
GDC 2020 has been postponed - minimaxir
https://gdconf.com/news/important-gdc-2020-update
======
jtdev
HIMSS 2020, a conference of ~45000 attendees from 90+ countries is still
scheduled to go forward at Orlando Convention Center March 9-13.

I was actually blocked by HIMSS PR folks on Twitter for inquiring about their
preparedness plan... which is inadequate to say the least. To top it off, HHS
Secretary Alex Azar is a keynote speaker, so now cancelling or major
attendees/sponsors pulling out is also a political issue.

This could actually be a catalyst for major transmission. It’s ridiculous.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I had to look it up:

Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society

Irony meter would break off if an outbreak happened there.

~~~
jcims
Probably not a particularly substantive comment but in my experience hubris
abounds in healthcare. Even if this did happen in would be explained away as
the shortcomings of a few rather than any systemic cultural issue.

~~~
evancox100
Of course, the field is full of doctors with God complexes

~~~
killjoywashere
No, it's the healthcare IT people. Imagine people with the combined hubris of
physicians and SV SWEs, and the skills of neither. It has to be the most
Dunning-Kruger conference on Earth.

~~~
jcims
I worked in hospital IT for a little while and I wouldn't say this is the
rule, but man you really nailed the exception hahaha.

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gonational
I always wonder in situations like this, will there be like one person who
flies in and shows up on the day of the event and is like, “what the...”

~~~
agersant
This news is being shared everywhere in game dev circles, it would be really
hard to miss.

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chaostheory
This is good news. The private sector is being more responsible than many
governments.

~~~
o-__-o
Just waiting on the olympics... any day now..

~~~
chii
people who purchased plane tickets and booked hotels to watch the Olympics are
gonna be pissed...unless they can either get their refund or also postponed
bookings for free.

~~~
xyzzy_plugh
Any half decent trip insurance would cover this. Many travel credit cards
include basic trip cancellation insurance.

~~~
jacquesm
It's only money for what is at best a luxury item. If the Olympics are worth
more than lives then something is really wrong.

~~~
s1artibartfast
>It’s only money

It will be interesting to compare the death tolls from the covid-19 to the
economic recession it causes.

For example, the there were an estimated 500,000 additional cancer deaths
between 2008 and 2010 due to unemployment and healthcare cuts [1]. When you
consider other diseases, you are easily in the millions dead.

[1]
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(16\)00577-8/fulltext)

~~~
simonh
The summary of the article says 40,000 extra deaths for the cancers studied,
is the 500,000 an extrapolation to other cancers?

I don’t think we can separate out the economic costs of spread prevention in
comparison though. If we didn’t try to stem the spread if the virus, health
systems would be even more overwhelmed and that would by itself lead to many
more deaths from other medical causes, in addition to more deaths from the
virus.

I think there clearly is a balance to be struck between measures to slow or
stall the spread of the virus and the cost of those measures, and as you point
out that cost is not just monetary but can also be measured in lives. The
problem is we can’t know for sure where that balance point is.

~~~
philistine
You guys do realize that the US is notably alone in the developed world in
offering no government healthcare insurance? You guys wouldn’t believe how
different our attitude is of recessions.

------
twistedpair
Now F8 is cancelled. What are the next conferences in the lineup? Google Cloud
Next @ Moscone April 6th comes to mind.

~~~
dfabulich
SXSW is (currently) planned for Mar 13-22, which seems dicey.

YC Winter Demo Day is scheduled for Mar 23-24.

~~~
songshuu
Seriously wondering about SXSW. Hugh Forrest keeps pumping out blog posts
about events, but no answers to questions about covid and no transparency on
the SXSW site.

~~~
evancox100
I live in downtown Austin and just contacted my city council representative
asking them to cancel SXSW, or if not to institute some type of preventative
measures. For anyone also in town, I encourage you to do the same, or for
those coming in from out of town contact @MayorAdler on Twitter with your
concerns. The latest update (yesterday) from @AusPublicHealth was "Dont worry,
we're tracking Austin residents who recently visited China." Austin residents,
really? What about the 70k people from around the world who will soon be
here!! Not to mention there are now major outbreaks in four other countries
besides China. Inept.

------
phodo
RSA happened this past week At Moscow’s center in SF. Some observations : \-
Hand sanitizer stations \- Workers cleaning door handles \- only a few wore
face masks

~~~
runamok
Moscone actually but I like your take. ;-)

Bsides SF too and I was there. They reminded people to take precautions but
you know...

~~~
animalnewbie
Vladimir Putin was there personally eating everyone's home work

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sprite
Not tech related but Ultra Music Festival is coming up in a few weeks. Wonder
how high the risk will be considering they are cancelling conferences and also
I saw Geneva Auto Show is cancelled.

