It’s usually a good sign for an event organizer when their event grows year over year. With Gen Con, which saw a unique attendance in 2015 of more than 61,000 attendees and almost 197,000 overall visits (turnstile attendance), the event has grown for six years straight and a more than doubling in attendance since 2010. Figuring out how to host a lot of attendees, exhibitors and live events in one space is a challenge. The solution? Organizers have decided that next year, Gen Con 2016 expands to Lucas Oil Stadium.
Lucas Oil Stadium is the home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. The stadium connects via a walkway to the Indiana Convention Center, where Gen Con has been traditionally.
From the official announcement, Adrian Swartout, Gen Con CEO and owner said: “Gen Con has grown to host nearly 200,000 turnstile attendees, and it is evident that we have to accelerate our growth plans to meet attendee, exhibitor and event organizer demand. Expansion into Lucas Oil Stadium allows Gen Con to keep offering more gaming, exhibition and entertainment options each year.”
One of the events to be moved to the stadium is True Dungeon, a popular staple at Gen Con. It is a live action role-playing, dungeon-crawl experience, with atmospheric locations and immersive, intensive live-action gaming. One of the benefits of the change in location, according to the True Dungeon organizers, is “tak(ing) advantage of a massive dividing wall to completely isolate the darker adventure area from the brighter lit (and more noisy) coaching area. The better control of light and sound ‘pollution’ will greatly aid us in providing a better lit coaching room experience while keeping the adventure areas more dramatically lit.”
The relocation, apparently, will equate to about the same distance from the Gen Con expo hall, as it was in 2015.
More news will be announced in the coming months about other Gen Con events being hosted or relocated to Lucas Oil Stadium.
