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Episode 18: Dan Loosen Co-Creator of Midwest Gaming Classic

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Jul 24, 2019
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TL;DR

Dan Lusin discusses MGC's evolution from niche Jaguar collector event to major gaming expo.

Summary

Dan Lusin, co-creator of the Midwest Gaming Classic, discusses the show's origins from Atari Jaguar Fest (1997) through its evolution into a major regional gaming convention. He shares insights on event management, manufacturer relationships, community expectations, and draws parallels between the pinball industry and his previous experience managing roller coasters at Six Flags, including how both industries handle leaks, speculation, and strategic secrecy.

Key Claims

  • Midwest Gaming Classic started as Atari Jaguar Fest in 1997, was a rotating show with 60-100 attendees, and Dan and Gary Stern took it over in 2001

    high confidence · Dan provides specific dates (1997 for start, 1999 Rochester show with 60 people, 2001 their first MGC event with ~100 people in Boy Scout basement)

  • The 2004 show at Brookfield Sheraton had 1,600 attendees but was a disaster due to venue non-cooperation and poor content organization

    high confidence · Dan describes specific grievances: attendee complained about missing Nintendo games, show lost money, drew negative reviews across the board

  • Gary Stern and Dan shut down the show entirely in 2005 after losing money for multiple years, then a volunteer group revived it with a successful community-driven model

    high confidence · Dan states: 'In 2005, we successfully murdered it. There was no show in 2005. It was dead.' A group of 10-15 volunteers took over organizing and found a venue that was '4x as big for half the cost'

  • Dan and Gary Stern split responsibilities: Dan handles content/entertainment, Gary handles vendors/logistics and finances

    high confidence · Dan: 'Gary Stern runs the vendors and does the back-of-the-house tickets' and 'the exact split that we always jokingly tell people is that Gary Stern makes the money and I spend the money'

  • Pinball manufacturers are inconsistent about advance announcements: some leak details, some stay secretive, and some provide vague commitments

    high confidence · Dan: 'the pinball industry in particular likes to, they have a lot of people within them that like to leak to people' and 'there are people that actually deal with, like me, like to be super secretive still'

  • Dan created a custom WWF Royal Rumble championship belt for the 2024 Midwest Gaming Classic with wrestling personalities present

    high confidence · Hosts mention: 'he's created a Midwest Gaming Classic WWF Royal Rumble-style, badass, heavyweight champion belt. Made by the same company that actually makes the belts.'

  • Complaint frequency about missing games has decreased from ~25 complaints per 1,500 attendees (early years) to ~10 per 15,000 attendees (recent)

Notable Quotes

  • “Gary Stern makes the money and I spend the money.”

    Dan Lusin @ ~5:30 — Characterizes the division of labor and responsibilities between the two co-creators of the Midwest Gaming Classic

  • “If you are coming for one thing, this is the wrong show to go to unless if I specifically say it's going to be there.”

    Dan Lusin @ ~29:00 — Clarifies the event's positioning relative to manufacturer announcements and attendee expectations management

  • “Don't believe the hype until parts have started to show up in the parking lot.”

    Dan Lusin @ ~38:30 — Reflects industry wisdom about entertainment industry secrecy and the unreliability of leaks/speculation across multiple verticals

  • “We need twice as much space for half the cost... We need to have someone who will just sit and sell tickets the entire time.”

    Dan Lusin @ ~47:00 — Describes the humorous 'impossible task list' that unexpectedly inspired a volunteer group to save the show in 2005

  • “The Sheraton felt that they would have business forever.”

    Dan Lusin @ ~51:30 — Explains why the original venue partner failed to provide adequate service, illustrating vendor overconfidence

  • “We had a group that was like, well, you know, what can we do to bring it back? It was probably about 10 to 15 people.”

    Dan Lusin @ ~46:00 — Demonstrates community-driven recovery of the event after near-collapse

  • “I was going to school. I was working for Six Flags at the time, and I was doing this. So I was working, like, literally 16-plus hours a day.”

    Dan Lusin @ ~31:00 — Illustrates the personal sacrifice and burnout experienced during the early difficult years of the event

  • “I know that every single podcast out there that deals with pinball leaks it months in advance. But, yeah, of course they're going to be tight-lipped.”

    Dan Lusin — Highlights the tension between community desire for leaks and manufacturer secrecy in the pinball industry

Entities

Dan LusinpersonGary SternpersonMidwest Gaming ClassiceventDrew BouvierpersonScott IanpersonRyan KuyperpersonAtari Jaguar FesteventBrookfield SheratonvenueWisconsin Centervenue

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Midwest Gaming Classic has grown from ~100 attendees in 2001 to 15,000+ in recent years, now established at Wisconsin Center venue

    high · Dan: 'First year we had just over between 100 people... The second year we moved to a high school... 206... in 2004... 1,600 people... Now we drew 15,000'

  • ?

    community_signal: Volunteer-driven model saved MGC in 2005 after near-collapse, demonstrating strong community commitment and reducing organizer burnout

    high · A group of 10-15 volunteers took over organizing after show was cancelled in 2005, found new venue with 4x space for half cost, and revived event

  • ?

    industry_signal: Pinball manufacturers vary significantly in transparency about upcoming announcements: some leak strategically, others maintain strict secrecy, creating confusion in the community

    high · Dan: 'pinball industry in particular likes to, they have a lot of people within them that like to leak to people... there are people that actually deal with, like me, like to be super secretive still'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Event organizers must manage expectations proactively to reduce attendee complaints about missing announced content, with complaint rates declining as communication clarity improves

    high · Early shows: ~25 complaints per 1,500 attendees about missing games. Recent: ~10 per 15,000. Dan now explicitly tells attendees what won't be guaranteed to attend.

  • ?

    business_signal: Venue partner quality critically impacts event success; poor partnership with Brookfield Sheraton (2004) caused event collapse despite 1,600 attendees

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.367

0:00
What's the chef cookin? Poor Man's Pinball Podcast with Drew and Ian. Welcome to the 4 Man's Pinball Podcast. Everyone's 7th favorite pinball podcast episode number 18. In studio today we have Ryan Kuyper, TurboGrafx7 on Twitch. What's going on? And our lovable host, Drew Bouvier. What's up guys? And of course me, Ian. Today we have a special guest. Please welcome one of the co-creators of the Midwest Gaming Classic, Dan Lusin. Applause. Welcome, Dan. How are you, buddy? I'm good. This was kind of quick notice. You guys only asked me, like, what, a week ago? And I was like, well, it's either tonight or, wow, I should not have just left the table. Nope, that's what we do here. Did we ask or did we beg? No, Ian asked me. He was like, hey, would you like to do this? And I was like, sure, let me check on my schedule. And then it was like, well, I can do this week Monday or, like, in two months. It was like, oh, here I am. That's awesome. We're glad to have you here. The funny thing was, yeah, Ryan, in all of his infinite wisdom, thank God we have him, He was like, we need to get these guys on. And I said, all right, yeah, sure. I'll send Dan a message. And then I sent Dan a message. I said, Dan, could you come on our podcast, you know, you and Gary? And he goes, eh, you don't need Gary.
1:41
So, well. You just need me. It's all right. Before I get in trouble, let me explain that a little bit more. Let's roll that back a little bit. So, well, no, it's actually kind of fair. There's definitely two of us that run the show. It's me and it's Gary. and we've ran the show together since 2001. The reason that I tend to be the face of the show is that I do the content side of the show. So when it comes to getting a new machine in the show or a new game or a tournament or a celebrity or whatever, that's me figuring that side of the show out. Gary runs the vendors and does the back-of-the-house tickets. So you make the money. Yeah, actually the exact split that we always jokingly tell people is that Gary makes the money and I spend the money. so he's the brains and you're the pretty face exactly and what's funny is that we used to sometimes have him join in on podcasts and like 90% of the time he would just be sitting there like I don't know what to say because nobody's ever like show how was it that you decided to move from 8x8 vendor plots to 10x10 vendor plots and you feel like vendors feel nobody ever asks that question everybody asks the questions of like oh so who's cool that's coming to the show this year? And Gary's like, well, Dan's working on that, so I don't know where he's at in those announcements. But I can tell you the table dimensions. Yeah, exactly. Well, I can tell you if we've got eight tables and how many of them are coming. And what's doubly funny about that is that if I walk into the vendor hall at the show, nobody knows who I am. And so, like the pinball guys and stuff like that, a lot of the times they'll not even realize that Gary's an equal side of the show. So I do always like bringing them up as that. But when I walk into the vendor hall, a couple years ago I walked into the vendor hall, and there was a 32X game, TMAC, and I used to work for Fun World back in the day, and we had a TMAC machine, and I was like, oh, I want to get this, because I remember liking that game but never quite figuring it out. So I picked it up, and I was like, yeah, the price is fine. So I said to the vendor, I'm sorry, I don't have money right now. Can you hold on to this? I will be right back. And they were like, we don't do that. And I was like, do you know who I am? Well, in my head I was like, I kind of want to say, do you know who I am? But that's weird, so I'm not going to say that. So I said instead, which I'm sure is just as weird, no, wait, I just need to run to the ticket booth. I'll be right back. And they were like, okay. And they were like, we really can't hold it. We'll keep it by us. But if anybody asks, we're going to sell it. And I was like, okay. I'm going to rob the ticket. I ran over there. I got it. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to hold up the booth and grab 20 bucks or whatever the game was and come back. And, like, I showed back up, and I got the game from them, and they were just looking at me like I'd just grown a third eye the whole time, like, what is going on here? And, like, Gary and I just did another show in the Chicago area called Video Game Summit, and it was funny because we had all these vendors there, and I don't know any of them. I walked around, and, well, I shouldn't say that. I knew two of them because they were personal friends before they started vending at the show. And so I walked around. Those two talked with me. No one else batted an eye with me. Gary walked around, and Gary said that his funniest moment was that one of them looked up at him and said, oh, is there anything wrong with my booth that I need to fix? And Gary said, I'm not working the show. I was just coming to say hi. And they went, oh, of course not. That's nice. We just are so used to you helping us out with your booth. And so, yeah, so there's a definite divide there. But, yeah, if you ever really want to have a podcast about, like, hey, here's how the tables were set up, Gary will be an awesome person for that. But, yeah, it's mostly me doing the interesting side of it. It's like any good business. There's always, like, you know, you need good behind-the-scenes people to get that stuff done. Yeah. You know what I got from that story? What's that? The reason why he made the WWF belt for the Midwest Gaming Classic. Now he can wear it and go to any table he wants. Hey, T-Mac, and then you can just flex this WWE belt.

high confidence · Dan: 'The first year that I'm talking about here that we drew 1,500 people, I know that I heard that at least with 25 times... Now we drew 15,000, and I heard it maybe 10.'

  • Dan worked seasonally at Six Flags for 3 years running rides, then in management for 3+ years, and observed leaking of false information and strategic misinformation similar to pinball industry practices

    high confidence · Dan describes working 'seasonally at Six Flags running rides for three years. And then I worked in management for multiple years there, three years in management' and shares anecdote about Six Flags purposely leaking false ride announcements

    • @ ~35:00
    Max
    person
    Six Flagscompany
    Great Americavenue
    Poor Man's Pinball Podcastorganization

    high · Dan: 'The Sheraton did not want to work with us at the time. They purposely changed things with the agreement... everybody hated it. We lost a bunch of money.'

  • ?

    announcement: Midwest Gaming Classic commissioned custom WWF Royal Rumble championship belt for 2024 event as social media engagement prop with wrestling personalities

    high · Hosts mention unveiling belt on Friday of show, passing it around for pictures, storing at front desk for attendee photos

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Dan notes that pinball community engages in speculation about unannounced games, with podcasts regularly leaking rumors months in advance despite manufacturer secrecy

    high · Dan: 'every single podcast out there that deals with pinball leaks it months in advance. But, yeah, of course they're going to be tight-lipped'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Max, an original Jaguar Fest community member, continues involvement with MGC by running video game tournaments at the event

    medium · Dan: 'Max, who still, he actually runs the video game tournaments now at the show. We attended Atari Jaguar Fest... in 1999'

