Dropping back just for a few seconds because I've had a number of people email me or contact me, so I wanted to clarify a few things in brief, it'll save me time in the end... Another novel incoming... Then to pick up the son and have a daddy / son night

1) Without going too deep into it, the weather decided to throw everything at Gary and I that it could, and since we've never had an outdoor attached vending area like that, it was seriously trial by fire. I don't know if there was anything that could have gone more wrong than how it turned out, or at least that is how we feel, and we don't know how that will effect vendor turn out for next year. We can't have it go so bad again, at least I can't imagine it (my backyard still has like 6 inches of water standing in it!!) and we knew that the first year we needed to leave the vendors with a good impression. That didn't happen.

On top of that, for the record, for every vendor booth that we sold in the temporary structure, we paid about 150% of what we made. For it to not be even okay, well, it's hard to take.

2) The city basically finally stopped screwing around with us the last week when I had someone explain who I was supposed to be talking with - before that point, I was talking with about 10 different people who were all giving me different stories, at the end it worked out, but when you literally have one person say that you need to do this, and then the next says you need to do something wholly different an hour later, and neither are returning your phone calls, it makes it hard to know what to actually do.

3) The tournament thing is actually a state law that was written extremely poorly. Now that we know, we could work around it, and most people agreed that our band-aid solution this year was a good way of handling it. Moving out of the city won't help that. We'd have to move out of the state, and that isn't an option. The larger venues in town want $200 per outlet to hook up stuff minimum, and one of them needs to carry your stuff from the door to where it is to set up. Simply won't work.

Having said that, I do not understand why Brookfield sent people to check out the pinball tournament both days, multiple times on Saturday. Really?

We also invested money with the tournaments that now doesn't make sense. I have Metallica sitting here, which is awesome, but we bought it to be our second yearly TOPS tournament at the show since with everything put together, that made about $400 last year for us (we gave away about $800 in mods though, so it was still a more than fair deal). Our hope was to run two next year and add a new machine every other year for people to enjoy. Now, I have to figure out if I can afford to keep this one.

4) Contrary to popular belief, Gary and I have actually delegated out so much stuff, it's ridiculous and amazing. I'm responsible for overarching crap - where this city and state stuff went horribly wrong - figuring out space, and directing people who are doing various stuff, and that's really about it. We've got people who handle the arcade hall (I didn't set foot in it Friday at all!), museum (ditto arcade hall), speakers (Mark!), contacting sponsors, running the tournaments, and on down the line. There are some stuff where I see opportunities in the future (I'll get to that in a bit), but the real problem is that we had so many changes at the very last minute with high level stuff, and so much stuff was completely out of our hands, and the margin for error at this point is so damn slim that it simply magnifies the problems. I don't know how to change that.

5) We have a professional team that worked on sponsorship this year for us. Because we're so damn unique, no one signed up. It really isn't as easy as walking down the street and asking a local place to get involved - we had a team on it 24/7 and it just didn't work this year.

6) The Very Important Gamer program, which was supposed to be a great ticket upgrade that Gary and I were going to really work with to do some cool stuff with the tournaments and whatnot they were getting to make it well worth their while, ended up being a disaster that we both feel horrible about. We haven't had any formal complaints against it, but we needed it to be a success because the money it brought was supposed to be a bit of a release valve for ensuring the show could invest in stuff like Doc Oct. Gary and I are still trying to figure out what to do with it as we weren't happy with the value that was there.

7) Presale tickets got screwed up this year thanks to everything else - I wasn't able to show people how to run it right, and then when I ran to get something that only I could do (bank), the system melted down and people were really angry that buying before the show, which was supposed to get them in really fast, only resulted in a longer line than cash sales.

Leaving Sunday night, in large part because of the rain, took for freaking ever and we didn't get into bed until well after 3:30am.

9) My basement, the GOAT Store (Gary's basement), and our storage area are seriously trashed and it takes forever to clean that.

10) We talked about taking in additional "paying" sponsors a few years ago and it just doesn't make sense. There is a MUCH longer story here, but let's just say our super-expensive infrastructure is also basically worthless (anyone want to pay us $5k for the tube TVs we bought in 2006-2008?) and we have the serious worry that if someone paid in a bunch of money with the possibility of making just a little, it would ruin how we run the show. Money isn't why we run the show, but if you pay in, say, $50k to potentially make $2k a year, and you're watching Gary and I drop $10k a year on an asset that is about to be worthless like another Doc Oct, well, it's not going to last well. It works for Gary and I because we started at ground zero, but it doesn't for anyone else.

So, before saying anything else, I'm not trying to whine about any of the above. It is what it is, and it sucks but we knew about it all going in. It's just that when so much stuff seemingly got dog-piled on us this year, it takes a toll. Usually, we are both gung ho while we're driving the stuff to storage, this is the first year since 2004 I can say that I really wasn't.

Here are specific things that I can say that it would be cool if we could get help with. I am not saying that these need to get done in order to have a show next year - if we get them all done, we still might not be able to pull it off - but this would go a LONG way toward helping:

1) For the show itself, we either need someone to run VIG or someone to come up with some sort of way that we can do something that brings in that sort of money that doesn't suck. As I hope everyone knows, I'm not someone to beg for money and I feel awkward taking it without having something to give back, but for the VIG, as a program it was supposed to turn about $4,000 in "slush fund" money to do something with for the show - upgrade some Doc Oct, get a new pinball machine for a tournament, buy another heater for the tent, whatever. This year, we spent probably $2,500 on the program and it netted about $3,000, and it sucked. If someone wants to take it over and come up with ideas about how to make it work, or someone else can somehow find a way to add about the same amount of money to the show's bottom line without just collecting donations or something, I'm all ears.