~~~
adventured
I'm curious how it's going to hit the remainder of the NBA season and upcoming
NCAA basketball tournament. What choices they're going to make given the
crowds. The responsible thing to do, three weeks out, will surely be to cancel
the NCAA tournament, and or only broadcast the games on TV.

~~~
geerlingguy
I know there have been isolated instances in the past where a professional
game is still played and broadcast on TV, but there is no general public in
attendance at the game.

That would be a pretty radical thing to do in any area that doesn't have
specific cases and needs that level of quarantine, but I don't think it's
outside the realm of possibility. Otherwise the entire season is postponed,
and that's a lot of sponsorship dollars and network TV that's left empty.

------
gentleman11
Any other indie devs in the thread? What do you like about events like GDC?
Have you found it paid off financially to meet people or learn thing while
there?

~~~
blueboo
To make math work, you need to arrange multiple viable meetings ahead of time.
They don’t just happen because you show up to Moscone with a GDC badge. And
such meetings don’t even require a GDC badge...

There’s every chance you could do these meetings at other times of the year,
but publishers might be in other cities.

As for learning, there’s great content, but GDC Vault is a far better value
than an all-access ticket, and the sessions are happening when you should be
having meetings. (That means the randos you’ll bump into aren’t the people who
you’d want to meet with...)

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wdb
Lots of conferences get cancelled or postponed they have postponed Baselworld
and Watches & Wonders. Such a bummer looked forward attending

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bluedino
Got a feeling Vegas hotels are going to be real cheap pretty soon

~~~
jedberg
I just got sent a coupon for three free nights. That hasn’t happened since...
2008.

~~~
knite
I'm about to book a LV visit for late March, which hotel offered you free
nights?

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ropiwqefjnpoa
Wonder if E3 will have the same fate.

~~~
favorited
E3 might be looking for an excuse at this point.

~~~
justwalt
Why do you say that?

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avocado4
Time to sit and home and play some Civ 6 until it blows over.

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on_and_off
Wondering if Google IO will get "postponed" or canceled as well. It is pretty
big and has people from all over the world

------
ufo
Where was the conference planned to take place? It doesn't say in the original
announcement.

~~~
andrewmunsell
GDC normally takes place in SFO

~~~
freepor
SFO is an airport, not a city.

~~~
Jeaye
Parent is right. I've been in and around the SF Bay Area for about a decade
and SFO is _only_ ever, unambiguously, the airport.

~~~
Animats
Also, SFO, the airport, is not even in the city of San Francisco. It's about
ten miles south, in San Bruno. Not close to GDC, which is in downtown SF.

~~~
geerlingguy
Most people outside of San Francisco would know that you mean 'San Francisco'
when you say SFO, though. Same as I think of Seattle when I see SEA, Dallas
when I see DFW, St. Louis for STL, etc.

Inside the city that's not always the case, but even when you're abbreviating
sports teams and the like, it's common to use the airport code to refer to the
city name if they match up so well.

~~~
zadokshi
Are you sure about that? These acronyms don’t have the same meaning when I
read them.

It’s pretty American to think like that.

------
rasz
Intel Extreme Masters XIV yesterday, GDC today, next one is May TwitchCon
Amsterdam.

~~~
nolok
IEM are going on as planned, they just didn't let the public in. The
tournaments are being played as I write this (I follow the SC2 games).

~~~
rasz
Yes, they turned away 150K people, everything as planned /s

~~~
dwild
> Yes, they turned away 150K people, everything as planned /s

It all depends on what you consider being planned. A competition is a
competition whether there's people watching there or by streaming.

------
tpetry
Whats happening in Switzerland at the moment is kind of interesting: Any event
will be cancelled with more than 1000 people including sport events.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
But not large schools, companies, hotels, etc? What's the criteria for an
"event"?

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ma2rten
There are so many political rallies going on right now especially for Trump
and Bernie Sanders. That also seems very risky to me.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
interesting point, never thought about this. If containment strategies include
limiting number of people at events (as was done in Switzerland) then this
would really impact abilities of candidates to rally. Sanders here has more to
loose than Trump I think

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spicyramen
Google Cloud Next and IO will be cancelled?

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tines
So am I going to get my ticket money back?

