Just for the record Clay, you don't know what goes on with other shows, as that is kept behind the scenes. Both I and members of our volunteer staff work with the fire marshal every year, multiple days, at MGC.

Most people don't know that, because people showing up to enjoy themselves at the MGC don't need to know the negotiations that went on with the fire department (or whomever) to have a good time. In fact, that will make their visit suck more.

So, I make sure they don't know about it, or if they do its no problem. It requires a ton of coordination.

To be clear, this isn't to say there isn't a lot of stuff going on that Mike has to deal with, and I'm not disparaging him at all, but let's not pretend that there are things that are crazy different.

I love Expo and hope to attend.

Ok I feel like I'm going to repeat what I always say after the show when people are complaining about it, but I'll say it before the show this year.

Expo is an industry show.

This is something that I always feel like people overlook with it. And, since my show is more or less just up the road from it, people like to compare the two, and I always feel like I have to say no, it's different.

The Midwest Gaming Classic is a players show. We are built as a trade show focused around the end user.

Expo is a show that was created to fill an industry void when pinball needed an industry show. 33 years ago, in the freaking 80s, when the show started, almost no one going was just a pinball fan. They were in the industry, either ops looking to route new games, looking for repair tips, people figuring out hat games would earn, and so on.

The Midwest Gaming Classic has never had this element. Expo still does.

If Mike were to make Expo more "like" the Midwest Gaming Classic, he would risk alienating his audience, alienating the industry that still uses it as their fall reveal show, and certain aspects of the financial way that it is put together wouldn't work, making the risk much higher to run it.

If the MGC suddenly became a five day show, I'd also lose my butt on it. Because we never set it up for that.

Expo has the problem of trying to be all things for all people now, something very difficult to do. Mike tries to thread a difficult needle by working for the wants of the industry as well as the fans. I for one can't imagine trying to run a show for five days straight.

I'm saying this because ultimately, Expo is different. And looking at it from purely a fan point of view doesn't work. Mike has to balance that.

Could he balance it better? I don't know - probably, but it's impossible to know everything going on, and he is now trying to satisfy FAR more groups than when he started.

It's a difficult task, and for that I'm grateful. I hope in the future he can improve that further for the betterment of the show.

I was going to make some sort of attempt at being funny in my reply, but in all honesty...

The Midwest Gaming Classic exists not because of me, but in spite of me. Gary and I tried killing it. Others came back and decided to talk us into trying it again.

I don't run the MGC for any reason other than to see a whole ton of friends and have excuses to randomly call them and chat throughout the year.

Expo is not run in spite of Mike, it's run because of him. It's a different dynamic.

Additionally, I had a job for a long time managing at a theme park, and consulting st others. I've been personally in charge of a park that was entertaining 40,000 people.

I learned from that experience what works and what doesn't for me. A TON of MGC theory is based on that time.

I do still wake up with nightmares about people not showing up and me needing to sell my car, relatively regularly, but we've gotten to a better point in managing our money where if we need to pull back, we can and I can feel safer.

And honestly, I also have Gary, who is the yin to my yang. Seriously. He handles all the behind the scenes stuff that I don't want to deal with. I handle all the front of house stuff that he doesn't like doing. It works out super well.

But no matter what, both Gary and I know that no one - NO ONE - comes to stare at us. They come for what we enable others to do. And we're both infinitely appreciative of that, as it allows us to see out friends yearly.

Honestly though, this isn't true unless you just look at it from the last few years. I went to the 2000 show. I can't begin to describe how different it was. Hours, tournaments, when things were open, how seminars worked, etc have all changed significantly.

I wish I knew where this quote came from, but someone said you always overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in ten, and looking at Expo from that lens, it sure has shifted.

There isn't a way to fully shift it without changing what it is. Anyone (this wasn't you, Whysnow) who argues MGC is trying to do what Expo does (or vice versa) I think doesn't understand the differences between the shows.

I do think Expo needs to better embrace the differences that it has by being an industry show instead of trying to be a show that does everything, but I think a sudden shift to a non industry show would be very difficult to do, and then there I'd again a void for the industry show again... And now, we have enough industry it's useful for that I think.

I noticed

Off the top of my head, you forgot state, licensing, and insurance. But whose counting?

Were you there they year the police kept searching the event for the pinball tournaments?

THAT was a fun time.

Have I ever seen that at any other showing in the United States? No, never.

We're not doing that though. There is a whole backside to shows that people simply don't know about and usually don't care about. Mike and I discuss things like this on a semi regular basis.

If you got, "man, the police came to the show to search it, I'm clearly the most awesomest" you missed the point.

I'll say it again, there is a unique set of circumstances for every show. In Mike's defense, Expo is longer than every other show with longer hours for the days it is open. There are simply more opportunities for something to go wrong.

