Why do I have the feeling you want this to become a pissing contest?
As I replied to your PM prior to seeing this, my point was if you were thinking about coming to the MGC anyway and wanted to bring some cabs with, there were some rewards to consider. I know the other folks on the forums were interested in seeing you there with or without the cabs, so I was just trying to be nice and made the comment in case what the anime convention was offering you wasn't a huge factor. I was not insinuating I knew exactly where you live or that you consider lost time from work in factoring the decision. I'm not quite sure why that even figures into the conversation considering anyone that does a convention is either taking time off if they have a job or using PTO.
To your other rather poignant topics:
1.) Do I think that just about everyone that goes to the MGC and visits this forum would be interested in those games? Of course. Is everyone that goes to the MGC going to? Of course not. Yet there is still a sizable audience for that at the show else Galloping Ghost's collection wouldn't have been nearly as popular as it was including games like The Outfoxies and DoDonPachi Dai-ou-jou, vendors that specialize in imports wouldn't be some of the first to sign up each year for the show, nor would we have just announced the Nippon Import Group room with folks like this forum's own Matt Turner, Joshua Jaeger, Sean Corse of Famicom Dojo, and Carlson of Mad-Gear. I won't deny your feelings any more than I'd wrong you if you weren't a Chicago Cubs fan like me (hehe), but denying there isn't a large group for those games at the MGC isn't right either. Just like MAG, we don't have too much control over what comes in through the door. Some years like last year we were heavy on fighting games. A few years prior it seemed like everyone brought something TRON related. I really don't know what to expect, but the show has such a diverse crowd that typically there's something for just about everyone.
2.) Size of the show... OK, fair enough. Yeah, we basically are in the largest hotel space we can get in the area, and the one hotel that was larger than this just went bankrupt. Will the show expand over the next year or two. Hopefully. We're always exploring options, but we're also very careful since we've seen a lot of shows go belly up by expanding too quickly or having that one bad year. Remember, we had a tough time after the 2004 show, so kinda like Blizzard will ship the game when it is done, we'll move once we're sure the finances are in order. That said, we are expanding the show this year again. We've added another wing to the show, we've completed a several thousand dollar upgrade to our electrical system again with an eye on the future, and we're likely to have arcades and pins throughout the show floor this year, including the new wing.
3.) If you felt like I was taking too much of a swipe at your comments about MAG floor space in this MGC topic (hehe), I'm sorry, that actually wasn't the thrust of my comments. It was mostly to say "wow, look at all that space and here I'm trying my hardest to make every last square inch count."
If Dan gave me all that room I'd feel guilty at this point if I didn't plan it as much as I do now! As for the comments about cabs being volunteered, of course. No show I'm aware of owns the majority of the cabs or pins they put out. We're all fan-run aside from a few mega conventions out there with corporate backers.
Listen, again, my point here was to say that I could see you had some friends here that wanted you to come out to the show, and I just wanted you to know about some of the perks just in case you did decide to come out. You make it sound like either I or the MGC has wronged you in some way, and that was never my intention. Cool?
Later.