    • 5:37
    Well, so. For those of you that are listening and don't know what I'm talking about, We'll post some pictures on Facebook. But he's got a Midwest Gaming Classic WWF-style, badass, heavyweight champion belt. Made by the same company that actually makes the belts. It's badass. Of course. I mean, Dan, he's not going to go shitty on us. He's not going to get one of those classic Hulk Hogan belts from the 80s. Well, that's what we have. Like Walmart? Yeah. The Walmart Hulk Hogan belt. That's what we spend our money on, Drew. No, not Dan. Well, and for the record, Gary was fully in on this, too. It wasn't just me saying it. oh, I'm going to buy the ridiculous belt. It was Gary going, let's buy the ridiculous one.
    6:18
    I could just see you now. Anytime you want anything, a T-Mac included, you could be like, I don't even have to show you who I am. Hold this for collateral.
    6:30
    That is possible. So what's actually funny about that is that, as I described to you guys, the reason that we actually created this belt was we had some wrestling personalities, obviously, that came to the show this year. and we were looking for stuff that would be fun for people to do as like a social media type thing that they could take pictures with. And while the belt was more expensive than a lot of people realized, it was also something that we were like, this is something that is cool and we can like pick up and carry places. And so it's great. Well, I got it. We got it the Friday of the show and so we've got it and we're like passing it around and stuff like that. And I kept putting it at the front desk so that people would let attendees take pictures with it. and every time they would come down there, it was like hiding. I was like, why is the belt away? And they were like, we're worried that someone's going to take it. And I was like, who is going to take this belt? They're going to be walking around with a Midwest Gaming Classic belt, and I'm going to be like, oh, yeah, clearly they made that one. No.
    7:24
    Guys, no one is going to walk off with the, trust me, it's too obviously not theirs. But, Dan, I've been to the Midwest Gaming Classic a few times. I would not bat an eye if I saw someone with a championship belt. With a championship belt, yes. But I would if it was my championship belt. That's the thing that I would be like, wait a minute. I know that we didn't make two of those.
    7:47
    What is the Midwest Gaming Classic to you? To me? Yeah, what is it? All right, so to me, the Midwest Gaming Classic is a... That's an interesting tweak to this question. The Midwest Gaming Classic is like a place where a whole bunch of different collectors can come together to share their passion. And so what's great about that is that it's a lot of the shows that existed before we started to exist. And I don't mean any particular type of show. I know that this is a pinball podcast, but I'm not just talking about pinball shows that existed before. I'm also talking about shows like E3. I'm also talking about shows like comic shows. I'm also talking about baseball card shows, shows that were sort of a similar style. The thing is that a lot of them really what they focused on was just, hey, we are going to have a giant vendor hall. And that's about it. And that was like, that's cool. And I totally appreciate stuff like that. That is standard for a lot of the shows. And I'm not complaining about that. There's a spot for that type of thing for sure. But when we started this, you guys, I know we were talking before we started recording that it was called Jagfest. and there is, or as we renamed it, Atari Jaguar Festival, because Jagfest equals weirdness.
    9:09
    Especially around here. Right. These parts, we got Jags. Yeah, well, so many, many Jags. Not the cars.
    9:17
    Not on the south side of Milwaukee. So we had this thing where those people, the reason that Jagfest existed was it was for the Atari Jaguar Festival, or the Atari Jaguar collectors to get together because nobody really collected it at the time. There was like 100 to 250 people probably total that were active in the community. And this was a way for people to get together. And like, sure, we could have vendors, but who's really going to fly out to vend to 100 people? Not many people. So the idea was more we're going to get together and play these games that we love that other people don't necessarily get to see as much. And then, like, if I come to you and say, oh, man, you want to play Ultra Vortex? I don't look at you like, what the hell is Ultra Vortex? I go, yeah, that would be awesome. Like I'm looking at you right now. Right, exactly. What is Ultra Vortex? Exactly. And then when we play that game, it's a fighting game. It's like a 2D Mortal Kombat-style fighting game. When we play that game, it's not just you whomping me because you played the game and I don't know what I'm doing. It's actually, like, competitive. And so the show kind of grew out of this love of sharing content with one another. For our listeners, what year was that? That was 2001. Okay. And Atari Jaguar Festival or Jagfest started in 1990. Yeah, you've got to always say Jagfest. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It started in 97 and was a rotating show, so it moved from location to location. And we had so much fun in 2001. We actually, Gary and I attended with one of our other friends, Max, who still, he actually runs the video game tournaments now at the show. We attended Atari Jaguar Fest. Well, it actually was just Jaguar Fest then in 1999 in Rochester, Minnesota. How many people came to that one? That one was about 60, which was the largest one at that time. Was that just in a hotel? It was. It was in a Days Inn. I think it was a Days Inn.
    11:08
    So when we did ours, my dad worked for the Boy Scouts at the time, so we used the Boy Scout Service Center's basement as our location, which he was able to get for us with the agreement that, hey, if you make money, why don't you make a donation? And so we said, cool, if we make any money, we'll make a donation here, and otherwise we'll have this space. And we drew about 100 people, which was the most attended Atari Jaguar Festival that there had ever been. And we found some kind of unique stuff. So there was a 3D headset for the Jaguar, and we had that at the show for the first time. And that's only been in public, like, I don't know, a few handfuls of times, period. And so we found these, like, really interesting talking pieces. And after the show, we were the only people that year also that stepped up and said, hey, we'd do this. And so after the show, we went to that community and we said, hey, if you'd like us to keep doing this, we'd be happy to, but we had so much fun, we think we're going to run something no matter what because it was that much fun. And the community came back to us and said, no, we want to move on. And we said, no worries. Like, that show was known for moving location to location, so there was no hard feelings or anything like that. And we hosted the first Midwest classic without the gaming part of it, which was very confusing for the couple years we did that because that's the same name as a basketball tournament in town and some other stuff. And that was in the early 2000s as well? That was in 2002 and 2003 that we hosted that. The first year we got just over 100 people. The second year we moved to a high school, and we thought that we were going to get a million. Well, not a million. We thought we were going to get at least 1,000 people. We had 206. I remember that number so specifically because we paid more for classified advertising than we got in the way of attendees showing up money for attendance. And there was a moment in that show where I skipped down one of the hallways with the few dollars that I had saying, this is what I did when I took out classified ads. And I still remember that moment very clearly. And then in 2004 was the year that we gained the word gaming in the middle of it, and we moved to the Brookfield Sheraton for the first time. And we held the show there, and we worked like crazy. We did a lot of different advertising. We had 1,600 people, and it sucked terribly. Because? Well, the Sheraton did not want to work with us at the time. They purposely changed things with the agreement that we had so that it was very difficult to work with. And then the other side of it is that Gary and I were trying to organize basically all of the content. And what was so difficult about that is that when you're trying to organize all of the content and you're trying to run the show, it's kind of like, well, how am I going to pull off anything? And I tell a story. I know that you guys had heard me on another podcast, so this may be a similar story that you've heard. But there was a guy who at that show walked up to me and said, well, I have every Nintendo game except for two, and neither of those two games were at the show. So the whole show was a disaster and I would never go back.
    14:01
    And at that point, Gary and I... Worst show ever. Yeah, pretty much exactly. And Gary and I threw up our hands. And it was actually, I was reading some of the reviews afterwards, and it was all the same stuff. We threw up our hands, and we're like, this is done. Like, this is stupid. We just wasted, for the second year in a row, multiple thousands of dollars on organizing a convention that everybody hated. And I hated it, and I worked, like, I was going to school. I was working for Six Flags at the time, and I was doing this. So I was working, like, literally 16-plus hours a day to do it. everybody hated it and it sucked why would I ever do this and I lost a ton of money and we, Gary and I run this place called GoatStore.com forever, it sells used video games online and we were literally we were working 12 months on GoatStore to get the money together to lose on the Midwest Gaming Classic and it was just like, this is dumb, we're busting our ass for 12 months out of the year to be ridiculed and be told by a bunch of people that they hate it. It's all coming together Yeah, exactly You've told several of these stories about some of these guys that come up to you at these shows. How often does that happen now? Very rarely. Is it once or two, just random? Probably less than a dozen times in a year now.
    15:21
    The first year that I'm talking about here that we drew 1,500 people, I know that I heard that at least with 25 times. It's just like any other time. Now we drew 15,000, and I heard it maybe 10. And a lot of these people, to be fair, have legitimate gripes. So if you are coming to a show, and if you believe that that show is going to have every single Nintendo game, for whatever reason, and that show does not, you have a legitimate gripe. But are you advertising that? Right, right. Exactly. You have everything. Right, I wasn't advertising that. But there's certain shows, and again, I'm not naming names. I'm not even talking necessarily. Name names, it's what we do here on the podcast. No, no, no.
    16:06
    No, I like everybody. Thank you. But the thing is that some of them are very vague about it because the belief is that the more vague you are about exactly what you're going to show up and see, the happier everybody will be. But then you set these expectations of other people coming up with ideas about, well, if this machine's not there or this whatever's not there, this entire show will be a disaster and why would I ever come back? And so we have now gone to the point that I specifically tell people, like, look, if you are coming for one thing, this is the wrong show to go to unless if I specifically say it's going to be there. Like this year, if you were coming specifically because you wanted to play the new Black Knight, you could have come there for that because it was guaranteed it would be there because we announced it. But if you were coming because you were certain that Jersey Jack was going to release their new game, we had never announced that officially as a show. and so if you showed up and were terribly disappointed because of that, it's not exactly my fault because of how we are trying to be very clear about that. Now, obviously, we let into that one pretty heavy because we knew what was going on. That was my question. Do these manufacturers let you in on this stuff, or do they just say, hey, we're coming, we need a room?
    17:21
    It's a little bit of both. But they're a little vague. Well, let me put it this way. Okay, the pinball industry in particular likes to, they have a lot of people within them that like to leak to people because they make it seem like, oh, this is awesome. But then there are people that actually deal with, like me, like to be super secretive still. So I had this weird thing. I was just going to ask that. Yeah, I had this weird thing where I had people coming to me that were like, this is what's going to happen from this one, and this is what's going to happen from this one, and this is what's going to happen from this one. And then I'd talk with them, and they'd be like, we have no idea what you're talking about. And I wouldn't say specifically, but I was like, you know, I've heard that you guys are planning to do something. Can you tell me what it is? They'd be like, no. No, I know. And it's funny because every single podcast out there that deals with pinball leaks it months in advance. But, yeah, of course they're going to be tight-lipped and be, oh, no, hush-hush. But who leaks it originally? Right. Well, often. But so here's the thing that's funny about that, too. As I mentioned, I used to work at Six Flags. And it was fascinating because I worked seasonally at Six Flags running rides for three years. and then I worked in management for multiple years there, three years in management. And when I was in management, I was one of the upper people in the company who knew what was going on. And we would have, just like, you know, you have your hardcores of any group, we would have hardcore roller coaster people show up, and they'd be like, wow. And I remember this one very specifically. I have already seen the blueprints for the dive coaster that we're getting next year. It's going to go right here. It's going to be amazing. And I was standing by this person. It was at a media day for one of our roller coasters, and they owe it to us because of what they built this year. And I was standing there looking at them, and I was thinking, like, well, that's funny because none of us here have ever heard of that, and that is sure as hell not happening. And so some of it is just that if you have people that put together two and two, they go, well, this is four, and they very confidently say, well, this is exactly what's going on. And do they really know that? Is there a roller coaster speculation site?
    19:16
    Probably. Oh, man. Well, and so I got to the point, like I said, I worked in the industry for a while, and I got to the point that it was, like, fascinating because there's a lot of this that also comes together with roller coasters very late, and pinball and stuff like that's the same way. If you don't have approvals at certain times, things change.
    19:35
    Yeah, I guess you're right. They're all sponsored. They all have license. It's games. Well, and it's an entertainment industry thing, honestly, is that the entertainment industry tends to operate like other aspects of it, And so they like to keep secrets, but they like to tease people and stuff like that. And so we would have these funny things where, like, people would be guaranteed, like, this is coming to this park and this is what's going to happen. And I used to always tell them, don't believe the hype until parts have started to show up in the parking lot. Right, right. And then once while I was working for Six Flags, we had parts of a roller coaster show up in the parking lot. And I saw the blueprints for the roller coaster. I know exactly where it was going to go. I know exactly what it was going to be. And a month later, we shipped it to a different park and decided not to do it. And, like, there's a lot of the – yeah, well, and, like, we hadn't announced it or anything like that. And, like, all of these people who were certain that they knew what was going to happen, as a business decision, it made more sense to send it to a different location. And so we did. And that's the same type of stuff that happens in all entertainment companies, whether they're pinball or whatever, is that, you know, there's only so many licenses at any given point in time that makes sense to be working on for a machine or whatever and so you end up hearing like oh you know what i've already heard that so and so got this license and it's going to be great and this is what it's going to be like and you end up then with these great speculations over well clearly this is what this person's doing and stuff like that and some of it's true because some of it is leaked by employees who like to be You're like, yeah, I know exactly what's going on, and I'm a bigger person for being able to sneak this out. And some of it is not. See, my kindness is huge. Right. That's so much to tell you right now. Right. And some of it's done. We used to at Great America every once in a while. I shouldn't say Great America because it was the whole chain. Six Flags used to once in a while we would purposely leak stuff that we knew was not true because then it's a bigger impact. Like if you're like, oh, yeah, so next year we're going to get two kiddie rides. And then suddenly we're building a big, tall roller coaster. All the roller coaster people are like, oh, my gosh, it's so exciting. All at the same time. Sounds just like pinball. Right. It's crazy. Right. And so it's fascinating the parallels between the two. Yeah. Interesting. That's something that I've never talked about on another podcast. Well, you heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. That's an exclusive. I'm a poor man's pinball podcast. Let's mark it down. 2205. That was an exclusive. And now I'm going to start getting people that will email me directly and be like, so tell me about the coasters. Yeah.