That isn't to say that Mike handles it all perfectly, and he'd tell you that himself. None of us do. As I've acknowledged and will continue to, he has another impossible task of trying to make the industry show also cater to collectors. That I'm certain wasn't part of the business plan when Expo started years and years ago.

Again, I love Expo, and hope it continues to succeed. I'm acutely aware of the problems Mike faces, and have talked with him about them and wish i could help. I've been missing it far more than I like in recent years because of my schedule, which appears to not be changing this year. I've been going though since 2000.

I heard that was the codename for Davy Crockett.

You weren't the "least bit critical", you did a total dick move. If you had constructive criticism, no one would call you on it.

For my part, based on what I know about me as a player, I would like TNA far more than POTC. I don't tend to like super deep games because of how I like to strategize about them, and if it's too deep I can't follow my options. TNA, which is less deep but more straight forward, is exactly the type of game that I like. Having said that, POTC looks awesome for the type of game that it is.

See, that wasn't so hard, and I doubt anyone would bash me for that. I definitely want both games to succeed.

Yes, but it's not that simple. While we all know how to start one game a new player walking up has no idea. I was showing someone a game recently and he kept starting four players without intending to.

It's a difficulty of pins being on freeplay.

The dudes sharing four player games was obviously different though, they knew.

There are also other shows not too far away that you may want to check out between now and then...

Again, this sounds simple, but it really isn't simple.

People really don't read signs. It is actually shocking just how much people can tune out in the way of signs. So putting up signs, on top of it costing some money especially if you make nice signs, are mostly just ignored.

Flyers are really good for getting thrown out, or getting tucked in your pocket to check out after the show is over. And again, even cheap quarter page flyers in quantity cost a chunk of change to run, again for something that is mostly just ignored.

Having people at registration verbally confirming the rules is great if you are a smaller show or if you have a ton of ticket takers, but let's say that Expo had 500 people on Saturday showing up, the majority of those are all showing up near the same time, verbally confirming each of the people takes a lot of time, or more volunteers, and even if you do this, how do you ensure that the people you are confirming have any idea what you're talking about? The vast majority of the people that we're talking about here are not the ones at issue, it's only a select few anyway - if they verbally confirm they won't do it but then don't know what they are saying yes to, what then?

And then, what happens anyway? A bunch of people walk around to make sure people aren't starting two player games, or are always checking for people behind them, or are not chimp flipping, or whatever you want to check for, and... Not just is this nearly impossible to actually police, what do you do if you catch someone screwing up?

I was at a fast food joint a couple weeks ago and I decided to go to the bathroom. I started walking toward it and as I neared, the door opened and someone walked out. I walked in and started closing the door. A dude who was about 15 feet away from the door started berating me and saying what the hell was I doing skipping the line, but I had absolutely no idea that I was or that there even was a line at all. He was an absolute ass, and if he could have kicked me out for my unknowing skip, he most definitely would have, but when someone is that far away and not acting like they are in line at all, how do you know? (And, for the record, I apologized and let the dude have the bathroom in the above case, although he kept whining.)

There are certain things that I feel work the best, but that has to do with other people being willing to say to someone hey, can I play? I have never done that to someone who then was an ass about it. If they didn't know, now they do. If not, as they press play again, you can just kindly say hey, I'm waiting here to play with my friends (if there are a bunch of you) and hop in. I find this works the best in all situations, as it is extremely rare that people who are doing this sort of thing realize what it is that is going on.

My experience of it not being so simple comes from a lot of different experiences. If anyone thinks that you have a perfect system, that's great and I hope it is. I, through running shows, arcades, and amusement parks, have found absolutely nothing that works perfectly, especially for the challenges described.

Oh, I'm not saying have no attendant or anything like that, but it really comes down to changing specific individual behavior can be extremely difficult without consistent one-on-one interaction, which simply isn't possible in the scenarios that shows have to deal with. Or for that matter, nearly any business.

It's how do you reach the tipping point where most people's behavior is what you figure is the acceptable level, and getting to that point is a lot more difficult than just putting up a sign or something like that.

Now, I don't know, because sadly, I didn't make it to Expo since my only free time this year lined up perfectly with the time that Expo wasn't open at all, so I ran down and popped in at Pinball Life for a bit and then had to head back up.

But was there not security at the entry doors for Expo? If this was a huge thing, they could have been got.

Expo is SO LONG and open SO MANY HOURS that hiring a few roaming security guards for the event becomes quickly cost prohibitive.

As for why the vendor didn't say anything, they may not have been there at the time.

Was something said to them is my big question? Because if there was, and there was 10 people waiting or something like that, I can't imagine they just sat there playing out their games. And if they were allowed to do so, that's when you go speak to someone. No show can properly police every game at every minute.