| | |
Peter Gustafson and John Margold at the Welcome Dinner.
Following in the footsteps of AMI's John Margold, who lead the American Amusement Machine Association over a two year term, is Sega's sales and marketing veteran Peter Gustafson who has been elected as the new chairman of the AAMA. The AAMA is an American national trade group that represents amusement manufacturers, distributors and suppliers in America.
Gustafson has brought together a mix of fresh faces and association heavy weights for his executive committee: MEI's Chris Felix will serve as Vice President; Rich Babich of Game Exchange, a Colorado distributor, will act as the new treasurer; former AAMA president, Namco's Frank Cosentino, will serve as secretary; former association leader and Firestone Financial top executive David Cohen will act as assistant treasurer; and Bay Tek's Holly Meidl will act as the new assistant secretary and is the first woman to serve on the AAMA's executive committee. Meidl recently received the prestigious Joe Robbins Award for her dedication and service to the association.
"I think you are going to see a very active group of leaders," Gustafson said on Wednesday night at the Welcome Dinner. "I have some big shoes to fill following John Margold, but we are planning some very positive initiatives for the organization."
Since that promise was made not even a week ago, the first initiative has come to light: the AAMA announced yesterday that they will create a defense fund to help address legislation and litigation which have been targeting various aspects of redemption game operation.
Government Relations Committee Chairman Rick Kirby of Betson Distributing made the announcement saying, "There's an assault going on out there, and the issue is redemption. We really need to self-police our industry. We need to take $500 to $800 prizes off the shelf of these merhcandise games."
The crack down on redemption games has become a strong focus in the U.S. recently. While there is no argument being made from amusement professionals that redemption games should be predominantly skill-based, the vague indications of what that means and how that is judged needs to be made clearer for the industry that is being expected to implement the change.
George Smith of the Family Entertainment Group commented on the call for 'predominantly skill-based' machines, saying, "There are no grey areas; it's black and white." However, this is not the case and many grey areas still exist within the legislation impacting on small business all over America.
'Predominantly' indicates that some element of chance is allowed and if this issue was black and white, the word 'predominantly' wouldn't be used - 'entirely' would be. But since it's not we must assume, that some element of chance is allowed, in which case in what ways can the element of chance be utilized? What is defined as chance in regards to redemption machines? And it doesn't help the matter when the issue is interpreted several different ways all over the country. For instance, Arizona targeted crane machines despite the fact many would argue that crane machines are and always have been predominantly skill-based games.
With Gustafson at the helm, the AAMA seems to be taking a more organized and unified stance to tackle the big issues affecting the industry right now. More news to come regarding the redemption issue and the AAMA's new initiatives.
Congratulations to Peter Gustafson and his new executive committee on their new roles.
558
|
|
|
|