    22:05
    what's what's next for sex play well what's funny about that too is that for there's a lot of inside stuff there that you get and i've been always very much like i just don't talk about that stuff because i found out too that even when you do and you're honest about it a lot of that side is like no you're wrong you don't know what you're talking about so like a big thing on roller coasters is that they like to talk about how the brakes and certain ones of them work so like raging bull as that goes over one of its hills has a brake that slows it down. And so on coaster sites, they're like, oh, yeah, the park's really turned on that brake. It kills the whole ride. It's terrible. I can't believe that they're doing that again. They must be worried about its maintenance. Guys, we have nothing to do with that. The computers decide how fast the train is going and slow it down to the point that the computers are happy.
    22:51
    And the same people will be like, yeah, I got a good ride on it today. The brakes weren't on at all. And it's like, no, actually, when the brakes turned on, it meant it was going faster. so you got a bad ride on it, the brakes didn't hit, so whatever. And, like, that sort of thing. It's down just like pinball, people. Yeah, it is, and it's fascinating. And so, like, I would go on places, and I don't, how can you tell who you are online? And I didn't really care, but I would sometimes be like, guys, that's not what's going on. And they'd be like, you don't know? Okay, cool. And so I pretty much have just kind of, like, I don't care if people worry about that sort of thing on their side of it. And you can believe what you want to believe on that. And if it makes you happier to believe that Great America is going to get a 4,000-foot-tall roller coaster next year and then, oh, my God, they must have stopped doing it because of something rare, whatever, cool. Enjoy that. And same thing on pinball. If you think that the next pinball machine is 100% going to be Futurama and it's not, well, then you can just say, well, they must have had problems with the license. And you can still be right and you can still be excited about pinball, and that's ultimately fine. And the industry needs that to an extent. Can people be excited about pinball after a lady gets denied? No. Six Flags is getting a Willy Wonka this year. Yes, a Willy Wonka coaster. It's going to be amazing. And the audio clips are going to roll. You're not going to sync up with the voice clips. That's going to be awful. Yep, and you're going to roll in it like a blueberry.
    24:16
    You know the Flags that will paint you blue? Yeah. Beautiful. So 2019 MGC, amazing show. It was a great show. You guys did an awesome job. first time at the Wisconsin Center, right? Second. I missed the first time because my daughter was born. I didn't make it. Oh, that was the snowstorm. Well, we had a snowstorm this last year. So let me actually just interject here on one thing, which is that you said that you guys did, and it's really all of us. And so here's what I mean by that is that we got to the point that I hated the show and, like, I wanted to kill it in 2004. In 2005, we successfully murdered it. There was no show in 2005. It was dead. Yep. And what happened is that we had all these people come to us, and they were like, what happened? And it was like, they're stuck. Everybody hated it. They're lining up at the door. Well, it was like everybody hated it. Everybody hated it. We lost a bunch of money.
    25:10
    And Gary and I worked ourselves to the bone for it. And we had a group that was like, well, you know, what can we do to bring it back? It was probably about 10 to 15 people. And so Gary and I were like, all right, well, and Goat Store is what makes the money. So we need to not ruin them from, like, coming to Goat Store and buying stuff. So let's just come up with a list of impossible stuff that they can do. We need twice as much space for half the cost. Yes, they will never get that. We need to have someone who will just sit and sell tickets the entire time. If you love the show, why would you just sell tickets the entire time? You wouldn't. You'll hate doing that. That's perfect. We need someone who will deliver flyers to all these places in town. And so we emailed this out to this group. And unbeknownst to me, what ended up happening right after that is that one of the guys took us off of it because we had CC'd everybody. He took us off of it. They started emailing amongst themselves, divided up tasks. And a couple weeks later, I got an email that said, hey, we found a place that's actually four times as big for half the cost. What? And, oh, hey, I'm going to do tickets with my boyfriend the entire time.
    26:17
    Really? Crap. Okay. Four times for half the price? Yeah. Yeah, and so the Sheraton, when we were using them originally, was totally screwing us.
    26:29
    Because they didn't want you there? The Sheraton felt that they would have business forever. And so because they felt that they thought, let's keep making the rates higher and we'll get every penny we can out of people because people will just keep showing up. They'll be fine. And the reason that we actually went back there a number of years later was the saleswoman called me up and I was about to hang up on her, and she said, please don't hang up on me. I was, oh, okay. She knew that I was about to do that, and she said, look, we used to screw so many people so badly that I am stuck doing cold calls with people hanging up on me and refusing to listen to anything that I'm saying because of how terrible it was. And she said, please, I understand if you will never use us again. I would love to send you a thing, and if you're ever interested in moving again, I would love to just talk to you about how different we are. And I was like, all right, and they were. Let me put it this way. What year was that?
    27:20
    2010, maybe-ish, somewhere around there. That sounds about right. And so here's what's crazy. When we moved back in 2010, the space that we paid for was about equal to what we paid for in 2004. In 2004, if you remember the Sheraton where we had the food and the indoor vendors, just that little strip, and then the basement rooms, that was all the space that we took up. And they refused to let us put signs up in the Sheraton that year because they were worried that the weddings would be turned off by gamers walking around. And it was like, thanks. So we had the arcade stuff in the back and the video game stuff in the basement, and one of the biggest reviews online for it was they said that there would be arcade games there, and there was zero. I was like, crap, you didn't find the back room, and why should you have? Because there was no signs, and they refused to tell you anything. Did you write it on a piece of paper? Well, we had maps, and we really tried telling people, but people only listen so much to maps. But anyway, so what happened was all those people were like, hey, we really want to do this. And so we were like, crap, I guess we're going to try it again. And what's absolutely amazing about the show is that that was 2005 for the 2006 show. Every single person that worked with us that year still works with the show. The girl and her boyfriend who did tickets for us are now married. The girl has been doing pinball tournaments lately, Jen. Some of you may have met her doing pinball tournaments. The boy is Jeff, I guess man. The boy. Sorry, Jeff.
    28:49
    He sets up part of the museum for us. The guy who found the space for us, he sets up, he's like the main guy in charge of the modern half of the museum, which is the larger half of the video game stuff. All of these people, the guys that ran the flyers for us, still work with us. They've been longtime pinball people. Are these all paid positions? No, volunteers. Volunteers. That's awesome. I love that museum, though. That museum is very, very unique to any other video game show I've ever been to. For those who haven't been there, it's just basically acrylic cases with all the old vintage. It's basically a great timeline of gaming. From Pong. Even earlier than Pong, I think. Atari. All the electromechanical stuff. There's all sorts of random randos that you're like, whoa. It looks like a real museum. Like I said, they have the cool acrylic cases, and they set it up, and they have the timeline you walk through. You get to a point where people let you touch stuff and then you can start playing some of the other stuff. It's very cool. Yeah, just seeing even some of the old Ataris and just stuff from the 60s, 70s. It's very neat. Well, and that was kind of the biggest thing behind that was, again, there was, at the time, the other shows that were in the country,
    29:58
    like the biggest video game one was CGE, which was Classic Gaming Expo, which for a long time was in Vegas. Yes, Vegas. We love Vegas. they had this amazing museum with all this really rare stuff in it, but you would walk in and look at it, and that was kind of it. And we were like, well, we want to get people to play together. And so that was kind of the genesis of the whole show was we want, and it was like at first when it was named Midwest Gaming Classic, we held a competition. Actually Ben Heck was before he was internet famous as he will say was the one that came up with the name Benjamin Heck Exactly He came up with the name And so we were like okay well what does this mean now And we were like all right first Midwest do we only do games in the Midwest How do we do that? And then it was like classic, what defines a classic? How old does it have to be? And we were trying to draw lines in the sand and figure out where this was. And in general, we were basically just like, well, screw it. It's going to be everything. and the idea was is that like if you're really into pinball cool video games are not that different than pinball in many ways we want those people to be able to cross over and computers are not that different and maybe you're only in some modern podcasts there's people swearing at you tabletop games they have everything we didn't have tabletop games until later on and like that's something that is growing bigger and bigger with our show every year because it's something that's been added now, and that community, again, is starting to understand, like, oh, they're really serious about this. And if you go there, yeah, you see a lot of people playing these games, like tables upon tables of people playing games. Yeah, and going back to you talking about people involved. For those of you that are listening, that is Ryan Kuiper talking.
    31:40
    Ryan's still here. Still here. You know, this last year in particular, the scope of the size of the show compared to the first time I'd ever gone is so, I mean, it dwarfs what it used to be. And you look at the tables everywhere and the people everywhere and all the stations of all these things set up, the amount of people it takes to put this show on seems staggering to me. It is. I will tell you that at one point the first year that we were at the Wisconsin Center, I walked into the room and was like, oh, my God, this looks so cool. I can't believe that someone set this up. I'm so glad I get to attend with it. And then I was like, wait a minute, it was me that kind of set this up? But, I mean, like, I kind of did. So, like, this is my room. So, yeah, and, I mean, the difference in Wisconsin Center to Sheraton is crazy. I was going to ask you how that started, the Wisconsin Center. Sure.
    32:36
    Let me get back to that in just a second because here's just the size difference. So last year at the Sheraton, including hallways and tent, we had about 60,000 square feet. The first year at the Wisconsin Center, we had two and a half times that. And we were real worried. Is that the scene of the Sheraton for our listeners who have never been there, what it was like when you guys were in all the literal hotel rooms? Oh, yeah. Well, so one of the things. So people know. And hallways to the rooms. Yeah. So people know where you came from. It was like the red light district at Amsterdam. So this was two years ago. They were still at the Sheraton. Well, and so the Sheraton, actually, this kind of leads into your question about how we got here. The Sheraton, when we moved there, was like, yeah, we want to make this really big. And so our first conversation, I was like, well, we had issues because your space is so spread out that it was really hard to connect at the time that we were here. And it was actually my saleswoman who was like, so what you do is you get, like, white dots and you stick them all over the floor. And then you tell people that they're like Pac-Man. Follow the dots room to room to make sure that they go to the mall. And I looked at her and I said, you're going to let us put stickers all over the carpet in the hotel? She goes, why would I not? And I was like, okay, it's totally different management. This is so different. And I got her to put in the contract because that was one of the things that they used to do when we first went there is that they would say stuff that was nice, but then they would not actually let us do it. And so we put in the contract. It was like, okay. Is that contract like 100 pages? It was longer than usual ones because we were really protecting ourselves with them. But we did other stuff where, like, at one point we came in and we were like, we need a spot for speakers and we just don't have any ideas. And then, again, the same woman who was our saleswoman says, why aren't you using our restaurant? And I was like, because it's your restaurant. And she was like, right. This hotel is yours now. And she said, well, her exact quote was, the only people here are your people. We'll sell more if you have a reason for them to sit there. And I was like, okay. And so we took over the hotel. Yeah, and so they got to the point, and they too, a year later, she said we were looking for a place to put tabletops for the first time. And she was like, well, why haven't you used our lobby for anything yet? I was like, because it's where people check in? And she said, look, she said, you sell out our entire hotel. if there are like two or three people that got a room on accident not knowing that your show is going on and they walk in and they don't want to be here during your show they should know that the moment that they walk in so before they check in they can request to move to another hotel instead of them going well crap i want to i got checked in now i'm around the corner and there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on i don't know if this is the right day for me and so she was like no that's fine and so we did that we ended up taking over nine hotel rooms where they literally pulled the beds out of them in the back room. They're playing games in actual hotel rooms. You go in there, there's like CRT monitors and gaming. And those were officially set up between us and the hotel. Oh, my God. So that wasn't like just a random hall that was legitimately part of the show. How was that hotel for energy consumption? Like, I never experienced any problems with any flippers when I played pinball there, but I know in other shows. Some people have said that. I've always been in an issue with it. Yeah, flippers. But it's always been really, really nice when I've ever gone. Well, so that's because of, so we talked about the belt, and Gary and I don't really do things half way. We do things full way. You can say half ass. I generally don't. Don't worry. Drew will. We'll let it in for you. You got my back, yeah. Dan said half ass. I heard it.
    36:23
    We don't usually half. Then there's a pause, and then Drew, ah! Editing. You're not on special in lit right now. I'm a magical editor, so I can make it all work. You've already dropped like four F-bombs. Exactly. Constantly. Orbital Albert, we're coming for you. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry. No, it's all good. Be patient. So when we were at the Olympia the last years and we were starting to get significantly more machines in, we did start to have flipper issues, and so we started building our own power grid. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. Sorry. Yeah, whoa. Yeah. You can't glaze over, we built our own power grid. Now it sounds like we're in an 80s movie. Please explain. This whole thing is like... Yes. Well, this is what's awesome about having him on, is the logistics of doing all this stuff. It's not just rent a hall and show up and it's just all funny. No, I know. This is awesome. And I appreciate that you said that because there are so many people that, like, I guarantee, you guys figured out that I'm doing a countdown on our Facebook page right now. And so there are people, I guarantee when I announce it, that are going to have some sort of issue. They're going to be like, well, you couldn't just move like three weeks or whatever. And it's like you don't understand how many different things that takes. And like, so my favorite person last year was someone who emailed me two weeks, like a week before the show. And their email said, did you not see that the largest snowstorm in the history of this state will be happening? Which, by the way, I didn't know what they were talking about. but they said, we'll be happening right before the show. We still don't know. We just saw that April. Yeah, exactly. And they were like, He didn't email God. And they said, we have not seen your announcement yet moving the dates of the show, but we figure you are either working on this, and if not, you will be responsible for the blood of the children who will die on their way to your show. Wow. That has never been said on a podcast. Blood of the children. We got a first. Blood of the children. I'm writing it down. That's way worse than ass. Well, and what's funny about that, too, is that that was kind of the story that we were laughing about. And some people thought that I was seriously, like, missed by this. And I was like, no, this is someone that does not understand. Because they were like, you should just move the show two weeks. And I was like, yes, because the Wisconsin Center is cool with that. I'll just call up everybody that got the hotel rooms, too. We've only sold about 1,200 hotel rooms this year. Hey, 5,000 people. We're just moving this. Don't worry about it. It's going to be fine. All your pre-order tickets are good for two weeks later. Tell your bosses. Hey, who is this? I know that we just worked out Saturday, but I totally got to get you to move now because somebody wants me to move the show because they're worried about snow that may or may not happen, which, by the way, that snowstorm basically didn't happen. Who is this jag? No pun intended. I don't even remember, and that is the thing. There's a positive and there's a negative being out there so much, and don't get me wrong. like I'm not trying to make fun of them directly about it, but the understanding or the lack thereof, well, that's you.
