I know there are mixed reactions to LOS this year but as a game player I thought it was a great place to game. I’ve been following some of the post con chatter and know some people are advocating for all the corporate events to be moved there, but it’s so much nicer than Hall A-E from a noise perspective that I hope the regular events stay there. A few thoughts for next year that unfortunately probably split jurisdictions at Gen Con HQ in Seattle.
1. I saw numerous people turn the corner past meeting room 2, see the giant roll-up door ahead of them and assume they were in the wrong place and turn around. That door needs a big, big arrow sign on it pointing the rest of the way into the stadium.
2. Move the HQ to be the first thing you encounter, then you can put the aisles running straighter in the stadium itself. The diagonal aisle on entering felt a bit odd. Also you need to ask ICC to have a better ramp into the stadium. I suspect that step was hard to navigate in a wheel chair.
3. Follow up on peoples comments about rest rooms, particularly for the mobility impared on the playing level. I suspect some of this was the blue and yellow shirted ICC event staff not knowing what was allowed for Gen Con and defaulting to rules for other events.
4. Put a true open gaming space in the stadium. Sort of the south end version of the JW space. Then if you have an hour or two between LOS events you would have a place to hang out and not feel the need to walk back to the convention center.
5. To respond to some of the concerns about walk-up traffic, put a stage at the far end of LOS. If gencon is taking over the cheese weasel type of program put the drawings out there because people will go anywhere for free stuff :-) It could also host some of the performers ( they could boast that they’ve played Lucas Oil Stadium). And it seems like a lot of the really serious cosplayers have a different character for each day of the convention- so maybe a Thursday and Friday contest on it as well. Some of the live streams could be hosted from it as well.
Had a great time this year. Thanks for all the hard work.
The Blue shirted ICC staff did allow anyone with a Gamemaster badge use the restroom in the SW corner of the field.
The signage to the main field really needs to be improved.
I don't know what was going on in the rooms off the hallway leading to the field, but there were a ton of people in the hallway waiting to get in. It made it difficult to walk through the hallway to get to the main field.
The noise level was a lot better except one event I was playing I couldn't hear the gamemaster at times because the event next to us was using a microphone for a live action survival game.
One thing I will say is that while LOS isn't exile exactly, you definitely get almost no walk-by traffic, and the walk is a dis-incentive to players when setting up their schedules. It's a lot harder to meet the Premiere level numbers there, and then missing those numbers means you miss out on the email blasts and catalog placement - making things even harder.
I get that GenCon is expanding and that LOS is the future, but you've got to help promote the groups that are there somehow if you want it to work.
When the noise from an event is disrupting other games nearby, please let the local HQ know at that time so we can address it immediately and fix it for the rest of the weekend.
And let us know if anyone has other feedback or notes about running events in the stadium.
- Derek Guder Event Manager Gen Con LLC
As a player and a volunteer who's events were all at LOS i would love to see a south end true open gaming area. Several times i had 30-90 min to kill and really didn't to have to make the trek up all the way back north.
Yes please for better signage, didn't realize the con had expanded to other meeting rooms besides just TD area now over at LOS.
The biggest complaints my group Game Base 7 had was the back and forth on the food allowed and not allowed all weekend. I have a couple judges that are looking at possibly not coming back if they are at LOS next year. The Second one was about the bathroom that we where right next to. One minute it was ok to use then the next it wasn't Just like the food issue. Again it was allowed for gm's at one point and then everyone then no one. These things are getting gm's and players alike very upset. If there was like maybe a way to give us the gm's and or the EO's a copy of the agreement so that if this happens again we can just show them that page or paragraph that states what is to be going on and what is allowed and not allowed that would help tremendously. The last thing is at the end of the con on pack out. We where told we could not pack out till 4pm on Sunday. Which is not a problem in its self. The problem came when 4pm hit and they came threw the doors and told use we had to move now. Then while moving they had forktrucks running back and forth which then creates an issue of being hit by one. If there is any way there could be at least an hour to 2 hours we could pack out before they come pushing us out that would be great. Also after about 2 hours when we where mostly gone they had almost stopped getting the tables and chairs and kinda seemed like they where on a break so it wasn't that they had to get it done that second.
Yes, that was not an issue last year but there seems to have been some miscommunication among the building security this year, for some reason. It was my understanding that was cleared up on Friday, however. It sounds like bathrooms may also have been rolled into that and that should be cleared up for next year. There is no need to provide any text of "the agreement" to event organizers, GMs, or players, however. Abide by the Event Host Policy and general show rules and when there is an issue, alert the HQ so they can get it cleared up.
As for pack-out on Sunday, that also should have worked the same as it did in 2017 and you should not have been "pushed out" by any means. If there were specific issues, can you send an email to [email protected] with the details so we can figure out what happened?