Pittsburgh Gaming Expo expands to 3 days in Monroeville

Six months ago, Brian Wissner and organizers of the annual Pittsburgh Gaming Expo were scrambling after discovering they might need to find a new venue for their event.

This month, Monroeville officials announced they’d reached a deal to purchase the Monroeville Convention Center, home to the gaming event and a host of other mid-size conventions.

That helped Wissner feel more confident about the decision to expand this year’s expo from two days to three.

“Everything we had is going to expand,” said Wissner, who owns and operates the event. “Our pinball tournaments, our arcade-game tournaments, they’re all going to be much more robust now, and we don’t have to try and cram everything into about a day and a half.”

The Pittsburgh Gaming Expo will take place Oct. 4-6 at the convention center, just up the road from the Monroeville Mall. In addition to opening Friday instead of Saturday, the convention also will add Penn Brewery Oktoberfest beer for sale, a virtual reality room, Retroware game stations and more exhibitors this year.

“We’re also bringing in motion capture and voice actors to the show for the first time,” Wissner said. “Expanding will allow them to have their panel as featured content on Sunday.”

Live music take place Saturday night, and the expo’s game show will shift from its traditional Sunday spot to Friday evening.

“We had to sort of wedge our game show entertainment into Sunday morning in the past,” Wissner said. “Now, Friday has its own dedicated entertainment. We’re really adding value to every day by expanding to three days.”

Wissner said he couldn’t be happier about the deal to keep the convention center open.

“We love working with the management there, and we’re meeting with them this week to talk about 2025 and 2026,” he said. “It’s where we got our start, and it allows us to provide good value for our attendees. It’s reasonably priced for an event of our size.”

The event regularly features a massive free-play arcade, a video game console history exhibit, pinball and arcade-game tournaments, tattoo booths, local and national exhibitors, a free-play board game library, tabletop gaming all weekend, live music and more.

Admission ranges from $30 to $75. For multi-day admission and more information, see PittsburghGamingExpo.com.