    39:32
    The understanding or lack thereof of exactly what this takes. You're just saying it's a large-scale operation. Right, and there's so much that go into that. Right.
    39:43
    It's not like planning a birthday party. Right, exactly. That's a perfect example. There you go. Sure. And I, a couple years ago, because we like to be honest about this stuff, when we were talking about moving, I had posted a picture of the tent, of a Model 3, a Tesla Model 3, and said, the tent is cheaper than this car. I'm sorry, it's more expensive than this car. And everybody was like, no way. Yeah. Everybody was like, no, that tent's like $1,000. I heard that. You said it was like a $20,000 tent. No, no, no, no. Oh, there you go. $45,000. Woo! You're moving up in the world with your tent. Yeah. That was a real fun thing to spend $45,000 on. I went to the tent for my son's graduation. I don't even know how that expense would work. It was like $300. That would be nice. I don't know. No, it was a Mexican place. I just came and brought a tent. Just crazy. I can't even fathom that. No, it is. Right. So $45,000 for a tent. $45,000 because it doesn't just involve the physical tent itself. It's just the tent. It's like 15. I think it was 18 that we ended up with. But there's also setup. You have to secure it. And you can't just secure it with, like, regular security. We had official police officers there. Because if you have someone break into the tent and start stealing someone's stuff, you want someone that can be like, hey, you're under arrest right now, not, hey, please stop doing that, I've called the police and they will show up eventually. Like, that's not going to fly for vendors. And it shouldn't. So we needed actual police to do it. We needed to do sandbags around the whole thing so it wouldn't leak rain in it.
    41:09
    Permits probably. There was permits. There was tons of stuff like that. Just back up just a second for the listeners who don't know, who are probably out of state or have never gone to MGC. There is a ginormous tent that was at the end. Was.
    41:23
    Right. We're not doing tent shit anymore, thank God. However, under this giant canopy, I'm talking, think circus. It's crazy. It's a giant. It's a large house and a yard. It was 18,000 square feet. It was more of a business. 18,000 square feet. It was 300 by 60. And I will say this. They had as many tables as they could fucking fit under. And there was all vendors, and it wasn't just pinball. It wasn't just arcade. It was brilliant. It had everything. If you wanted any kind of Nintendo game or Sega game or pinball part, it was all under this damn tent. It was quite an impressive thing. I remember being at the show before the tent came. So let's back up to that point. The show's over, and you're like, we've got to get a tent. How did that happen? I mean, that's a huge, bro, we need a $45,000 tent. Is this called tent gain? So it doesn't start off as a $45,000 tent. So does that mean the year before you made $45,000 more? Oh, clearly.
    42:27
    No, I'm going to be that guy now. No, you can totally be that guy. You must have took $50,000 and just put it in your pocket. Exactly, constantly. You motherfuckers. 2012 was good.
    42:38
    2012 was a good year. No, so what's funny about this is that every so often, again, those people that don't quite understand that side of it. I had someone once come up to me that was like, well, you guys are grossing over a million dollars on the show. And I was like.
    42:51
    And for those of you listening, he is wearing a three-piece suit and a diamond ring the size of my fist on his pinky finger. Actually, my legitimate wedding band has nothing on it. And I'm wearing a Rocco's Modern Life shirt. I was going to say, he's wearing a Rocco's Modern Life t-shirt. It's awesome. It is pretty awesome. That he got for free somewhere. From my sister who gave it to me as a gift. So that's true. Millionaire Dan. That's his new name. Exactly. We call him Diamond Dan here. What's funny is that that person, too, is someone who I knew. And I was like, how do you get a million dollars? And he was like, well, you have 10,000 people coming. And they're each paying at least $100 a ticket. And so 10,000 times 100 is a million dollars. That's me dropping the mic. We're out. A million bucks. And I was like, well, wait a minute. $100 would be a three-day ticket, so that wouldn't be 10,000 people. Kids are free.
    43:44
    Even at that, that would be half of that because they're each getting that. Everybody that's bringing a machine in, which is hundreds of people at this point, no, I wish that I was getting that much. No. And, yeah, there's a lot.
    43:59
    You were like, folks, that was a no. We're not digging into finances, but real quick, yes or no, do you make a million dollars a year? No. The show has never grossed a million dollars. You better hear her first, folks. If you combined our best three years, you would still not quite gross a million dollars. Oh, my gosh. And to be clear, it's not just Dan and his partner. No, I know. There is a team. I know. A literal small army of helpers to make that show work. You know, it's like any business. I don't want to get on a tangent here, but, like, you know, staring when they talk about, oh, their bill of materials and stuff. Tangent in three, two, one. Tangent. No, you know, they pay for, you know, insurance, and you've got all kinds of stuff that people don't even think about. Yeah, it's overhead. Right. What does that mean? Power grids. We didn't even talk about the power grids. Yeah, no. Well, that's what we just started this whole thing. We're starting it. We didn't even get to them yet. That's the plan. But, yeah. What is your insurance bill, I mean? Insurance is actually not so bad because we have a – well, it used to be pretty crazy, but we have an insurance agent who I actually heard about from Spooky Pinball because they mentioned him. He's up in Green Bay. And I'm, of course, because this is just how my night's going, I'm totally blanking on his name right now.
    45:08
    He's not listening anyway. Vincent Urban and Walker. Oh, they're listening. And so I called him up and was like, hey. And he was like, yeah, we'd love to do this. And because he can come in and do it all himself, and he's at the show anyway, the insurance cost of the show is not crazy. It's still in the thousands of dollars. But it's not like $20,000 or something like that. There's a lot of other things that we owe $20,000. So let's circle back to Power Goods. Yeah, let's get back to Power Goods. We started in that last year at the Olympia, the power was starting to drop out. Like flippers were literally weak. When you would hit both flippers on a lot of Williams games, it would reset.
    45:51
    And there's two issues with this. The first issue, obviously, is the gameplay. The second issue is that there's a lot of people who, especially at the time, didn't understand that that's an issue when you have voltage drops on your power and wasn't actively hurting the machines. And so we would have people that, after that show, were like, well, I can't bring my games back because they keep breaking because of the power grid, and, you know, I'm going to come home with a broken game every year. It was like, once you plug it into a regular power supply, it's going to be fine. Wait, wait, wait. These are pinball people that thought this? Yeah. Because I'm an idiot, but I even know that. Well, and it's because a lot of this information has gotten a lot clearer. So I'm not, again, I'm not calling anybody out on this, but, like, at the time, who's the idiot? There was, Tom, there was not much. You're the idiot, Drew. You're not listening. There was not much known online about this stuff. And so people would see their games resetting, and they would think, oh, my God, there's some huge issues that are being caused here. And now there's so much more information that you can get with searches and stuff like that, so much easier than you could back then. It's also the reason why we had talked before we started that pinball prices used to be so much less is that people thought that they would be impossible to repair, and there wasn't that much information on it. And so as you get more information, it fixes it. But we were like, look, this experience sucks both for the people that are playing and for the people that are bringing. So we started talking with my father-in-law, who's an electrician, and said, how can we fix this? And so I now am the proud is not quite the right word, proud owner of two power supplies that power our show, which are a grand total of 1,200 amps that break out into mini distribution boxes, that break out into additional mini distribution boxes. Well, we call it die-on. Damn, my dick got hard and soft at the same time when you talked about that. That's so weird. Okay, this got real weird. You knew what you were getting into, right? This is called poor man's pinball, huh?
    47:44
    All that power was weird. Right. Right, well, and we started because we were like, we need these not to drop, and so we worked with the Sheratons to start building the system, and we were able to bring in three-phase 200-amp, which you can break down to 600 amps, and doing the main panel and then the first few pieces of that panel were like... So you're bringing your own panel? Oh, yeah. The parts were like $8,000 by themselves for that first part. Did you hear that, people who think he's a millionaire? Well, at this point, I used to jokingly tell people that the power grid was my medieval madness because that was the expensive pinball machine at the time, and we paid more for the power grid than a medieval madness. People were like, you're crazy. And since then, we've doubled it and doubled the capacity on each of them. So it's minimally, like each year, this last year, we only spent $2,500 on it, which was by far the cheapest year that we've done. And, like, we're already working on more parts for this next year. But the idea is that that way we can control our own power, spread it out, and make sure that everything works right. And so that's something that our show decided to invest in a long time ago because we were like, look, we want to be able to do this. And then what sucks is that you end up with this asset that sits in the basement for 362 days a year. And, like, we've talked about potentially using it for other shows. But, like, what am I going to do? I'm going to send another show an $80,000 power grid and hope it comes back. Well, I was just about to ask. So do you talk to some of the guys from, like, Texas and some of these others? I don't talk with Texas too often because they were pretty established by the time that we got bigger. But a lot of the smaller shows that started after us, and smaller is probably not the right word, but a lot of the shows that started more after us talked with me on a pretty regular basis. Because what I'm curious about, like, say you're in Vegas, right, and they have a pinball show. Do they have the power because, you know, like the casino? Well, yeah, and maybe. It's not so much the wall power. it's the distance and the gauge of the wires and stuff like that. I was going to ask, you know, being ignorant to all this. Yeah, I'm going to fucking retire when we're talking about this stuff. This is terrible. I mean, but this is why it's nice to talk to you. You're talking about supplying extra power for all this kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. I'm curious about it. Is this something that other shows do? That's what I'm wondering. That you know of? That I know of? No. Okay. But part of it is that they're better able to balance what power they have. Part of what we were doing is that the Sheraton that we were at, we knew didn't have enough power in certain rooms, so we worked with them to add on to that. And now working at the Wisconsin Center, we only have to pay to plug in the power grid. Otherwise, we'd be paying $155 per outlet. And I don't got that sort of money. Is that standard? Do they do that?
    50:24
    Standard for what? The $155? Yes, that's standard. In the past, the Wisconsin Center was not willing to let us plug in our power grids. And that was the biggest reason. People would come to me every year. Again, they're all like, well, we know more than you. Hey, you guys actually have a lot of people that showed up. Have you ever thought about moving somewhere else? Wait. No. You mean the people that never organized the show know more than you? Right, exactly. Well, and they would come and have it. Just checking. Well, my favorite quote was always, and these were the years when the tent was attached to the building, well, clearly you've outgrown the building.
    51:06
    And it would be like, well, you might not have noticed, but clearly you've outgrown the building. I was like, yeah, there's a tent. Dan, have you ever touched somebody right in their nose? No, I just kind of smile and giggle in these situations.
    51:18
    Ian wouldn't be so kind. Me? No, no. I see Ian getting irritated right now. You see the neck thing? Yeah, I can tell. next thing.
    51:29
    That's a little harsh for you. I would kill Meeble. I would kill him. Our show is in fucking tent city right now. Take ten steps back and please leave the premises. I will stick the dogs on you. You are such a nice guy, it seems. How do you keep yourself from throat punching somebody? No, he's a nice man. Well, it comes down to the... Well, I don't really throw a punch. It's also because it comes down to the... Yeah, I mean, there might be opportunities. I'm not going to rule it out.
    52:05
    We're breaking them down. It's good. But the thing is that there is fairness to people that don't understand. Damn, that's... No, so... You're awesome for just, like, you know, taking all that crap and saying, like... Well, thanks, but again, this isn't... The show exists because all these other people came there. And so if I'm not explaining to those other people why this happened and what we're doing, I feel like I'm doing a bad job of organizing the show and being in charge of it. So if, like, all these volunteers have come on and they're like, yeah, I'm going to volunteer my time, and then I'm taking a million dollars and, like, rolling in it, then clearly the show is going to die. Well, it was funny because this last year we did have someone online. And someone, again, I have people. And this guy was being totally nice. He texted me, and he was like, oh, my God, you probably don't want to read this right now because it might make you really angry, but after the show you should look at this. And there was some guy that posted, like, I went to the show, and clearly the guys that ran the show are going to be millionaires after this show because of how many people were there just on Saturday alone. It's ridiculous, and the prices that they charge and all. So I did the math and was like, yeah, so we need like 30,000 people to show up so that I can be a millionaire. So we might get there tomorrow. And how many people showed up? Right. It was 15,000 total, but we needed 30,000 a day or something like that. I forget what the exact numbers were, but there was a joke, and I had said it in the after party for the pinball stuff, of like we need something like an extra 25,000 more people to show up tomorrow, and then maybe I'll get it. And then later on I went, wait a minute, that would only make one of me and Gary a millionaire, so we need to double that.
    53:45
