is great for professional conferences. This being a recreational convention, there are big differences. None of us have employers paying for us to go. When you attend a vegas conference you don't get a room discount because they are so eager to fill rooms. You get the standard conference rate, based on what business will pay to get people into the conferences where money is made. Business is used to paying full price for hotel rooms. What's more, at a trade show, exhibit space makes big sales, and the companies pay a lot of money to be on that exhibit floor. you like seeing that small vendor in the exhibit hall? Forget about it in Vegas. A lot of small gaming companies would go bust just based on not making back their investment in a gencon booth. Plus, the union guy would have to be called in to plug in the vendors laptop in the morning, and uplug it at night, and there would be a line item on your bill for it.  Vegas has big conferences every week, along with a number of smaller conferences. We would be nothing special. We wouldn't even begin to be the fun unusual thing in town. Not even close.  We can walk around indy in costume because everyone knows about gencon, and most of them are amused or excited to have us. I've been to conventions in cities where that isn't the case. People stop cosplaying after the second person gets beat up in costume. Sharing the monorail with people in town for the 4th annual Uptight Business Seminar won't be much fun either.

In response to the suggestion that we dump the housing lottery and contact the hotels directly. There are conventions that do that. It's aweful. Really aweful. We don't want that. It's just a lot of smaller totally disorganized housing lotteries.

  Everyone tries to get the first hotel that opens it's reservation system. That's a huge disaster, and the hotel is full as quickly as their system can process the load. Then everyone tries to get the second hotel that opens, same result. On down the line for each hotel, with people cancelling previous reservations when they get into a hotel they like better. Some people end up with multiple reservations, some get none. Lots of time to invest. Huge amounts of drama.

Are you trolling?

What do you mean "keep mentioning True Dungeon"?  I mentioned it exactly once in this thread, in direct response to another poster who introduced True Dungeon the topic by saying: "...that kind of rewards program would reward the attendee who buys multiple TD runs over the one who attends free seminars..."

You've misstated how GenCon shares revenue with its event hosts in general (*although see TD specific notes below):

• Your incorrect claim: Any 2 hour event nets GenCon $2, regardless of ticket price.
  
• Correct information: GenCon recieves a minimum of $2 per 2 hour chunk of event time (rounded up to the nearest 2 hours).  For events that charge over $20 per 2 hour block, GenCon collects an additional 10% of the event cost, further...
  
  
  
  • GenCon actually collects all the money up front, and only reimburses the GM/event host for the extra fees collected when a ticket is turned in at the event and then submitted to GenCon for reimbursement:
    
    
    
    • Someone buys an event ticket but doesn't show up?  GenCon keeps the entire event fee
      
    • Exhibitor forgets to collect tickets / loses tickets? GenCon keeps the entire event fee
      
    
    
  
  

As for the rest of your breathless allegations about me - I suggest you try to work on your reading comprehension, as evidently you can't undersand either me, or the GenCon event hosting quide, both of which you have misunderstood.

I never said "all money people spent on years before you attended shouldn't [be considered to help gencon]," or anything like it.

I never said TD attendees deserve any special treatment - I simply acknowleged another poster's point that a loyalty program that factors in money spent on event tickets would tend to benefit customers who spent more on tickets (TD being a salient example).  

I further observed that perhaps that wouldn't be a bad thing, from GenCon's perspective, as customers who spend more on tickets generate more revenue for GenCon than ones who don't.
 

I don't understand why there is such a to do about this, but no, Gen Con does not keep the entire fee when someone turns in generics.  That's wrong, and I don't know why you would think that.  Also, as tickets are fungible, while someone may not use a ticket for your event, it can be used for another event, and Gen Con does not keep the entire amount in that case. 

Anyhow, this is getting heated.  Take it down a thousand please, or move on to something else.

Good point - I removed the offending bullet.

I'm with the guy in that other forum thread...move it to Flint, MI.  Then maybe where you sleep won't seem nearly as important. 

And when I ask people to calm down, and they don't, I just lock the thread.