Midwest Gaming Classic 2010

[Dan Iacovelli]

the best thing that I liked about the show was that the elevator next to the museum area went to my floor second floor where I had my room.

Astropuff's room was on the same floor as the museum right down the hall. so we had no problems getting to the jagfest section.

I also like the the location of the show, not too far from the amtrak station DT so it made my travel expense cost a bit less then going to the Oylmpia.

[jbanes]

The floor dots were an EPIC idea! It made it so much easier to explain to random lost people how to get where they're going. "Just follow the stickers on the floor. You'll find it!"

 

The Sheraton definitely felt *different*, but not necessarily bad. If anything, the MGC has grown so much that it's absolutely killing conference centers. It almost needs to take over two or three big conference areas in some of the really large hotel conference-centers like you find in Wisconsin Dells. Or perhaps it's time to move up to an Expo Center?

 

Any way you cut it, it was a great time! There was so much *stuff* it was overwhelming. In addition, the presentations were pure awesomeness followed up by even more awesomeness! Eugene was great, as was the Sword of Fargoal guy, and the IDGA meetings managed to be quite interesting.

 

I'm sorry I only managed to spot a few Atari Agers. I seem to have bumped into quite a few more Commodore Computer Club folks. (Who are all members of the WI IDGA? I'm sure I'll figure it out someday. ) Hopefully next year I'll run into even more of you guys!

 

Thanks again to the organizers, vendors, hall owners, presenters, and anyone else I missed for a great time! You guys are pure awesome!

[Tom-Lynx]

I will finally weigh in on the location....

 

I like both the Olympia and the Sheraton and would return to either one in a heartbeat.

 

If I have to pick I will give the Sheraton the edge for the following reasons, but this is from the point of view of an exhibitor:

 

- more room to display, which results in more games to set up

- a locking individual room at night that I had a keycard to rather than having to cover my tables with tarps

- my hotel room was right down the hall rather than on the other side of the building...very convenient to bop back and forth

- restaurant / bar at the Sheraton had better tasting food for a lower price than Olympia's restaurant (both breakfast and dinner)

- extremely helpful hotel staff

 

Items that were better at Olympia that are not big deals:

 

- halls were closer together, and when I shopped I could go back and forth faster. Because things were so spread out at the Sheraton, I ended up having less time to shop and spent a lot less money with vendors (which I guess could be a positive also)

- concessions stand food was cheaper

- hotel rooms were nicer (but only slightly)

- better area and crowd control for tournaments

- in some ways, having all the exhibitor areas together (Family Game Room / Underdog Chamber / Museum / etc) made it more "fun" to enjoy all those areas rather than going from room to room, but that is purely subjective

[+Yurkie]

Hey everyone,

 

Still working on getting our feet back under us, but I think it was a pretty darn successful show this year! Glad most of the people agree!

 

For the police presence, at the show it was actually security guards, sorry if they cleared out the hall quickly, they were under instruction from us to do that, so you can blame me for that one. We just have had issues in the past where our halls end up with people in them at the wrong times for altogether too long, and it becomes hard to manage.

 

As for Friday night, my guess is that they were just being overly careful. They had come to talk with us on Friday as mentioned, which was all cleared up, but then they decided to ask the patrols to cover the parking lot at night to make sure nothing fishy was happening. A midnight run from someone no matter who it was might have drawn their attention, as they were watching for anyone trying to leave with stuff that they shouldn't have been. Ultimately, perhaps a little intrusive, but I'm sure the vendors who had stuff there would rather them be overly protective than not at all.

 

As for the location, we learned a lot this year. We are deciding whether or not to return soon, we also have a chance at one other venue that is courting us. The issues that we had in certain locations with traffic flow and whatnot I think can be resolved with a second year of being at the same location. We didn't nail the Olympia the first time either, but we had the challenge of filling an additional approximately 18,000 square feet of space at the Sheraton this year, while also having what you might consider almost "too much" stuff to fit it all in! We added all of the following things this year or grew them significantly:

 

Gamers Network Room (New)

BenHeck Room (about 3 times bigger than last year)

Versus Room (New)

60+ additional arcade and pinball machines

RGP.Rec.Room (new)

VGEvo.com Room (About 10 times bigger than last year)

Portable Pieces (New, although wasn't open that long)

Second speaking venue (new)

CelebrateTheArcades.com Tournaments (new)

 

Hiccups? Definitely. Overcome-able? Definitely See you in a year!

