One major hurdle for people looking to get into the arcade business are the local laws which often restrict the use of coin-operated video games in certain venues. Because of that, it is always my advice to check up on these laws well before you start organizing everything for your business, otherwise you can end up wasting a lot of time and effort into creating a business in an area where arcades are either completely prohibited or they are restricted to the point where it is nearly pointless to start on in the first place. If this is the case then I also advocate getting involved to change the laws – many times these are holdovers from the 70’s or 80’s where a cities created restrictive arcade laws out of either greed, fear or both. This can be an extremely difficult task to do alone and in some cases even as a group, as we see in this story at the Vending Times about the efforts of the AMOA-NY to change the laws in New York City to be a little more friendly towards the purchase and use of arcade machines on a location.
The new law allows venues to purchase and operate a certain number of arcade machines on location without requiring them to get a license, unless they have more than 10 machines. As anyone who deals with business in New York knows, obtaining a license is an extra headache that results in higher costs and time wasted. Now licenses haven’t been eliminated by any means here but at least this will open the doors for more businesses in purchasing a couple of games and that is a good thing overall.
For more details hit up Vending Times.
I looked into getting into the arcade/net cafe biz in Los Angeles a few years ago but, precisely because of the reasons mentioned herein, local laws made an already daunting task simply not worth the risk–who wants their entire business to be at the mercy of a mercurial city council, eh? (Despite having found a prime piece of real estate for said venture.)
This has always been a factor in the slow take up in the modern amusement scene – the legal license issues has placed many a good venue opportunity in jeopardy
I question this new law as it smacks of a amusement trade back-door deal over the matter of sales. But if it means sales then it can only be good.