2) Again at the show, we need a pre-sale ticket / entrance guru. Someone who can work with Gary to ensure the system works how it should, and then can coordinate people doing check in and whatnot to get them in. We do scannable tickets, which when they work should take as long as a cash transaction to get in, but when Gary or I aren't basically the ones to run it, it becomes way slower, and then we have lines out the door for pre-sale while cash is walking in and going on their merry way. The worst first impression you can do for a pre-sale, basically.

3) We need someone to become the MGC "storage expert." We have a sizable storage area where most of the show is held. We can't spend 10 hours packing stuff back into it Sunday night. If someone can help with this, by directing or leading or whatever, that would be huge.

4) In the not too distant future, we need to really go through and clean storage. Like, item by item, figure out what is there, and organize it. Sell or trash stuff we don't need, understand what we have and inventory what we do. I have already had some people volunteer for this.

5) We have 40 amazing "boxes" for the museum for displays (they were under most tables holding the systems). They look great, but they aren't painted, which made loading them a nightmare Sunday in the rain as they are made of cheap, swellable particle board. We need to get them painted somehow.

6) The GOAT Store, which is the retro video game store that Gary and I run that underwrites the show, was moved into his basement last summer. While the space is WAY bigger than it was in mine, we have never re-inventoried everything, and doing so takes forever. It would be great to have like 10 people join us and make a day of it sometime because without the GOAT Store, the MGC wouldn't exist and it seems like lately we've been sacrificing the health of the GOAT Store for the MGC. Not cool.

7) My garage, which somehow ended up with more games then it should have after the show, could really use the same thing as storage and the GOAT Store, preferably after those are done. There is a LOT of GOAT Store / MGC stuff in there, and I have no idea what. The whole thing is basically trashed from it.

Whenever we get the shirts from the show up online, buy one or two. We're hoping to do this relatively soon, but long story short last year we underproduced shirts and basically sold out by noon on Saturday. This year, we overproduced shirts and I've got a ton left. Besides, the show could use the money, and that way I'm selling something that is tangible. They are $20, so keep an eye out and impress your friends, or something. I'll post when we make that happen.

9) I'd like an America's Most Haunted to materialize at my house because I'm writing down a wish list so why not put down something fun? Seriously, it's a really cool game. Don't buy me one though - maybe we can make the show make enough that in the future, I could afford one after it. That'd be cool. Everyone else should buy one so that there are used ones available for not an arm and a leg when that finally happens

That was a lot. Sorry again if you didn't want to read that much, but I hope that goes a long way toward clearing up a lot of the issues that happened. If you're interested in doing some of the above, email me (please, easier) or PM me if you must and we can figure stuff out. I don't plan on answering anything until at least next week Monday - unless you have an idea about how to fix the VIGs for this year, then I'm all ears because that is still hanging over our heads - but it might really go a long way toward figuring things out.

As always, thanks guys. I do agree that from an attendee side, this was the best year that we've ever had, and as I always say that is because of how many amazing people make it happen. I'm absolutely one of the cogs in it, but it is really true that without the 500+ people that make it happen, it would just be a disaster. I really, REALLY appreciate it.

Now, off for some well deserved time with the son

Briefly, have had some people contact about some stuff so far, thanks.

If you are free, tomorrow night starting around 730pm we are going to do some work inventory-ing the GOAT Store that we also run and which underwrites the show. I know it's late notice, but if you are free, Pm me and I can get you Gary's address. Hoping to get about 6 people total.

Also, I pulled shirts from storage. I'll be listing them tomorrow. Tell your friends, I'm hoping to raise 2000 to pay for some shelves in storage and bills that came up. I will not take donations, but I will happily sell shirts

That's it for now. Thanks again for those who can help

Here's the thing, without going way into this all...

The GOAT Store already underwrites the show and is an LLC, however the problem is that if the show loses $25k, someone still has to pay for that and it would be us. If we changed the LLC or whatever, at the end of the day someone would still be on the hook.

Along with that, I am actually not the person that handles most stuff. I mentioned it and it's true, I didn't set foot in the arcade hall Friday. I also didn't set foot in the museum hall, any basement room other than the Network Game Room, or any hotel room Friday. When you look at it like that, there is actually very little that I directly oversee. There are people that do all of that with me and Gary handling only little details. Gary and I last did everything in 2004, and the show really has been run by everyone else since then with us just handling little portions of it and overseeing. Lately, we've been stepping back even further.

Having said all that, there are definitely parts where we need help, and those are the totally un-sexy things that I mentioned before. Some people have already stepped up to potentially claim those. That's great. It's just even being a central figure in this is rather overwhelming.

Finally though, for those people that say that in three months I can figure it out, I can't. The hotels and whatnot need answers as soon as possible, and basically if we aren't all cylinders go by the end of next week, there won't be a 2015 show. Before that happens, we need to talk with the vendors and whatnot because if we have no vendors for next year's show, we have no show. Seeing how that response is, and also what we can do to improve the tent situation for next year, will really go a long way toward determining what we can do for next year - but I have basically seven days including today to make it happen.

Shirt post is up - http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/mgc-post-show-shirts#post-1599265

Looking to get $2,000 raised. Trying to not increase the budget next year. If we can do this or close to it in a week, I'm going to feel a lot better about a lot of stuff.

As for tables next year, use the MGC Contact Form if you haven't already. We don't have pricing because we don't know that we're doing it, but having registered interest would help. We have had at least a couple vendors say no to next year already, and although the vendors don't make us much money (we truthfully pay more for the space then they pay to be there, or at least we did this year because of the tent), it is a very important thing for our video game crowd in particular, so having 1/3rd the vendors would greatly impact walk up door sales, and would therefore greatly limit if this whole thing is viable or not.