    That's what Drew and I are doing for this podcast. We just got to double our viewership. Every single time. It's like the underpants. Double it. Double it? Question mark. Double it. Profits. But with the power grid and the Wisconsin Center, the Wisconsin Center kept coming to us, and they were like, yeah, we really want to have you. And we'd always be like, cool, let's talk. And I'd always go and meet with them. We'd always get to power, and they'd be like, well, we need to plug everything in. I was like, okay, how much is that going to cost? Let's say that I've got only 1,500 things to power up, which would be, honestly, I think, less than what we do. And they were like, well, let's do the math, 1,500 times 155. And it was like, holy crap, that's like $300,000. The show's never grossed that much, much alone profit. Oh, no. So, and we were always never able to do it. So they were literally trying to charge you the gross. Well, and we just take a pinball machine and plug it in. Yeah, well, and then you're going to love this, too. There was a time where they said that the commercial equipment that came to our show, we couldn't have people set up because they had to set it up because it's commercial and they wanted it to be safe. And I was like, so how many people here set up pinball machines regularly? And they were like, well, but that's not the point. I was like, no, no, no, buddy, it is. Because you are not going to have someone show up with a brand-new pinball machine and be like, here you go, dude who's never set up a game. Have at it. That's not going to work. And so what actually ended up happening is that the Wisconsin Center, we knew that we had outgrown it. and then the last year... Not the Wisconsin. I'm sorry, the Sheraton. We knew that we had outgrown it, but the last year, too, the saleswoman had changed to someone new, and they were... A lot of what the Sheraton had done for us, they were suddenly trying to take back for some reason, and it was weird, so they were like, yeah, next year you can't do the restaurant. We can't use that, and we don't think we want you in the lobby. We don't think this... Oh, and we're going to double your rates. And I was kind of like, why? That's sales 101 when people start out. Someone new comes in, they're like, okay, now my budget's this, so now I've got to rake these guys over the coals and try to get something more out of them, squeeze them. And the truth is that as a show, we were paying the hotel itself very little money because we were paying the tent company very much money. And so it was kind of a balance. And you put all that money in your pocket. That's hilarious. Exactly. And then I took it out of my pocket and paid everybody that I owed it to. The soft top might be more than the hard top. Yeah, that is crazy. Yeah, you're right. Well, and so, but sort of, because what the Sheraton did is that they made tons of money off of food and beverage sales. They made tons of money off of hotel room sales to the point that my previous salesperson, it was actually a different gentleman, who moved downtown and kind of indirectly worked with us. So that's all that, by the way, the food and beverage and stuff? Yep. And so the new, he told me, and he told me this when he was working there. He said, the only reason this hotel is in the green is because your show does so much business for us in the middle of April that it keeps us in the green the rest of the year. Wow. Not so much anymore. And he told me that it is amazing because of that. And so when we left, he's working downtown at one of the hotels that we partner with, actually. Not in a sales role, but I've interacted with him a couple times. And his first conversation with me was, what did they say when you said you weren't coming back? because they used to tell me that they would fire me if I lost you guys. And I was like, wow, you never told me that. He was like, yeah, because I never wanted to lose you and I didn't want you to feel that stress, but I really wanted you to come back. And now I'm homeless. Well, no, he works at a different hotel. He was ecstatic to see us coming to the Wisconsin Center because of that. He's drinking again, guys. He's doing his whiskey and he's doing his whiskey and sours. He didn't drink last week, folks. So we, though, when we moved downtown, what was crazy is that I had, we were meeting with both places, and this happened every year. And I was doing lunch with the Wisconsin Center, and I was doing, like, just regular meeting with the Sheraton. And Gary had said to me, which one do you want me to go to because I can take off of work for one but not both? And he said, is there any chance of doing the Wisconsin Center? I said, no, so might as well do the Sheraton. And he was like, cool. And so I'm sitting there at the Wisconsin Center, and Liz, who's still our saleswoman there, is amazing. And she's sitting there, and she's bullet point going through everything that we've had issues with in the past. Well, this is what we're going to do for power. This is how we're going to solve it. This is what you can do. You can plug in your systems. You can bring in your stuff. This is what we can do. I've already talked with this person. Whoa, okay. She had everything else. Oh, and then for this, here's how we can divide this. Now, at your show this last year, you had this many rooms. Like, she had actually come to our show right after I had had a fight with the saleswoman, actually, at our previous show, and said, well, I'm going to meet with Ms. Johnson Center now. I'll talk to you later. So I came, and we had that meeting there, and we walked around with it, and everything was fine, but I still didn't think that there was any possibility of going. She bullet-pointed everything that I had been looking for, and then Price wasn't crazy when he factored in the tent and everything else. And so she's like, well, let's go walk and see the space. And so I'm texting Gary at this time on my phone. Holy crap, this might actually work out. I can't believe this. They're being reasonable about everything. And at the same time, I noticed that there's an email that came in from my salesperson at the Sheraton. And we had this issue, like I said, at the Sheraton where they wanted to move us out of stuff. And the assistant general manager had said to me the year before, like, I don't understand what they're doing. We don't have a way to let you operate unless if you guys are doing this. We have a whole bunch of people that are just looking at the numbers now instead of operations, and it's driving me nuts. And he would protect us. Like when they tried pulling us from the restaurant the day before the show, that final year, he came in and said, I don't think that Dan goes crazy very often. So I don't think we actually told him. And I also don't think we actually told him because I didn't schedule anybody to work in the restaurant because we always let Dan have the restaurant. So what are we doing here? And he said, well, if you can find him a new place to run this, that's fine. But otherwise, he's going to use the restaurant this year. And I told him his name was Keith. I said to him, Keith, you know, if you're ever not here, I don't know that we can come back. As I'm walking to the Wisconsin Center, I get an email that's from my saleswoman that says, hey, we just got sold. Is it okay if we move our date for the meeting a little bit? We're undergoing a lot of management shifts right now. And I said, oh, no, anybody that I know. And she texted me back, as I'm walking to the Wisconsin Center, I'm still the only person who I think that you know is Keith. And I was like, I emailed, I texted Gary immediately and was like, this got a lot more real. Keith has gone from the Sheraton. I don't think we've got the protection there anymore. And clearly the Wisconsin Center is very interested in getting us. And so we, obviously everything worked out. And then it double worked out because the snowstorm that we've been talking about, which we've now gone two years in a row with, if we had had that blizzard with the tent, it would have landed on the tent. Our heat would have taken longer to melt it than what we would have liked it to do, which might have meant it would have condensed, which would have meant that the condensation would have been falling like rain on the inside of the tent, which would have meant that Sunday we would have had to shut down the show, which I guarantee would have put the show out of business. As it was, the first Wisconsin Center year, we basically lost about $10,000 on, which on one hand, big loss. On the other hand like with the snow and everything else okay it was understandable what happened here And so we were able to go back through and we started looking at exactly what we can do to kind of fix that and kind of stabilize the show for the first time And this last year was the first year that we really were able to kind of put everything together And it's not like the show made tons of money.
    61:24
    If we have certain things happen, we're back in the red. But that's where having as much content is what's difficult, is that that costs money. And so two-thirds of our floor is content. Sure, sure. And so you end up with two-thirds of our floor is me spending money and throwing money at the Wisconsin Center to get the places or the place to rent the tables or whatever. Well, you started with a million dollars. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's clearly nothing.
    61:57
    I still still owe someone a total of $35,000 for this year's show because we've been going back and forth with it. That's like the size of the smaller bills at this point. Don't envy you. All right, so last MGC, let's just say that. How'd that go? How was attendance? How was kind of the turnout, and what was the feedback? Well, and so that's the one that I was saying. In the way of the actual money, we basically were at the point now that it's not like anything's crazy, but we're still not making like Boku bucks or anything like that, but we're in a much better spot overall for that. We grew 15,000 people over the three-day event. We really don't count Friday much because Friday is just the preview night. We limit that to a pretty low number, and then we only open up the gaming side of it. So really it's the Saturday and the Sunday. Sunday we still had a snowstorm. Sunday was still significantly less attended than Saturday. But we had set ourselves up in a better way kind of knowing like, hey, let's pull together some stuff and let's kind of size this in a way that makes sense. And so overall, we were pretty – I honestly was very happy with the show. It ran a lot smoother than the first year. That happens when you're in the second year of a Spice. Of a Spice. You've been talking too long. You are losing your tongue. Ryan, what do you think about this year's MGC? I want to know. Ryan had some nice choice words to say about it. Give Dan a rest. He's going to drink some water. He's going to fuel up. What game was missing? Time crisis. as a matter of fact.
    63:28
    I've been coming for a long time, and like I said, the first one I remember going to, I think it was the last one at the Olympia,
    63:36
    and then it was the Sheraton for a while, and then the last two were at the Wisconsin Center. And to watch it grow has been something, I mean, this is going to sound kind of weird, I almost kind of take pride in it in a way because it's the local show that I go to, I support, I try to drag friends to, And I have gone to other shows around the country. I mean, I have traveled across the country to go to other large shows, and I'm not going to say the names of what they were because I'm going to speak negatively about them.
    64:06
    Only negatively in a way compared to Midwest Gaming Classic. And I'm not saying this as a homer. Midwest Gaming Classic is better in size, in scope. The other ones I had gone to might have had some aspect that was maybe bigger, but as a whole, the whole part of MGC, every aspect, total package, way, way better.
    64:31
    Well, thank you. And I mean that. I mean, like, I have spent money going across the country to some of these shows. His wife has the receipts. She does. And one show in particular, I won't say what it is, Everyone's like, you've got to go to this one. This is the one. And I'm like, all right, I'm coming. And I went there, and I'm like, yeah, you know what? This was cool.
    64:52
    But the one back home is better. Well, and so the thing that's different that you've probably picked up on is that we, for the longest time, people didn't understand why we had put everything together. And, like, I would have people that were on the pinball side that would be like, yeah, this is a great show, but why is all the video game stuff here? And I was like, no, no, no, you don't get it. It will get to the point that you get it. And you guys are younger. I still consider myself younger, I guess. And so, like, our generation, it's all kind of the same sort of thing. I'm in a basement where there's a pinball machine and arcade games. A lot of the, when we started, a lot of it was one or the other. And so we had the benefit that a lot of those people were like, oh, okay, and now they're starting to get it. Now it's like, oh, I get this. And so, like, I was at a party, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, and there was someone who didn't know that I ran the show that was nearby and they were talking and they're a pinball person. They were like, man. And so I go to this show and when I go to the Midwest Gaming Classic, I realize that I didn't play one game of pinball. I sat playing tabletop games for an entire day with people. I stayed up until past midnight playing this game of werewolf with people. The next day I was kind of hungover for a little while so I slept in and then I ended up just sitting and playing video games. And then at the end of the show when I was packing up my pinball machine, I went, man, I didn't play any pinball. What happened? And that's the thing that I think is kind of unique about it is that we have gotten to the point that your experience at the show is not just one thing. And if you are going for just one thing, I generally tell people, look, we're probably not the show for you. Maybe we are because we've gotten some bigger things. But part of the reason that we've gotten those bigger things, part of the reason that I think that manufacturers of pinball have picked up on our show is because if you're going to go to another pinball show that's just pinball, every single one of those people will hear about the new game. If you are going to release that game there, they're all hearing about it. If you are going to release that new game at our show, every single person at that first show will still have heard of that new game, as well as all these people at our show that maybe didn't know that pinball was still new. There was a large crossover with Willy Wonka and Black Knight this past year at the show of the general public going, huh, they make pinball. New ones. I had no idea. and like Milwaukee especially has started to support a pretty good number of different places where you can go play. And I'm not patting myself on the back for that, but part of that is that the general public here is realizing, hey, this is still a thing. And so that's where I think that it's finally, it's taken darn near 20 years to get to that point. But I think that that's where people are starting to realize like the sum of it all is bigger than small parts. And then the flip side of that too is that you said that you're very proud of it. The thing that's amazing is that if you just look at what Gary and I do for the show, the joke is that, and it's actually the truth, is that if it's just what Gary and I do, we have some video game stuff for sale, a couple broken pinball machines, and that's it. And nobody comes and nobody cares. But it's because of what everybody else brings to the show. And whether that's just as an attendee showing up and walking around. Do you find you're getting that feedback a lot where people say you should just be more pinball-centric? Not anymore. Okay. That used to be the regular thing. We used to have people that would tell us video games should be separate. And then we also had the weird thing of there's been some different groups of organizers that have tried to get together to talk about things. And I'm always happy to try to talk with people, but I also have always thought it's weird because shows are all so different. It's hard to necessarily overly tell someone about exactly what you do because most of it's not going to be the same. The contract situation that I have with the Wisconsin Center is unique and completely different than any other venue that I've ever used or that anybody else is using. So I'm happy to go tell, I don't know, any other show about that contract situation, but it's not like that's going to help them do anything. And so what was fascinating is that a lot of them will say stuff like, oh, well, we were supposed to in this one say about what made us unique, and I'm quick about these things, a matter of fact. I run the show. It's up in Milwaukee. And pinball is kind of an equal part to all these different aspects of the show, like video games, computers, tabletop games, and stuff like that. And I had all these other people chime in and be like, no, we've got video games, too, and we've got arcade games, too. It's just the same as you. And I was like, I appreciate what your show is, but you should own that side of it because if you want to do something better than us, you can do any part of our show better than us by itself. But the combination of it is the weirdness and the coolness and the uniqueness that's now become this. And the understanding by so many people of that benefit, like what you just said, is what I think makes our show what it is.
    69:36
    So for 2020, what do you think is going to be better or new from 2019? That's coming up in April. So the biggest thing that we're really looking at doing is that we're just looking to expand on some stuff. stuff that we've already done and then also enhance things in a better way. And so the first thing is that we can only get so much bigger so quickly because we're at the point that like, oh, we could add another 30,000 square feet. I don't know how I'd pay for it. And I don't know that we'd get money for it. So the spacing was good last year. Yeah. It was definitely not crowded at all. You guys can outgrow those guys inside, do you think?
    70:17
