I went around expo and looked at my “competition” in boutique and was not impressed at all at any of it.
At least mine (The Kuglers), Deadpin, Buffy, Wooly, FullT, TBL -- could all play a game (and the first 5 have pretty complete rule sets, and the last had some pretty cool functioning toys.). All of these, except maybe FullT, not sure, were started looooong after MG. Heck my, second game, Casino, was only 6 months old when it was at expo, and could flip, play a game and had working toys (although not totally complete) and nice cabinet art -- and I only work on it a couple of hours a day, a few days a week -- not 7x14.
Making a pinball machine is not easy and it does take time, but I don't believe it is 7x14 x 4 years time/hard to get a playable prototype produced. Manufacturing them is very, very hard, but seems like John is not even ready for that. I just find it mind boggling that he has yet to be able to bring a flipping machine to a show, change that, he has not been able to even show a 5 to 10 minute video of game play. I can understand him not wanting to show something too soon, so as not to create a ton of negative comments about what is missing, incomplete sound/music, etc., but at this point him showing practically nothing is doing far more damage. I also doubt many of the pre-order buyers (which are the only kind of buyer for MG) would be freaking out seeing an incomplete rule set and a game with some minor playfield issues.
Oh, and yes, I had no vents in the back of the Casino cabinet, just holes. I guess maybe I should be concerned that it will take me 7x14 to get that done.