Well, hey there! I guess... sorry! I'll admit that I usually do post a thread in here and do my best to update it, but... From what I've seen, I'm like the only show organizer that does that, and they've always felt a bit awkward to me to try to be my own hype man. I appreciate that you have appreciated it!

The MGC is always a bit of a different beast than all the other pinball shows. Not trying to make excuses or whatever, but (unless it has been this year and I have missed it), in the Expo thread Rob isn't the one posting the updates. For whatever reason, the people who come to MGC are usually more low key about it, maybe because we cover a lot of different things, maybe because I've traditionally done a great job informing people of what's up (ha! Although hey, maybe?) or maybe something else.

I've seen a lot of talk about what's going on in my Facebook groups. Also, while things are barreling full speed ahead, it's been hard to take time to update a million different other sites. And yes, I used to do that here better, so sorry about that!

I will say this - if you're concerned that the November date might have been premature, then I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised when you come out. Also, there is a much longer story behind that November date, but I'm not going to get into it now. The point is simply this - I think it's going to be a really good year to be here

What I'll also share here is this - the trade show business has been absolutely rocked by covid. Because of that, it's taking longer on the back end of things to do what are usually mundane tasks, and I'm ending up having to spend a TON of time doing things that are critical to the show, but are not interesting. Like, woooo! We just finally completed our insurance, which instead of it just being like an email to say hey, is this done and then it is, it became a month of back and forth. A lot of this is because there are new people in all of these different positions, which makes it so that I am having to do a LOT of follow up on stuff that isn't fun. At all.

None of those make fun updates - although if you want to do that, I talk about it on Twitch every Monday night now on tvMGC. What I can say is this - watch the site, look for updates, and if you've got Facebook follow us there. I can't promise that I'm going to be able to stop in here and announce like, "Oh man, we're going to have 45 Stern machines on hand!" or whatever, so if you see an announcement like that, by all means if you can bring it in and share it I would appreciate it.

Other quick details of things I can actually announce, just talking pinball stuff here:

- If you brought a game in the past and had load out issues, we have permission now to pull into the building for load out. This will allow us to bring in a minimum of about 7X the vehicles we could have loading at a time in the past. This should be a VAST improvement over the past.

- There will be an arcade auction on Sunday. We've been trying to do this for a while, it's time to try it. There is information on Facebook from a week or two ago, and there should be information on the MGC site hopefully tonight if I can do it before I collapse again, like last night.

- Kingpin Games has show specials on Godzilla and various others including American. I don't remember the prices, but you can check here: https://www.kingpingames.net/ We should be sending a communication about that soon.

- We will be hosting two IFPA sanctioned tournaments, one is Clock Chaos (sponsored by Madison Pinball), which will happen on Friday night and be a new, chaotic version of the tournament where you have 3 hours to put up as many scores on 20 machines as possible before the top 16 advance to the finals. The other is the Midwest Pinball Championship, which is getting a format tweak to be able to get more people to play in the qualifying rounds and is presented by Jersey Jack Pinball! There is also a non-IFPA PinGolf tournament on Friday. Oh yeah, and TROPHIES RETURN!

- If you bring a game, it's always been confusing about how Friday night works and if you're supposed to be able to hang out or not. In the past, you really weren't supposed to hang out, but that was difficult to enforce, so how it works now is that if you bring a game, you get to hang out Friday and get your Saturday / Sunday tickets! The one thing to note is the "hang out" for Friday night will NOT include tournaments or the second floor of the event (with other game tournaments) so if you want to participate in those you will need a ticket. But hang out and play if you'd like!

- MarcoTV will be livecasting throughout the weekend!

- One of the pinball manufacturers has requested a time to do a presentation on Saturday, but the topic won't be announced until much closer to the event if even then. I'm told I can share that much for now.

- Rob Anthony will be back, although he is planning to focus more on repair than on vending stuff. He'll still have his regular room.