    Yes and no. The pacing. There's not another place to move to if we do. I was going to say. So we're not trying to because of that. But, I mean, like, you know, that's what a lot of people think is, oh, well, you know, it's easy. You can come to this basement. Yeah, there you go. But, like, a lot of people are like, oh, it's easy again. We can do, like, get Sony and Microsoft to show up and set up big booths, and you'll get tons more people. And it's like, well, first, they don't, like, do shows like this because that costs them a ton of money. and secondly even if we got that what is that really doing? How are we bolting it on to make it make sense? Nintendo was at the show last year Nintendo is super smart Nintendo has realized what type of show we are and they team up with Star Worlds Arcade and so they're in there they show off stuff but then they team up with the community to show that hey we're part of the community I don't want this show to just become a corporate thing where it's all driven by corporations. It's a trade show but it's more of a trade show for the little guys that wouldn't otherwise be highlighted. The Gamers. Yeah. It's a show for the gamers by the gamers. Damn. That's why I always loved it. How are you going to put millions in your pockets? Well, so the new things, which unfortunately won't get me millions of dollars. You're kind of sarcastic, right? The two new things that we're definitely looking at doing, the first which will be half announced when the show goes live in a couple days and then we'll be doing a more bigger announcement about it just a few days later, is that we're kind of sort of adding a third day, but it's specifically for tabletop games. A lot of the tabletop role-playing game adventures take multiple hours to play at once. And so what's tough is that when you have as much going on at the show as what we have, if you're like, hey, yeah, go do tabletop stuff, and you're going to sit and spend, you know, if you're going to do it three times, you're going to spend three-quarters of your time in one room doing this. That's difficult for some people to be like, well, that's worth it. So we're planning to add additional time for those people to play that so they can either experience more of the rest of the show or feel like, hey, yeah, I could go on eight quests in a weekend, and that would be awesome. And so it's a way to build that side of it up a little bit more. The other thing that we're looking to do is that, and this is something we've wanted to do for a while, we've talked about doing workshops where people can really learn stuff in depth. and so not something that makes sense as a presentation in our presentation hall, something that can be more in-depth. And the goal for that is like, oh, hey, we have a lot of people now that are really interested in coming to the show. We had some of the industry alumni last year who came or industry professionals come that were, for instance, celebrities in many ways, like Ernie Hudson, who has done a lot in the industry. My man. If you could say... I love you, Ernie. Thank you, Ernie. He's great, actually. He's absolutely wonderful. If you could sit, though, in a room with him for, like, two hours and have him explain to you the ways that he goes about, like, trying to get jobs, that would be infinitely valuable for a very small group of people. And we don't have Ernie Hudson coming back, and that's not a workshop that we're doing, so sorry that I just pumped someone up for that. Who's coming in 2020? So, well, we're not sure yet. Lou Frigno. We'll see. Probably not. Maybe. If you want to, maybe. So is that something you would charge Frank No for? Yes. I was going to say, it would make sense to do that. Well, and so the idea is that these would be off-site and these would be before the show. Frank No is in every show. Because we feel like using... I'm the Hulk. That's my Hulk. Well, and to be... As a quick aside on that, when I said no so quickly, it wasn't because I... That's the thing that drunk Drew. I wasn't saying no because I don't think that he would fit our show well. I think that he would. It's just a matter of we want to make sure that we have as much of a crossover as possible. But so with these, the idea is more like, hey, if we've got 30 people that really want to do this, it doesn't make sense for us to. The smallest room that we have is more than $1,000 value in rental per day. And so if I'm going to entertain 30 people, 30 people at $45 a ticket or $50 a ticket is not enough to pay for that room for an entire day as well as bringing someone in. And so we're looking at doing these on, like, the Friday or something like that and having, like, some of them that we have talked about. And I'm not sure that they're going to happen, so I don't want to name who. But, like, I've talked with someone who made some very popular different arcade games who might do a workshop about game design. and how to go through that. What he had talked about with me is that there's a lot of these schools now, the colleges, that don't teach the actual how you make money from your gaming stuff. And he said, I keep getting approached by these businesses that are like, yeah, we've got this idea, we want you to do all this stuff for free, and then maybe someday we can make money from it. And he said, that doesn't make any sense. And so his idea was like, we'll do more of a business class for college-age kids that are trying to get into the industry. Very cool. Very, very cool. I have, and I expect that this will work out, we have someone that is well-known for doing arcade monitor repair who came to us and actually said, hey, have you ever thought about having an arcade class on fixing monitors? And we were like... Bradley Check? Yes, that would be cool. No.
    75:47
    Like I said, I don't want to name names. You know Bradley Check, though. I know who... From Green Bay. He's the monitor guru here in Green Bay. Yes. He's got a million monitors. He literally has a thousand monitors that are nice. We bought them. We saw them. I bought some. Yeah, we know some. My outrun here is a Bradley check original. Well, yeah, and he's great. Don't get me wrong. But this particular person is someone who's been in the industry. And, like, a lot of people who work in coin op, like actual routing of games, have learned from him. And so this class is very expensive if you take it, and it's going to be three days long. But when you're done with it, you'll be able to go repair arcade monitors. That's cool. And so it's that sort of stuff that we're looking at. Someone gave me the idea online yesterday because I asked on our social media, on Facebook, hey, what ideas do you have? And someone said a first-time pinball owner's thing about simple maintenance. Oh, that's super cool. And I was like, that would be super smart, and it would be really easy to get Marco or... Yeah, that one's like, yeah, no-brainer. And like, oh, hey, you buy a game, and we're going to put you into this class for free if you want to take it. And cool, we can get someone. And I now, as soon as I said that, I know people that are really good at that sort of thing that have done, like, presentations on buying your first pinball machine at the show. Drew's toolbox has a rock and a soldering iron. Exactly. You talked about that. You bash it with one and you melt it with the other. He uses the rock to hit the soldering iron. Oh, well, that works for me, too. John!
    77:20
    He's like Homer Simpson. So stuff like that is kind of the big addition that we're looking to do this year. So you've got real classes, huh? Yeah. Is that something anyone else has been doing? I don't know. Because it's very awesome is a very rudimentary way of putting it, but I think it's a really unique, cool thing that is extremely beneficial. Well, we like to fancy ourselves as a trade show. There's a number of reasons for that. But one of the things about that is that you kind of need to be making sure that you're showing people new things. And that's kind of the big part of what we want to do is that it's not just like it is obviously celebrating what everybody's doing, but it's also then informing the next generation about what they can do. Absolutely. Like we're looking at, we've talked with some artists about doing like some drawing classes and stuff like that. How awesome would that be? Yeah, exactly. Can you get Franchi or Zombie Yeti to go there? I don't know. So a lot of these conversations. Zombie Eddie and Franchi, are you listening? We want you at the Midwest Gaming Classic, April.
    78:27
    I haven't yet announced that. April, some third, fourth, and fifth. Good shot. Third, fourth, and fifth. I tried. Third, fourth, and fifth. I've said it about three times. He said it third, fourth, and fifth. Yeah. We haven't announced it yet. What? It changed gears a little bit. Thank God. My daughter's birthday is on the 14th. That would have been brutal again. It's Easter. We're doing it. It's Easter. Man, you know what? Sorry, go ahead, buddy. What would you say for the general public to help the show? Like, what are a few things that we can do as people attending to make things better and or easier for everyone involved in organizing and that kind of stuff? Yeah, absolutely. The first biggest thing is that we are going to put tickets on sale in two days right now. When we do, the biggest thing that people can help with, and it doesn't have to be right away. Two days from now? Yeah. Oh, wow. Two days from now. So, like, part of the reason that I put on social media this thing about, like, the workshops is that we realized we wanted to announce the show almost right away after this last year's show, and we got kind of mired in details about trying to figure out, like, well, exactly where can we put the workshops and how much will they be and stuff like that. And part of that was that we've always kind of had the whole package ready to go when we've announced. And the workshops, we realized there's no way that we're going to talk to, like, 100 different people, We'll nail down 10 to 12 of them that really want to do this, nail down space and have that ready to go. But as long as we've kind of warned people that, hey, this is coming, be aware of this, then if they want to do something, and our goal is going to be to make those at times that other stuff isn't going on. The goal isn't like, hey, it's preview night, and in the middle of preview night, you can choose either preview night or this other thing that you really want to do. The goal will be like, oh, okay, maybe it's 2 in the afternoon on Friday is the how to do your first pinball machine class. Or maybe it's the unboxing for the games is Thursday night, and so it's right before that or right after that that we hold that class. And so, like, we have that flexibility, but we're not going to be sure on those times for a few more months minimally, and we wanted to be able to get that out. But, honestly, preordering is a huge thing because, for instance, when we signed the contract for the Wisconsin Center, I owe them immediately $10,000. Oh, really? Right. And that's like a deposit. Yeah, and then the schedule after that point means that we're spending around $15,000 to $20,000 a month at that point as we gear up. And so the more that people can preorder, it's huge because it saves us money from stuff like, oh, hey, I need to pay for this and I need to put on a credit card and run a credit card debt or whatever. We hate doing that because that doesn't help with the show. The other thing that that does is that it tells us how many people are coming and when. And so like this last year, we were able to invite more people because we saw how our pre-sales were doing, and we were able to get more industry professionals in to do additional things because of that. And so that's the biggest thing. And then the second thing is to share on social media and stuff like that, hey, this is what's going on so that we can figure out what it is that we're doing and that those people can hear about without us having to spend as much money to do that. because advertising is also a huge budget item, and the more that we can spread the word without having to spend the money to spread the word, the easier it is. Well, again, kind of beating this dead horse, having you on to talk about this stuff,
    81:55
    I think it helps people understand why it's so important to pre-order and where the money's actually going. It's not just being frivolously spent on whatever is in their head about what their perception of the show is. It's a big, good point, good point. Right. Well, and the other thing that's important, I think, is that when you look at the show and you're thinking about it, like, especially the people that see it because they see it through, like, a Facebook ad or whatever, a lot of people are like, oh, cool. And then they're looking, they're like, holy crap, it's $50 on Saturday. This is insane. And, like, a lot of people at that point are just like, oh, I'm done. And so if you hear about it from a friend, and your friend's like, well, so wait. So your $50 gets you unlimited play in the arcade. You can play all the brand-new pinball machines. Last year we had over 100 brand-new and boxed pinball machines that were at the show. We had over 450 coin-operated machines of some type at the show. We had over 300 consoles set up. Those are all included as part of that. You have all the rentals of the tabletop games. If you want to meet any of the industry professionals, Ernie Hudson last year, there was no price to meet him. That was one of the things that we are very set on is that we have purposely not worked with a few celebrities that have said, well, I'd love to come. I need to charge $25 per autograph. We said, okay, cool, wrong show. And they've said, like, yeah, and they've been like, no, no, no. And I had one guy that literally his manager said to me, well, we need to partake in the money that we make the show. And I said, you are by us paying you that amount of money. And this person was willing to do no promotion for us, no additional work for us. and yet they were like, no, no, no, it'll be great.
    83:34
    You're going to pay us $25 plus per autograph, and you're going to advertise us. And it was like, no, this doesn't make any sense. And so all of those experiences, this last year there were multiple people like that were just hanging out at the show. And the Wisconsin Center at one point came to me this last year and was like, what is the security plan? Where are we taking these people so that they're not on stage? I was like, they're going to walk through people like they're people. And they're like, but we need to place Ernie Hudson and Eric Bischoff and Ted DiBiase in places where people can't see them. I was like, that's the opposite of what we're doing. Like, they're going to walk through as people. And I said, if there's really an issue, they have my phone number, and they're going to call me directly, and I'll deal with it at that time. And they're like, but no, that's not how anybody else does it. And I was like, watch how it works. You're a little different. Well, and what was great is that the same guy that had said that to me, and he's awesome, by the way. He sends me a text message on Friday, oh, my God, Ted DiBiase just walked by me like there's nothing going on. And I just texted him back with a big smiley face and said, I told you so. Because I was like, that is the difference between our show. And what's tough about that, though, is that when you just look at the price, we talked before about how so many shows are just that vendor hall, right? If we're just a vendor hall, our prices are absolutely absurd and nobody should go to us. And if you are just coming because we are a vendor hall, you are not spending your money in a wise way. You can get a lot more on eBay for $50 than you can get in our ticket to come in and spend more money in the vendor hall. But if you are coming for every other part of our show, that's where I think that our value lies. And that's the thing that's very hard to communicate on Facebook when you've got four words and a photo. You know, like I can't take one photo that encompasses the whole show and make anybody make any sense of it. Oh, we got it now with the belt. So, well, the belt, that'll help. But the idea is to start that conversation. That's why that thing exists. If someone sees that and they're like, what the hell is that? You can be like, well, this is a stupid belt that this guy made, but it's at the show and it was crazy, and the first person that held it was Ted DiBiase, and it was ridiculous. Yeah, you just need the right person to hold that. Right, and so once that happens, it starts going through more. He's not the right person to hold that, by the way. No, he's good. He's, like, caressing it now. It's all good. No, it is. That's why we built it. It's on my shoulder now, my strong shoulder. Exactly. He's a D-list celebrity. You need like an A-list celebrity to hold it. The first person. You're my favorite guy on this podcast, but I think it's Ryan now. In our storyline that we created for the show last year, Ted DiBiase created that belt and showed up with it. Really? Yeah. Well, I don't, and this is something, if you like the old school wrestling stuff. who doesn't like the old school wrestling old school is a relative term if you haven't seen this it's worth going and finding it we had Eric Bischoff film an NWO style promo for the show that is hilarious and we honestly thought when we published it like people are going to pick up on this and it's going to be great and it was seen more than 10,000 times on Facebook and we shared a bunch on Facebook but like no media sites picked up on it and it is hilarious it is so well done it's like two and a half minutes. And then there's the response video. And I'm not positive if I ever put the response video up on YouTube. I know that it was on Facebook. But so in the whole thing, in the original part of the storyline, Eric is going, yeah. So like I took over the wrestling world and now I'm taking over the Midwest Gaming Classic. And you all are going down. I'm taking over the after party and I'm going to run it. And I'm going to announce this game in the booth and it's going to be hilarious. But wait a minute. WCW has never had a one person booth. Who's going to join me. And so there's a response video where we had a guy, he's the guy who runs our speaking hall in the way of like verbally interacting with people. His name's Ardo Cal. And Ardo, as he will say, he worked in the WWE for about the amount of time as it takes for someone to sneeze. And now he works for ESPN and their eSports division. And he works for like the Madison Square Garden Network and stuff like that. But he loves the show. And so we originally had someone, And we thought that we were talking to Tony Schiavone, and he had something else, so he wasn't able to come to our show. But we thought that we'd have Bischoff and Schiavone doing the two-man booth. Well, at that point, we couldn't have that work out, so we have this hilarious response video that's Arda calling someone and saying, oh, my God, I need to go on that booth. It's going to be great. I just need your influence to do it. And then Ted DiBiase shows up, and he's like, I got it. I just need to talk with Uncle Eric a little bit. It's going to be just fine. and then he even mentions I'm going to show up in Milwaukee with that new belt so there's a storyline to why that exists because why not be as stupid as possible and there it is Ted DiBiase the million dollar man WWF he's on Raw tonight there's a Raw reunion show after this point I need to watch the video clip and then text him So what's awesome, too, I just want to throw this in here, is that all the people that we've worked with are so cool. Like, they all were like, no, stay in touch with us. This was so cool. And so, like, I was like, when people tell me that, I actually do. Do you mean it? And so, like, I every once in a while will still text with, like, all the different people that were involved with the show. Very cool. You got a lot of cool names on your phone. Yeah. It's weird. It is really weird. Yeah. Hey, wife, Chad is texting me. Well, so my wife, it was funny, we're driving in the car, and I don't think that there's any reason that I can't tell the story. I'm driving in the car. This is like two weeks before the show.
