A Year of Change and Progress, Reports Marsh A Review of His Term at AMOA President Q: Looking back over the past year, what have been some of AMOA’s accomplishments under your leadership? A:It’s been 42 years since we tuned up our logo and created a new tagline. What we’re going with now is “Building Engagement in Real Life.” It’s a freshening up of what we’re doing. We’re also using social media more and more every day, and it seems to be effective. We’re getting an increased amount of engagement from operators. That’s how we’re communicating: We’re modernizing what…
Author: RePlay Editor
Why Do Customers Engage? Ways to Keep People Feeling Good About Spending Money With Us by Howard McAuliffe, Partner, Pinnacle Entertainment Group The retail industry is being disrupted with many stores are going out of business, while others are shifting their business models to “experiential retail.” Both of these phenomena are creating opportunities in our industry. Bankrupt big box retailers are providing a plethora of empty real estate and landlords are offering very favorable terms to FECs, which is a major opportunity. Other retailers are looking to create experiences so consumers have a reason to visit their stores, besides purchasing…
Start Your Engines! Detroit Area FEC “Rev’d Up Fun” Opens Its Doors by Matt Harding There’s no place like home, but the family environment of Stars and Strikes might come close. Its managing partner and co-founder Jack Canouse said opening the first location in Cumming, Ga., in July 2005 was like watching The Wizard of Oz — doors swinging open to a new, vibrantly colored world that was a former Walmart facility in his case. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the 1939 film is on Canouse’s mind these days considering Elaut’s coin pusher of the same name is a favorite…
Military Simulations to the Game Room Raydon Amusement Blasts into VR Biz Boasting Attendant-Less Play by Casey Minter A little over a year ago, the employees behind Raydon Amusements’ newly released Total Recoil VR game were hard at work on a wholly different task: training our country’s military with hyper-realistic virtual simulation systems. The part of the outfit our industry knows actually spawns from the larger Raydon company which, for over 30 years, has been crafting training simulations to “drive user operational proficiency in situations where lives are on the line.” A hefty task and sobering work for its employees.…
What’s Between the Spaces Revisiting an Old Column as Year-End Reflections Loom by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com This month I’m front and center, very humbled to be on the cover of RePlay Magazine. For the photo, I brought along a person who has worked with me since 1996, Larry Appice. Larry came across the street from McDonald’s to work as a fry cook in my amusement center at the time, Fuzzy’s Family Fun Factory. Within days, Larry became an assistant manager and then GM. It was his management of Fuzzy’s that enabled me to spend time as…
Editorial When I was a young buck starting out as your cub coin-op reporter at the old Cash Box magazine in the early ’60s, the number one “political” subject on the industry’s table wasn’t jukebox record royalties, anti-pinball laws, gray equipment or counterfeit circuit boards. It was raising play-prices on the machines. Back then, you still had some jukeboxes charging a dime a tune, and the same for shuffleboard and some other novelties. Wurlitzer had a “Ten Top Tunes” feature that allowed for ten plays for two quarters! Good deal for the folks. No so hot for the operators. Then…
Eight Years Following a Big Leap In 2011, Jersey Jack Pinball Dove into a Shrinking Market and, In Part, Helped Revitalize It Into Today’s Millennial-Adored, Hot “New Thing” by Casey Minter The world of pinball looked a lot different back in January 2011 when Jack Guarnieri decided to take a leap of faith. Stern stood as the lone survivor of pinball manufacturers, with Gottlieb and Williams long gone and the remnants of Bally/Midway smoldering in bankruptcy court. Chicago Gaming Company was two years away from releasing its first remake, Heighway Pinball had yet to even begin its short lifespan and…
Editorial Quite a few years ago, a startup novelty company (since disappeared) made what looked like a promising amusement machine. It was, as the description said, “novel,” and they sold a bunch. Trouble was, customer service (like repair parts availability) wasn’t too hot. In fact, their sales manager once told me he complained to the boss about the scarcity of replacements and the response was something like: “Why should I worry about that? There’s no money in parts.” As I said, they exited coin-op rather quickly, but not before selling the plans for the game to one of our more…
Virtuix Debuts eSports-Focused VR Offering With a $50K Prize Pool, Founder Hopes to Invigorate the LBE VR Market by Casey Minter Building on the success and learning gained through its first introduction, Virtuix’s innovative Omni VR treadmill, company founder Jan Goetgeluk and his team have forged ahead and introduced a brand-new product at IAAPA, the Omniverse VR Arena. Not only does it provide fun VR action for players, it also comes with an exciting eSports component with prize money to boot! A four-player experience using Virtuix’s brand-new Omni 2.0 platform, the VR Arena requires one attendant and covers around 375…
As the Year Comes to a Close… A Hope That You’ve Realized Every Goal You Set for 2018 By Beth Standlee, CEO, TrainerTainment This is the perfect time of year to reflect and plan for the New Year. Although the hustle and bustle of the holidays is a bit hectic, I encourage you to set aside a few hours for you. You owe it to yourself, your family and the business to reflect and plan for 2019. If you’ve worked with our company for more than one year, you’ve participated in the reflections and planning exercise we think is so…