~~~
minimaxir
It's in the FAQ (site is down), but passes will be refunded.

[https://twitter.com/Official_GDC/status/1233545322133106688](https://twitter.com/Official_GDC/status/1233545322133106688)

------
Cacti
ITT: Lots of people seemingly unaware that the cities hosting these events on
average _already_ (currently and will continue to do so throughout the coming
months) receive 100,000+ tourists _per day_ and nothing will stop that.

The risk profile of transmission is unchanged whether they are canceled or
not.

~~~
banachtarski
ITT: you

You do realize that a crowded convention with a lot of talks, parties, and
meetings is a different thing altogether right? Also, that every action to
curb reasons to travel helps and is appreciated?

------
cryptoz
No word on the reason for postponing?

It seems odd to dance around the issue like that. I mean, I get it, we all
know _why_ its being postponed, but it seems weird to not say something about
coronavirus risk.

~~~
subaru_shoe
Really? you would have to have just come back from the moon to not know or be
able to speculate why.

~~~
gizmo686
Or be from the future. Granted, this announcement isn't that major that I
expect it to become a significant part of any historical record, but if
someone from the future is looking through the GDC records and comes across
this, is would be nice to give them a bit of context instead of making them
search around to find out what else was going on in the world at the time.

~~~
zelly
The plague of 2020 will be taught in history classes for hundreds of
generations.

~~~
saagarjha
Keep in mind that this is about the length of recorded human history. Surely
they wouldn’t be fixated on what is currently a small outbreak.

~~~
stordoff
Really depends how big it gets, not how big it gets currently. We're still
taught about the Black Death, and that was nearly 700 years ago now.

(though it does seem absurd to suggest it'll get anywhere _near_ that scale)

~~~
tenpies
It could be taught within the context of economics:

> The asset bubble of the late 2010s was finally popped by a minor pandemic,
> initiating the Final Great Recession of 2020. The Final Great Recession led
> to the abolishment of all Central Banks and the outlawing of all public
> stock markets. Strong nationalist economic policies characterized the
> remainder of the decade.

~~~
zelly
I think there would need to be a violent revolution to get rid of public stock
markets. This would not happen because of a measly recession or depression,
even if tens of millions die from the virus at the same time. I mean what is
America if it's not the host for the stock market. Do we even have an identity
not related to money? 90% of people at all class levels esp in software work
for publicly traded companies or companies that desperately are working to
become publicly traded. As an American most of the decisions that influenced
your upbringing, your interests, your housing, your transportation, your hopes
and dreams, your leisure activities, and indeed even the decision of your
parents to have you was a consequence of those sacred numbers moving a certain
way. We know no other force to tame and guide our society.

John and Jane Q. Public will go back to hating the stock market like they did
2008-2015, shortly after thinking they were smart to rent not buy a home so
they can put more money in their Robinhood account. Meanwhile the big players
will accumulate, things will go back to normal by this time next year, and
John and Jane Q. Public will be saving rainy day money they will eventually
use to FOMO back in on the same shares $RICHGUY bought from them at the lows.
This is the American way.

------
starefossen
This is ridiculous! The seasonal flu virus is likely more deadly than COVID-19
[1] maybe we should ban all assemblies permanently then.

[1]
[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm)

~~~
coding123
From your link:

CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 32 million flu
illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations and 18,000 deaths from flu.

The math: 0.0005625

From my link:

[http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-
perspective/2020/02/study-720...](http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-
perspective/2020/02/study-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate)

They are saying COVID-19 is about 20 times more deadly than the flu, so I
don't know why you think the opposite.

~~~
starefossen
People with mild cases aren’t getting counted in the same way so that number
is likely very incorrect. What we know is that we are very far of the death
toll of seasonal flue which is estimated to be around 291,000 - 646,000
globaly.

~~~
californical
That's like saying "I planted an oak tree last year. It's smaller than the
pine trees that have been growing here for 50 years, therefore oak trees are
smaller than pine trees"