    89:19
    And the car on the screen pops up Ernie Hudson calling, and I'm like, Susan, I need to take this. And she's like, okay. I got to take it. Who are you going to call? So I answer the phone, and I say, hey, Ernie, how's it going? And he goes, hey, Dan. And I said, just so you know, you're on speakerphone in the car with my wife. You don't call him Mr. Lister? Are you serious? You're awesome. And he goes, oh, hi. And my wife's like, hi, Ernie. They talk for like a second nicely, and he's like, well, is this a good time? I was like, actually, she was just about to go to the store. I don't need to go to the store. So, yeah, this is a perfect time. And so, yeah, stuff like that can just happen sometimes. Then we talked, and this is how cool he was. He was like, yeah, I might be filming the Friday before the show late. And I was like, oh, crap, okay. No problem. And I was, like, already in my head figuring out how, okay, we're going to have to announce that he's not able to make it. And he was like, well, it's not really bad news for you. It's just bad news for me because I'm going to be really tired because I'm going to, like, show up at 9 a.m.
    90:21
    You are? And I was like, you don't have to do that. That's okay. And he was like, no, no. If it happens, I've been talking about doing this for, like, two or three years with you. I really want to do this. Let's just, it's going to happen one way or another. Really? Okay, cool. So, yeah. So let's rewind to your teenager. Do you think at any point in your life you'd be talking to a Ghostbuster and a wrestler on the phone?
    90:49
    His name's Winston. Ernie Hudson. Hey, Winston. This is incredible. Hold on, wife. I've got to talk to Winston.
    90:59
    Did Keanu Reeves tell you before we got here? Go grocery shop while I talk to Winston. Oh, my God. So I never at any point thought that I would ever have that sort of thing. And it's just kind of happened. And what's fascinating is that I, for a period of time, in grade school especially, I had all these great plans about businesses that I wanted to do in the future. And at first I got the rest of my class to be like, yeah, we're going to help them with this. It's going to be great. And then all of a sudden we got a new kid that came that was like, what the hell is this dork doing? and suddenly I became by far the least interesting kid in school and everybody just made fun of me and was like you will never accomplish any of this stuff and so now it kind of funny because some of them are still friends with me and it like oh I posted a picture of me with Ernie Hudson and they oh I guess maybe we shouldn have told that kid that he a complete loser And me before I came here tonight I like hey honey I talking to Dan Lucey Yeah, exactly. He runs NGC. But now I feel like shit because you're not Ernie Hudson. Well, sorry. You know, next time. And so here's what's really funny, too, is that there's some weird stuff like that because Because a couple years ago, the guy who plays Jack, John Parrish, were at the after party, and I walked in on the after party, and I had not seen him yet. Who played who? Jack's tomorrow. I like to thank everybody who's on our VIP list, which is now like 115 people at the show, personally, for coming out. I mean, I'm usually the one that talks to them. So I walk up to him and I say, hey, John, thanks for coming out. And he goes, oh, my God, Dan Lucin, we need a picture. And I was like, really? I mean, what? Okay. And so, yeah, there's this picture with me with this, like, crazy look on my face, like, yeah, right, with him at the show. And he's just beaming. So, like, it's cool. And what's also cool about this is that ultimately all of these people, like, we sit here, and even as I'm talking about it, I kind of am almost putting them up on a pedestal. But that's the opposite of what we want to do at the show. They're all people. And that's the difference between, like, a lot of these shows. What we don't like to do and what I've explained to them all is that like the Comic-Cons, oh, yeah, you can come meet Ernie Hudson if you pay $25 and then you pay another $20 for a photograph. And so you limit the introductions to him and you make it less about like, oh, you could do this. And it's more like, well, this person is much cooler than you would ever be. And I will tell you that multiple people that we worked with this past year were like, the reason I want to do your show is I hate doing that. I feel like a prostitute that's up there going, give me money. Good on you. And, yeah, and Drew is a prostitute. That's why he doesn't make much money. That's why he wants to pay for me. He doesn't make much money. We went to the Star Wars thing down in Chicago earlier this year, and, yeah, they had the tables lined up. You're right. You pay $50, you know, Warwick Davis and, you know, all the Star Wars people. And you're right because you just literally stand in line, you pay your money, and you get to see them. You're right. It's kind of cheap. Right, exactly. You know what Drew and I did? We went up to the highest vantage point. We're like, Tom. Yeah, we saw him. We're like, hey. And they're like, get out of here. You can't look at us without paying. Stop looking and saying hi without paying $50. But no, you're right. Yeah, we didn't pay for a single one. We're just having fun there. Right. Kind of like what you just said. We just want to have fun at the show and just do what we're doing. Well, and that's the thing is that, like I said, these people are ultimately. Let's give them an applause. Well, thank you. But yeah, it's ultimately these people are people. The reason that I talk to them on the phone isn't because they're really cool. It's because they're people. Well, they are really cool. But they want to be treated that way. And actually, that's exactly the words that some of them would use, is that we've had different opportunities than what most people will get. But they don't want this, like, oh, well, I show up and I'm so much better than you. And the people that we get that vibe off of, we're like, no, we don't want to work with you. And I had one guy who works with us come up to me at the show this year. He's one of the guys who helps run the after parties. His name is Matt. Matt comes up to me and he's like, how did you find all these really awesome guys? I was like, well, because when I'm talking to them, I'm basically saying, look, we want to work together on this and work it out like that. And the ones that don't are like, well, you've got to pay me all this money. And it's like easy, hard pass. Yeah. So you get that, obviously, right? Yeah. People say it costs however many thousands of dollars to get me. Like, I'm not saying that we didn't pay to have anybody come in. No, no, I know. Because we paid money to have people come in. But at the same time, the way that a lot of places work is that we pay, and there's a guarantee, and you make this much off each autograph, you make this much off this. And we've had more than a handful of people that we've turned down because once we started talking with them and we've said, well, this is how we do it, we do not want this, we want you to come. And we also purposely don't, like, take up tons of your time. Ernie Hudson signed autographs for two hours at our show, and he did an hour-long presentation, and then he came to the after party for like 30 minutes. Oh, and he helped with the cosplay contest. But in total, he was like on official show duty for like four hours maybe total. Whoa. He was the judge or what? Yeah, he was one of our celebrity judges. How cool is that? The cosplay contest had Scott Denisey from Spooky Pinball, Eric Bischoff, and Ernie Hudson as the free judge. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Where did we miss that? I would have shit myself if I got judged for those three. I don't know, because I'm a nerd. So one of my favorite parts about that, too. So we had those three, and then we had three people. Those were our celebrity judge wing. Scott Denise. And we had three, like. Get the fuck out of here, Scott. What are you doing here? These three guys? We had three, like, official cosplay judges. And what was awesome is that after we're done, we get to the back. And Ernie Hudson and Eric Bischoff start this debate over. I'm not sure why this one didn't win. Well, I really like this. Well, I really like that. And so I walked over, and they were like, we got asked, Dan, why did this guy win? And I said, well, so the difference between these two costumes was that this one was more handmade, and so they were, like, looking at the stitching and stuff. There was some pre-fitting. Oh, my God, they looked at the stitching. That makes so much sense. Okay, I can totally see why. I didn't even think about that. They were so serious about it. And, like, I felt bad because we had a snafu with how that was run, and we ended up with, like, a bunch of weird, awkward vamp time in the middle. And both of them were like, dude, it was hilarious. We just got to sit on stage and tell each other awkward jokes. I loved it. And I was like, you guys are awesome. I guess for me, that kind of makes me feel good that these celebrities come and they legitimately enjoy coming. Yeah. And it's not just a forced thing. Give me your money. Glad handing. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Picture next. Yeah. And it's very cool to me that that's the way they work. Yeah. Eric Bischoff pulled me aside on Sunday to tell me about how he had never seen a show run like ours, and it was so much better. And I was like, really? Okay, cool. Eric Bischoff, thank you. I don't run the show, but that's awesome. I feel a bit about it. What he said to me, and I actually believe what he said, because some of these people, you know, they say nice stuff because they want to come back. But I believe what he said was a little bit different because how he said it was, look, he said a lot of shows, they put all your times back to back to back to back, and they try to put you on forever. He said, you guys scheduled me for a total of four hours. And he was like, my first time was at 11 a.m., my second time was at 5 p.m., my last time was at 10 p.m. And I was like, this is stupid. Why is this so spread out? And he said, I totally get it now. He said, at these other shows where they put you back to back to back, he says, you want to be that guy that everybody envisioned you being when they meet you. and you want to be on. He said, once you're four or five hours in, you're like, oh, my God, I'm tired, and it's hard to maintain that, like, excitement. He said, I never lost it because being there for an hour, it's exciting the entire time, and then I can go take a break. And it was actually crazy. Bischoff had broken ribs and a cold. So he was in tons of pain at the show. And he was like, no, I want to do everything. It's fine. And so. So did Zach Menne. He bitches about it all the time. He had broken ribs and his cold. Or was it just a cold? I don't remember. I'm going to keep going. Let's flip it on pinball.
    99:14
    Sorry, man. I love you. I'm moving on to pinball machines. That's the experience with this that's kind of fascinating. That is so cool. And again, it's not that there's any real difference. It's that they are people that you can just walk up to. And the only reason that now I know them and other people at the show don't is because I'm the first ones that talk to them. So I realized after they left, like, oh, crap, I didn't get anything signed by anybody. Oh, well. Yeah. But that wasn't what it was. I'll just call Ernie Hudson on his cell phone, and I'll ask him later. Yeah, exactly. No, it's awesome. I can't wait for him to get announced for the new Ghostbusters movie so I can text him and say, finally. Yeah. Because we, yeah, I mean, but it's cool. Like, it's cool. And it's cool that people like that do that, because that's the other side of it is that, like I said, we like to fancy ourselves a trade show. And ultimately, the roles that these people are playing are roles that any one of us sitting at this table could theoretically play if things broke in the right direction and if we did things the right way and so having someone come in who's younger and go oh man like that could be me is important um one of my favorite panels this last year actually we had a panel of four four or five women gamers on sunday and the reason that we had this panel was the previous year i have my son who goes to school and he's nine and one of his um classmates dad's was talking to me and he was like yeah my daughter loves going to your show but she's always super nervous that she's going to be seen by someone i was like why and he was like because girls don't play video games and so it's so funny because your son you're you're the dad who's actually running it and her son is in the class and so you know and i was like that's really kind of terrible because like you should you shouldn't be a nine-year-old girl and feel awkward about The demo is kind of over, but I guess there's still time. Yeah, and so we set that up specifically so that if you were a girl who's nine or eight and you came in and you felt awkward, you can see these awesome ladies who are in the industry working on games. Or one of them was a Twitch gamer who has helped debut products for Microsoft and stuff like that. And there's a lot more than that. And you can see this. Yeah, and then you can interact with them and be like, hey. And so, like, I love that panel because of that. I haven't seen it because I don't have time to see any of them, but I loved just the concept of that. And I heard from multiple people afterwards that they absolutely thought that panel was fascinating because of that and that there was a bunch of diverse people in there that were listening to how there is a difference here in all this stuff. We have the two best air hockey females in the world at the show. And that's something that you don't really think about too often and that you think like, okay. I don't know who the best air hockey people are. Right. But then you're like, okay, well, wait. Is this something that you're embarrassed about? And if you're one of the best in the world, you can't be embarrassed about it. And so is it awkward? Is there problems? And you can walk up and ask those questions. Yeah, it makes it a lot more relatable. And one thing I like about the show, one thing, one of the many things, is the family day and just how family-orientated in general the whole show is. all those little kiddie rides you guys put up? Whose idea was that? So that was Chris at Kingpin that came to us. Really? He was like, hey, you know what you don't have? Coin-operated kiddie rides. And we were like, let's do it. And so the first year that we did it was like 30, I think, that they brought in because Chris's dad runs the business with him. He loves kiddie rides, and so they were going to take like 10, and they kept throwing them on the truck because it was like, let's take this one. I actually have one in my basement because I couldn't fit them all back on the trucks afterwards. And they were like, well, you can have this one. So I've got a little tractor that makes train noises as it goes. Do you have drinks and jump on that thing? I don't, but my four-year-old loves it. Talking about the little kiddie rides. And I have taken it out in the yard, and I've had people over for different parties that sit on it then in the yard, and I have funny pictures of like, I have an 86 year old guy with a picture. Yeah. Who's a friend of ours who I took a picture of him on it, which is hilarious. I got my wife's mom on it. Um, so yeah, but yeah. And the family day really came out of the hole. We were trying to figure out, like, there was one point that a bunch of our vendors were saying, well, Saturday is really the only day we make money. It was like, well, who can we bring in on a different day? Because if we just do one day, there's no way for us to make money and break even or even come close. And so we said, well, let's focus on family. And besides that, the hardcore Nintendo collector does not show up and go.
    104:06