- Finally... we're going to have one vendor who I'm going to say will simply make me feel really nostalgic for some of the past shows setting up at our show.

And, I'll just share one more non-pinball update, because some people on here enjoy giving me crap for enjoying Tesla vehicles...

- Tesla is bringing two vehicles to have on the show floor so people can sit in them and play the Tesla Arcade throughout the event.

There is TONS more stuff in the other sides of the show. I am hoping tonight to announce Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments, board game tournaments, update some staging, talk with the NES guys, Ben Heck is hosting a workshop and that should get announced officially tonight through our mailer and Facebook, nail down a couple really big arcade video tournaments, finalize the speakers, announce the on-site ACW wrestling show, list the table top RPG details, update the bands, add about a dozen more industry professionals to meet, and that's just what I can think of off the top of my head. To be honest, while Pinside hasn't seen as many updates, the actual stuff going on for the show is perhaps the most crammed that we've ever had!

If you just come to MGC for pinball, it's going to be a great year. If you come to MGC for stuff beyond pinball, it's going to be an outstanding year.

And with that, if you post something you need a reply to, please PM me or email me so I can make sure to check in on it Otherwise, I've got so much to do, I don't know that I'll know what's going on!

Just figured I'd address this for a minute since I saw it right after I hit publish on mine...

Expo had *always* been the second weekend of October. (quick edit... I should have said, for as long as I can remember... I've been going to Expo since 99, and I think that was always the weekend at least!) As I alluded to, there is a long story about why we're doing the November show that I'll not type out here in another novel like the above. But, when we picked dates, we picked a date that I thought would be three or four weeks after Expo would be held.

Expo then announced their dates, and they had shifted back.

There are no hard feelings at all - let me simply say, venues don't just sit there empty waiting for either me or Expo or whatever to show up. They are constantly filled. Both of us did what was best for our own shows without knowing about the other's changes.

But, there is a weird narrative that we somehow saw that Expo moved and then decided to run right after them and... that's just not true.

If people pick Expo over us, that is what it is. I'm sure some will go the other way. I'm sure some will do both. Expo is definitely the more "destination pinball" show. We're traditionally the "everything and the kitchen sink of gaming" show. Our audiences overlap surprisingly little, even when we aren't right by each other.

I've also heard from a number of people that they can do a week and two weekends of a trip, and they plan to do both shows which... cool! So who knows?

The last thing I'll say, if anyone wants to bad mouth MGC, Expo, or whatever for doing whatever they can to survive, you have no idea what it has taken to keep shows alive, and the straight up pain and stress that the last 18+ months have been. I've been really up front about this - MGC lost over $100k due to covid. Contrary to what some trolls on here might tell you, the best year MGC ever had, we made around $10k. I'm not shy about breaking our finances down for people who actually want to know. It's been a tough, tough time.

If you want shows to continue, you should support whichever ones you can, however you can. It's a long road to recovery, and quite frankly with the stress this year, it's been tough to stay positive as much as I like to because of the stupid stuff I'm constantly having to deal with. It's been a battle, but I'm doing it for those who care. I've been absolutely touched by how many seem really to care. Heck, just the other night I mentioned on a Twitch stream that we would love to get something but it was out of our budget, and one of the people watching messaged me afterward and offered to buy us the item because of the work we've put in. That stuff is amazing, that community is why we started the show, that community is why we didn't give up the show, and that is the community that I hope can help to rebuild all of these shows back to strength.

All right, for realz, I gotta go update a bunch of stuff!!

Okay, dang it, replying to myself one last time...

If anyone wants to take what I said and make a new thread that isn't saying "What's up with no promo?" and instead be the hype guy, I'd appreciate that. Or maybe if we want to edit the title of this one. I'd rather not try to hype in a thread that is specifically saying there is no hype

Also, holy crap, I just realized I've been on Pinside... for 17 years?!

It should, alas, not this November. Fingers crossed on both my and Tom's hands for April.