I don’t think the FFA owner is that fond of a new arcade opening 20min away who’s owners explicitly said that they want to put him out of business.
With “arcades dying” competition is not the right answer.
In 1975 arcade machines were .25 a play.
In 1985 arcade machines were .25 a play.
In 1995 arcade machines were .25 a play.
In 2005 arcade machines were .25 a play.
Arcades weren’t able to adjust for inflation because of competition between each other. Why go to play at an arcade that has adjusted for inflation, that makes 3s play for $1 (like Japan has) when you can go to the other one and pay .25?
1: Denjin Arcade is in Simi Valley, which is Ventura county, not LA county.
2: Simi Valley has had a history of being business-friendly, even to arcades.
Despite this, I do think Shogo’s getting his chain jerked around, hardcore. Also, as far as PACs go, I suppose you could start one in California to represent and protect pro-gaming legislation and initiatives. Of course… we’d need to find a lawyer or three willing to DO that, and hire a lobbyist with DDD cups and a waistline slimmer than a bottle of beer.
The fate of arcades is pretty nerfed. I think your best bet is to somehow join forces with the entertainment industry, but that’s worse than dealing with the devil.
EDIT: This is a strange place to have this thread. Since it pertains to SoCal, I’d rather like to see it in the SoCal thread. Just my two cents.
I had french toast for breakfast, with 2 strips of bacon, 2 sausage and eggs. scrambled. It was delicious. It was at a small restaurant and the 2 sausages cost an extra $1.25 but I feel it was worth it. I go to this restaurant because I also feel it is worth it for the higher quality food they serve as opposed to a place like Denny’s or Ihop which pretty much serve crap in a bucket imo for $2 less. So I feel a more expensive breakfast by $2 is really in the the grand scheme of things the same price and thus easily turns breakfast into a decision of quality for my dollar. Breakfast is important, and I always recommend French toast.
Well, I’m not the only guy with a law degree or career on here, and I don’t know the first thing about zoning laws or how city councils work or whatever, so I’m no more helpful than anyone on this. One thing that sort of has to do with something is that there already is a PAC for video games called the Video Game Voters Network, but it has more to do with fighting against regulation of video game speech and expression and it concentrates on national politics instead of the local kind.
Anyways, sucky to hear that Shogo is still having problems opening his arcade. Can’t wait for it to open, though, it’s gonna be even closer to me than Interface was.
Trust me if there was an arcade we wouldn’t go to a walmart parking lot cause the shit sucks. If there was ANY decent place to go where the cops wouldn’t kick us out all the time, we’d go. We get kicked out just for being there, no harassing people or anything. The only place we could ever go besides that was the Pool hall and the only reason why we were allowed there is because by the time the owner found out how old we really were he knew us well enough that he’d let us in.
Plus I don’t know about you… but both my T5 sticks are broken, I hate playing with a pad, and all my other games are really boring me. I would love to play an arcade game right now.
locally speaking, we had a grill that openned up in my town, at first he wanted it to be a bar with arcades. But the town governemnt said that bars aren’t allowed in this town, so he side stepped the issue and also offered food which made him a grill. Before he had openned up he had a truck come in with some arcade machines, just as the arcade was coming off of the truck the police came by and told him that “coin operated machines” are not allowed in this town. Sadly there is really no way to side step this (unless he installs some other credit device that uses credit cards, or cards they he would make himself…) so no arcades in this town.
ok, I got bad rep for my comment, Am I wrong? I don’t think so
you see when my pc broke like a year ago I had to go to internet cafes to find a solution why the damn thing couldn’t boot and I saw these kids. Quite a few of them playing online games like quake,strategy games everyday. Then the thought came into my mind, What I used to do when I had their age. We did’t have computers or internet,the only computer gaming we had were consoles and arcades. You see this kids are doing the same thing what we used to but instead of playing in arcades fighting games they have move over to shooters,strategy games with pc’s.
and everybody knows how huge ass popular FPS are,just like how popular fighting games were back then
Doesn’t sound like something Rich would say. Did you actually hear this from Rich?
BTW, I think Denjin Arcade opening will be a great thing. It gives FFA some competition and a reason to make sure their sticks and buttons are working…cause truth be told, the sticks at Family aren’t always that great.
My friend owned a cybercafe in San Francisco and had to go through something similar. An Irish guy got stabbed at a 7-Eleven down the street by some Asian kids who frequented the cybercafe. It was about 2 hours after the cybercafe closed for the day, but it came under severe scrutiny anyway.
For a week we had random Irish guys coming into the place who just stood there looking around for awhile, and police wouldn’t let anyone “hangout” on the street at all. If I wanted to take a break from Warcraft and have a cigarette or had a phone call the police made me cross the street.
One day the chief of police tells my friend he needs an “entertainment license” to keep the cybercafe open and they had all kinds of people come in and inspect the place and bug my friend with stupid little details that he had to fix or get shut down. This all happened about 4 years after the place originally opened.
My friend did everything he needed for the “entertainment license” and fixed all the crap they told him to and tried to tell the chief of police but he never got a response. So he was basically stuck with a store full of computers that he couldn’t open for business and eventually had to shut down.
It just boils down to politics. If a bunch of old white people don’t want your place of business to open, then it’s not going to happen.
So what, are we going to have to wait for all the old gamer-hating folks to die first? That’s like waiting for racism to end by waiting for all the racists to die off.
If arcades were able to make enough money to also donate money to the local community (high school sports teams, etc) and I dunno, attended the local Chamber of Commerce so that all those old white guys knew who the owners were, it might get somewhere. I was just at a meeting in Westlake with the local high school’s principal, superintendent and other staff sitting at my table and I can see where a little greasing of the wheels can go a long way in these situations.
i’m not sure if they changed the rules, but lan places and cybercafes were not placed in the same category as arcades like back in 2004. At least not how San Gabriel and Monterey Park looked at it.
From what i know there are now two liscenses to get, one just to operate the arcade, and another to bring in imported machines if he wanted… i wonder how much of those license fees go around to pay for council members for their country club fees.
and i didnt even get around to talking about the threats from the Homeowners’ Association.
I wonder, does anyone make coin slots that accept (and differentiate) quarters and gold dollar coins? Perhaps that would help the few remaining modern arcades stay afloat. After all, spending one coin seems far more reasonable mentally than tossing 4 in.
Are you serious? You have to pay to have an imported machine just like an import car? Thats b/s. Pretty soon we won’t be able to have any Japanese or imported things because we need licenses for it. Just wait, 15 years from now we’ll need licenses to own XBox’s and PS’s.