 

Great Job! My personal thanks goes out to you and all the other organizes for a job well done, and making it all possible!

[Dan Iacovelli]

I will finally weigh in on the location....

 

I like both the Olympia and the Sheraton and would return to either one in a heartbeat.

 

If I have to pick I will give the Sheraton the edge for the following reasons, but this is from the point of view of an exhibitor:

 

- more room to display, which results in more games to set up

- a locking individual room at night that I had a keycard to rather than having to cover my tables with tarps

- my hotel room was right down the hall rather than on the other side of the building...very convenient to bop back and forth

- restaurant / bar at the Sheraton had better tasting food for a lower price than Olympia's restaurant (both breakfast and dinner)

- extremely helpful hotel staff

 

Items that were better at Olympia that are not big deals:

 

- halls were closer together, and when I shopped I could go back and forth faster. Because things were so spread out at the Sheraton, I ended up having less time to shop and spent a lot less money with vendors (which I guess could be a positive also)

- concessions stand food was cheaper

- hotel rooms were nicer (but only slightly)

- better area and crowd control for tournaments

- in some ways, having all the exhibitor areas together (Family Game Room / Underdog Chamber / Museum / etc) made it more "fun" to enjoy all those areas rather than going from room to room, but that is purely subjective

with jagfest being in the hallway, it was good though. being by the door was kind of drafty(thought might have been a fire hazard as well blocking the door)

did try the dinner buffet the breakfast one was good though for 11.61 it was worth it. glad they take credit cards as well, since I've already checked out.

couldn't really see everything between jason watching the museum by us since one of the guys had to do the game show and me and him switch on and off.

A lot of people asked me about Jagfest and the jaguar and seemed interested in my own show(self plug).

As I stated, the wifi wasn't much of a problem for me paying it. it worked out good anyways just wished that would have known about the free access

sooner, or have somebody check on us every so often. Dan didn't come by the jagfest section at least once(unless I missed him) I even do that at my show to check on how things are going.

overall great experience,maybe next year I can bring my jag(going to cut down on bringing shirts)

[Mirage]

Would a building/hall at State Fair Park be too expensive or not work for some other reason? I have no doubt that you've considered this already, but I'm just curious. I've been in some halls there that are pretty large, but not too crazy big. Plus they partition them off sometimes. The one where they have that bike sale every year is probably one of the ones that would work. Not too cozy though, unless you set up dividers or something.

[the.golden.ax]

Would a building/hall at State Fair Park be too expensive or not work for some other reason? I have no doubt that you've considered this already, but I'm just curious. I've been in some halls there that are pretty large, but not too crazy big. Plus they partition them off sometimes. The one where they have that bike sale every year is probably one of the ones that would work. Not too cozy though, unless you set up dividers or something.

 

I think the main drawback is accommodations for the out of towners that make the show possible. If it were just locals I could see it working perhaps. With so many people needing to stay where the show takes place, and set up till the wee hours of the night.. they kind of need to use a hotel.

 

AX

[Tom-Lynx]

Would a building/hall at State Fair Park be too expensive or not work for some other reason? I have no doubt that you've considered this already, but I'm just curious. I've been in some halls there that are pretty large, but not too crazy big. Plus they partition them off sometimes. The one where they have that bike sale every year is probably one of the ones that would work. Not too cozy though, unless you set up dividers or something.

 

I grew up in West Allis 4 blocks from the State Fair grounds, and I think it would be a poor location. When the State Fair isn't in season, all the ammenities are closed. You would have to leave the grounds and spend more time travelling to get decent food and the roads around there are a lot more busy.

 

Within the State Fair grounds, you would need to go through gates to get to the parking area and there is a potential for a long walk from the parking area to the exhibit halls.

 

 

The Sheraton's parking lot merged right into the Brookfield Square parking lot, so there was lots of food choices and other shopping choices if desired.

[Dan Iacovelli]

I have to say keep the show in a hotel. some of us don't drive to show<hint>

plus it makes it easier for vendors and such to get their section/table then driving from hotel to show location

and visa versa.

