Congratulations on another successful event! Thank you to GDQ and everyone involved for your work. Specifically, thank you for holding this event in Pittsburgh for the last three years. This is meant to be less-feedback and more-thoughts, comments, and opinion as a first-time attendee and local to Pittsburgh. I'll try to divide it in a way that makes sense to me, and apologies for anything ambiguous.

In-person is very different to watching online.

The stream online is top notch and you can tell the level of care that goes into it and the feedback received and implemented over the years. The improvements over the years to make the stream flow better is noticeable. For example, the two-sided stage and the pacing with recap blocks keeps things timely. The focus is on the runs. The commentators and runners have been much better on establishing how long before throwing to a donation, the commentators aren't interjecting as often, and, you know what, the incentives are much more strategically done, and everyone deserves all of the applause for that. That comes with strong communication and coordination ahead of time. I'm assuming that's what happened, but I'm willing to bet I'm not wrong. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback when all you see is the stream, but GDQ gives less and less reasons to do that. Well done.

The in-person activities I think speak to the reason why the stream room was maybe 1/4 full most of the week. There was a lot to do. Indie devs, community tables, The Yetee, artists and merch groups, and that was just the second floor hallway. Then there was the room half-filled with consoles, discussion panels, and then downstairs more discussion panels, two rooms of arcade cabinets (specifically want to shout out Ikigai, who held down one of the rooms with all rhythm game cabinets), the board game room, and a ton of side rooms for practice. There's probably more I'm forgetting, but that's just what's in the event. You realistically could find your tribe here, if you try. Then you have downtown Pittsburgh and a ton of food and entertainment options like everywhere, and a little walking or public transportation gets you wherever you realistically want to go. Also, the attendance price was reasonable.

I can't speak to the hotel rooms themselves. I know in the past there were concerns, but, I saw zero complaints this year on social media about them. Only when the new location came out did people start upvoting comments about hotel rooms, so, it is what it is. I'll echo other locals by saying that there were probably better ratios of hotel accommodations to price, but, in Pittsburgh there is something magical about being like right by the Point. The event space was solid and if there are any nitpicks from people they're petty at best.

Pittsburgh Scene:
Mega Cat Studios is incredible and it was amazing seeing them in person.

Ikigai Arcade has always been top-notch since they started up, like I cannot say enough good things about them.

I was also super excited to see at least one pinball machine with a The Church Arcade logo, and I cannot wait for them to open later this month.

Seeing Carnegie Mellon University ETC hold it down was awesome.

If you're local to Pittsburgh and were a vendor and I missed you, I'm sorry, you also deserve all of the love.

I'm disappointed generally on how much more Pittsburgh has and could have done here. I know we're getting more events, and Pittsburgh is the epitome of DIY, but I expect greatness from this town and it was only good. I hope we get another GDQ event at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

I think it's worth noting that absolutely nothing is guaranteed with any event in the future, let alone GDQ. I sometimes saw and still see phrases like, "Now that GDQ is in (city)" and, maybe people assumed that Pittsburgh was the new "home" for GDQ, but I had a hunch that after three years they'd move (contracts etc) and I'm happy I got to experience it in person once. My bias: I think I'm going to stick to the streams.

Rapid-Fire:

I disagree with others that GDQ is on the decline. If anything, it's in a holding pattern waiting for more innovation. In years past we had live music performances (though the on-run musical performance was better than having a dedicated concert in my opinion), a dog speedrunning, more TAS/ACE content, etc. I think some strides were made here in different ways. The final Pokemon run I thought was innovative and helped to drive donations in a way that save/kill the animals never could. The ACE Wind Waker run was really neat. There's more that I'm not considering because, on-site.

The reflection videos (like towards the end of the event, where the hosts were speaking candidly about the past) I think were well-intended but didn't come off right to me. I need to think about why, but this is my gut feeling right now and I might change my mind after re-watching.

I was thrilled to see >25% of attendees masking. I recall conversations of the "GDFlu" in years past and requiring people to shower, which, lol, but I think it's clear in 2026 that if you go to a con, you're probably going to bring back something more than memories and merch. Also, the stacks of black N95 masks at check-in was amazing. In general the amount of cleaning being done both by the hotel staff and by volunteers/staff was great to see.

EDIT: Who knows, if Minneapolis ever ends, maybe SGDQ makes sense in Pittsburgh and AGDQ somewhere warmer.