    I should say the family collector does not show up and go. Well, it needs to be on the original Nintendo because otherwise if you play Super Mario Bros. on a Nintendo clone system, the shade of Mario's pants is two degrees warmer than it should be. Have you heard that before? The emulator is 3.2 milliseconds off. And then when you put it on an LCD, that's even worse. And you'll never be able to get the fireball. It's like you heard this before. I count to three before I hit the jump button. I go, yeah, trust me. The emulator stuff on arcade guys when they're perfectionists, it's a rough thing. Right, well, and that was specifically. And when Nintendo emulators are even. Yep. Oh, yeah. And that was specifically why we were like, look, there's a real market for this. This is part of the hobby, and passing on the hobby is part of it too. If pinball, so pinball was all but certain to die, according to a lot of people in the industry in the early 2000s, because, well, who's playing it anymore? And it was like, well, no one if we're going to sit here and just hoard them in our basements. So how can we do this where we can get people interested in it? Because what you're doing right now won't work. But I had also said for the longest time, look, people my age aren't really buying these right now. I was in my early 20s at that time. And people aren't really buying these until they get older and get some money and can. And then they're going to want them. This market will go up in the future once that happens. And people are like, oh, I don't know. We'll see it when we see it. And now we do, obviously. But a big part of that is that you have to introduce those people. and so many people that volunteer actually say the same thing as what you just said.
    105:48
    We have a room, Guys, Games, and Beer, that brings in just tons of unique stuff. Wait, what's that name? Guys, Games, and Beer. They're a podcast, too.
    105:57
    Right, next year, Tom. Yeah, G2B. Subscribed. Yep. And they're great. They're where a lot of people play Werewolf on Saturday night. And so they, the, Tom, who's the kind of the father of one of the guys that works with it, and he actually, we had an entire Nintendo, we had an entire Nintendo collection at the show this past year. That was boxed and displayed? And that was actually in a display that Tom made for us because they're that awesome. It was actually very cool to look at all the boxes. It really was. Yeah, it was great. When was that? Was that right when you walk in? Yeah. In the vendor hall? Not the vendor hall, the game center. Excuse me. I was only there on Friday. That vendor hall wasn't open.
    106:41
    It was in the Game Center. Game Center? It was? Yeah, it was at the very start of that. I'm a dick. That's all right. Well, and part of it was that we weren't overly trying to promote it because it was fascinating. When I posted it, I expected that people would go nuts. And it got a decent response on social media, but it wasn't like the crazy, like, oh, my God, I have to see this type of response that we get out of other things. And so we posted it, and people were like, oh, cool. And it's like, yeah, that's fair because that's not the type of people that we purposely are promoting to anymore. But, yeah, Family Day really came out of that side of it. And so Tom, the guy who made this, getting back to my original point, said to me that what really got him is when he first took his son, Travis, who now lives in, I think it's Atlanta, and comes back for the show every year, like early to help us move and stuff like that. Travis, he said my first time taking him was like showing him the stuff that I used to do in like the early 2000s. And he said, we decided to set up a room and see what it was like. And he said, the thing that got me, and he said it was like super emotional for him, is that he had a grandfather taking his granddaughter and he was carrying around a stepstool with her to let her step up to see things. And he was like, this is why this is the show that I care about and not only the other ones. Because so many of the other shows that are collector-focused,
    108:09
    you don't have 8-year-olds that care about that stuff. Like my 8-year-old, I'm sorry, my 9-year-old, he's 9 now. It's like, my God, we have so much stuff about Fortnite and cool. like he today was on a mission so that he can save up money so that he can buy a loot llama, like a physical one to do something with and I'm kind of like, cool. Is it a physical? Or is it a game? He doesn't play the game because he's not old enough because he freaks out about gun stuff and he acts like a freak show so we don't let him do that. Two words you hear on our podcast, loot llama. Yeah, exactly. Loot llama, guys. And so... He doesn't play the game. It's like a pinata. Oh, okay. I guess. All right. Yeah, he doesn't play the game. Wrap your brain around that one. Yeah, well, he watches people play it on YouTube or something sometimes, and we try to watch some of those with him.
    109:02
    Ian's in deep thought right now. No, I'm trying to figure it out. And I'm not dismissing it, because people like that, they love that sort of thing, are going to be the next generation of people that are running our show. Ten years from now, they're going to be adults. Right. and the funny thing is he's going to be nostalgic about his loot llama and he will be but the flip side of that is that he does not care about the Nintendo game you can take him there and be like dude check this out stadium events box $100,000 game and you're going to have my son Ben be like why?
    109:37
    if it's worth $100,000 you should sell it buy some loot llamas don't buy Amazon stock buy your Loot Llamas kit. And then what you're going to do is you're going to be able to sell that for twice. Three times. And if not, blame Ryan Kuyper at TurboGrafx-7. At some point in the future, your Loot Llama will be worth the number that you paid for it. So, for all of our pinball listening audience, what can they expect for MDC 2020? I'm hoping for at least 400 pinball machines and arcade games again. 400. Coin-operated machinery. It's hard because those two numbers flex kind of back and forth. What did we have last year? We had 450-ish.
    110:20
    It's hard because everything gets a tag, and I don't go through and double-check what everything was, so some of those were crane games, not many. So 400 coin-op. 400 to 450 coin-operated games. You're going to have, for sure, a whole ton of people in the industry that come to the show. We're the closest show to Chicago that's not in Chicago, and because of that and because of how we invite people. Like last year, we had something like, and it's still up on our website for a little bit of time, but if you sorted something like 40 to 50 people in the pinball industry that came to our show. And these are people from the manufacturers. Exactly. We have people from the manufacturers that don't go to other shows because we invite kind of as a blanket everybody. Who came last year? Well, it's not names that I can think of. It's more of like positions. Like I know that we've had the director of HR come from Stern before. And that's not like, you know, a show that's not near Chicago isn't going to invite that person. Was this last show, at least to my recollection, is this the first show that actually had reveals for pinball? No. The previous year Iron Maiden was first debuted at our show. Oh, that's right. You're right. But before that, was there anything with MGC? No. Part of that was our spacing. It was just that we didn't have enough space. There was, well, and I don't know. It depends on how you look at it. We were the first place that had one of the versions of Ghostbusters. I think it was Ghostbusters Premium we were the first show to have that officially. It may have been the opposite way around. I don't exactly remember.
    111:50
    But it wasn't as big of a deal because we had, like, two. And this was, we have worked with Marco and with Stern to where everybody understands the benefit of it. Wasn't Houdini revealed there? Houdini was revealed at Chicago Pinball Expo. Okay. But they had some there. They've had some there. Yeah.
    112:10
    Well, and it depends on what company you are and what your goals are and where it makes sense to debut. We are a general public style show, and so the larger pinball companies tend to get more of a bang at a show like ours because, again, we have the crossover to the mainstream and the kids and the stuff like that that you wouldn't otherwise necessarily see. Whereas if you're – and, like, Spooky Pinball basically started because they met people at our show from our show. But for them, and if you're listening, Charlie, this is totally not an insult, but I totally get it. It makes way more sense for Charlie to debut a limited amount of a run of games at a show that's 100% pinball people because he's going to sell out to those people anyway. If you're going to sell 300 and those hardest of the hardcores go to Texas, which generally is a week to two or three weeks before us, then maybe that's the better market to do it in because we still get some of those really hardcore people, but we're not going to get the same, like, numbers. You know what, though? Texas, what? They got revealed, you know. Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz gold. We kind of upped them. Yellow brick road. I'm okay with that. I think, Charlie, if you're listening, buddy, and I know you are because you're my best friend,
    113:24
    we are, Drew and I will personally help you load up all those. Charlie, we'll see you in about two weeks. We're going to load up all Scott D'Amesi's number twos. We're going to be over there, MGC. Charlie, we will discuss it. We've got a few months. We'll be there in a couple weeks. We'll talk all about it. You tell us what game you want us to reveal for you. And Drew's been doing push-ups this entire time. Oh, man, I'm ready. I am ready. Dan's been talking this entire time. Drew's been doing nothing but push-ups for this moment. So, Charlie, if you're listening, buddy, which I know you are. Oh, boy. I'll give you my phone number. Dan's like, ah, things are getting sideways. Yeah, they're good. All right. Now I'm just going to dismiss myself from the Porn Man's Pinball Podcast. As you see for life. All right. So thank you very much. Let's just wrap it up here. I think we're good. Yeah, you guys got me to talk about a lot of weird stuff for a long time. Oh, perfect, man. You didn't know what you were getting into, but here you are. Well, we went through a power grid and way details that I don't think I've ever quite learned. Tell us about your ohms and voltage. Yeah, exactly. Send us your email about ohms and voltage at PornMan'sPinball at gmail.com. Brian, you got some closing thoughts, brother? I just want to say this. I know you want to always not take credit, and that's fine, but you are spearheading a lot of this. True story. I want to personally say thank you, and to everyone else involved, for putting on MGC, because I know it's not this thing you just whip together over the weekend, and it's something that is a full year of work that goes into it. Are there any people you want to thank while you're here? Just thank them out loud. Volunteers. So for me, I always, he's about to, he's trying to flip on the head, the usual thing that I end with, which is that I usually say, you know, this show isn't about me. And, like, I appreciate what you're saying totally, but it is truly not just about me. Gary and I made a failed show. 2004 sucked. 2003 sucked. But now you have millions of dollars. 2002 sucked. But coming together and the friendships that have been made and the people that we've worked with and the way that the show has grown, it's a group. And, yes, I'll take some credit and Gary will take some credit for being the people that are on top of it all. And it's fascinating. Gary and I just went on a trip like a week and a half ago or a week ago. And on that trip, Gary and I were talking a little bit about it, and I had said something to the extent of, like, we have to remember the fact that we have actually touched a lot of people's lives on this. And it was funny because, like, a few hours later, Gary was like, I keep thinking about what you said because all that I can ever think about is, man is the credit card system working or not and he said like there's so often that we sit there and we're not thinking about like the bigger picture and eugene jarvis actually one year said to me the tent it was raining the tent was flooding my mom who bless her heart was running ticketing for us and had decided to talk to everybody who was doing pre-order tickets for like a minute before she swiped them in so our pre-order ticket line was outside in the rain while people that had not pre-ordered were walking in and just going. And so people were leaving bad reviews online. My wife had just texted me. She runs social media during the show, so she texted me, should I be deleting these negative reviews of us right now? And I was like, oh, my God, what's going on? And right then Eugene shows up, and he's like, Dan Lucid. I'm bad at hiding when I'm feeling stressed about something. And I'm like, hey, Eugene, how's it going? I'm trying to be happy. He's wiping away his tears. Oh, hey, buddy, how's it going? Great. How are you? He pulled me to the side. He's like, what's wrong? I'm like, well, you know, there's all this stuff going on. And he, as we're walking through, we're walking through the middle of the crowd of people. And he's like, oh, I've been there. When I release a new game, sometimes I'm looking at all the little details. I'm seeing this little thing that's wrong. And, like, I'm sitting there. I'm like, oh, my God, the graphic is tearing a little bit at this corner. What the hell is going on here? You need to step back and look around. This is fucking awesome. Boom! And I was just like, man, I really needed that at that exact time. I love them. He was like, look at the forest through the trees, and that's something that is sometimes hard to do. But the only reason that we can pull it off is because there are so many people. There's a crew of people that set up the arcade hall. There's a crew of people that set up the museum. There's people that come in and are just super excited every year to run our tickets now. Do you need more volunteers? Yes. Do you want to go on an email? Well, yeah. And so if you're interested, the best thing to do is go to minnowsgamingclassic.com and contact us. And in general, what we do is we ask you first, like, number one, have you been to the show before? Because we found that if you haven't been to the show before, you should see what the show's like before you start volunteering at it. And the biggest reason for that is simply that otherwise you end up with people that are like, yeah, I'm going to do doors. And then they have no idea what our show's like, and it's not a good fit. So we usually ask that you've been to the show at least once before. And then we say, what's your interest? And a lot of times people are like, don't you just tell me what to do? And it's like, no, we want to put you in a spot that you're interested in. If you're a pinball guy, I'm like, sweet, you're going to run board games all day. You're going to sit there being like, ah, so you. Try and beat the werewolf. Yeah. You do something with dice. I don't know what the hell is going on. I don't really know. And so on the flip side, I ripped up this Black Lotus card. What do I do with it? Right. That might be a problem. And so. Like what? Is that worth money? I use this Black Lotus card for something. It's my poster. Yeah. I put my drink on this $5,000 Magic card. Well, that's the exact thing that we don't want to do. We don't want to put people in uncomfortable situations. And a lot of the times, people even come to me and be like, oh, we want to set up this display. And I'll be like, cool. And they'll be like, what do you want me to do for them? I don't know. What do you like? Do what you like. And people are always kind of stunned by that. But if you tell us that, we'd like to. I like to drink and play pinball. Do you want me to volunteer for something? Yeah, yes. You guys have a bar there? We need to get a bar there so Drew and I can bartend. Yeah.
    119:13
    There you go. See? Well, this is where we can be the poor man's pinball podcast. We can be podcasting while we're bartending. Well, we're kind of known for our drinking, so we might as well serve some shit. Yeah, why not? That's actually a pretty good idea. There you go. See? Drew and I, I got bartending experience. Drew drinks a lot. I got a lot of drinking experience. Well, we'd be great for that. We volunteer for that all day long. Well, yeah. And what's crazy is that Gary and I are really bad at saying no to most things. So, like, people come to us with ideas. The poor man's pinball bar is open. Yeah, that makes us sit down and be like, all right, what are we going to do?
    119:49
    Come by and get a drink. April 3rd, 4th, and 5th. We've got the Midwest Game of Classic. 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Take us on seven.
    119:58
    24th. Dan, thank you so much for coming today. When you're hearing this, it'll probably be the 23rd, so take us on tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow.
    120:10
    Go share the Facebook post when it goes live. We will do that. We will. I don't want that completely blown up before that, but it's okay. It's okay. Don't worry. And Ryan Kuyper, thank you again for joining us.
    120:22
    TurboGrafx-7 is streaming this Thursday, so probably tomorrow also. TheGoatStore.com. And there's also a place that's goat that's no shoes that people constantly, they apparently have terrible service because they constantly contact us. They're like, where are my shoes? I have no idea. If you want shoes, do not email poormanspinball at gmail.com. But if you want games, go to goatstore.com. Beautiful. Love it. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for taking the time we had tonight. And we look forward to April 4th and 5th. Yeah. Episode 18 in the book, guys. What do you think, Brian?
    121:03
    Loved it. All right, Drew? As always. All right. Okay, great. Dan, thank you so much. You're up. That sure did. All right. We made it. Love you guys. Thank you. Bye-bye.
    121:29
    Thank you.