(in my one post I stated that I did the dinner buffet I didn't I did the breakfast one)

[Retro Rogue]

The problems we're going to get towards are the same ones that eventually had GenCon leave the city: If you want the larger venues, then the trade off is easy access and hotel access both suffer. And a lot of the other "unofficial" things the show is known for will suffer as well. Likewise, we're trying very specifically not to have this show turn in to another corporate run and catering juggernaut. No matter how big we get, we want to keep the same atmosphere we've always had. A place to hang out with other gamers and have a good time, get good deals, and play games all day. Not simply to see the latest big corporate offerings, get a bunch of swagger, etc.

 

For a comparable cost, Midwest Express Center for instance wanted almost 4 times as much as we paid for the Sheraton for the same amount of space (about 30,000 sq ft.). And that didn't even include tables, electricity, and the other basics that we'd need.

[Dan Iacovelli]

if you leave the hotel, and go to an expo type site, I would imagine that the cost would include payment to union workers at the center.

I know IL has a strong union presence and that has been an issue with shows that have been done at places like Odeum, Rosemont etc. I don'tknow how it is at WI

though.

[Mirage]

To Ax and Tom-Lynx... I didn't really think about all that... I'm not too familiar with the area around the Fairgrounds (I'm relatively new to Milwaukee), but I guess that would be an issue. People would have to drive somewhere to a hotel and food. I get that. I also didn't really think about that since my hotel room (if I actually went again!) is my house, so... LOL. Anyway, yeah, just wondering why not, thanks for the thoughts.

[Astropuff]

I liked the Sheraton it was a littles spread out but I thought it was great The room was nice too.

[JayWI]

OK no more bitchin' about the Sheraton for me.

 

What I liked about the show:

 

Pinball pinball and more pinball. I always forget how much fun it is until I play again. Next year I might actually buy a machine. My wife says she'd love to have a pinball game so we just might have to pick one out.

 

The game museum was a blast. There were so many consoles and computers I have never seen so it was a lot of fun. I especially liked the opportunity to play on most of them.

 

The vendor area. Just walking around looking at everything was fun. When I started looking at specific things I found a few good deals and some teases I just wasn't ready to actually go through with buying. I saw a Neo Geo I was interested in but $250 was a bit too pricey for me. I was also looking for some good Intellivision deals but either most of the INTV stuff was sold pretty early or most vendors just don't carry too much of it.

 

I didn't get a chance to hear any speakers, I was too busy bouncing between pinball and the vendor area. I'll have to make time for that next year.

 

One big regret was I wanted to visit with the Geek Kon folks to see what it's all about but I totally forgot to stop by. I work right across the street from where they'll be holding it this year so I may go anyway. Anyone else here planning on going?

[Dan Iacovelli]

let me apologize for my actions what for what said if it was bad for the show.

Overall the show was great the Jagfest section was great was busy all day sat as usual with normal slow down on sunday like most of the show.

anything I said from Monday from prob up to yesterday should be taken with a grain of salt being that I had a long day on Sunday and I didn't get home till 2:30am

Monday morning and my body was just getting adjusted to be back to normal. and remeber you can't please everybody since we all have different taste, I'm not into next gen systems or pinball

but I do like classic arcades and old school systems.

[Tempest]

Can someone tell me who was running the TI-99/4a section in the museum area? I wanted to ask some questions about the Geneve card he had there but forgot and ran out of time. I had a blast talking to them.

 

Tempest

[Retro Rogue]

Can someone tell me who was running the TI-99/4a section in the museum area? I wanted to ask some questions about the Geneve card he had there but forgot and ran out of time. I had a blast talking to them.

 

Tempest

 

 

Erik Olson, he's in my Facebook friends list, you can reach him through there.

[turboStar]

But how does one get on Marty's Facebook friends list? =)

[+save2600]

Pinball pinball and more pinball. I always forget how much fun it is until I play again. Next year I might actually buy a machine. My wife says she'd love to have a pinball game so we just might have to pick one out.

Let me know when you're ready Jay! I usually have a selection of fully restored machines to choose from.

 

 

 

[Retro Rogue]

But how does one get on Marty's Facebook friends list? =)

 

 

Just send a friend request.