Imagine a casino where players carry a loyalty card that stores their personal preferences and acts as an electronic wallet, a casino that has integrated its back office systems, so that point-of-sale, entertainment and room-booking data, as well as tables, and slots, and game content can all be managed seamlessly to optimise profits across the whole property, and indeed the whole estate.

In this casino of the future, the operator can provide the optimum experience for individual players, can target offers, rewards, incentives and promotions to players when they are anywhere on the property – and can follow them off the floor to home or work, and even holiday, by ‘pushing’ content to PC, mobile phone or PDA. Floor management facilities allow the operator to monitor and diagnose machines and change the configuration of individual machines, banks or entire floors. The kind of games, the denominations, and the bonus or multiplay elements of games can all be changed dynamically and presented to the player to encourage play, enhance the gaming experience, and create excitement and interest.

It’s not so much server-based gaming that will deliver this vision, but the network and protocols that allow machines and systems to connect up and work together. Yes, servers are very much involved, but are only part of the infrastructure. In this fully-wired casino, operators will be able to take better management decisions based on better information about their customers, and implement those decisions more quickly. The net result of providing the player with the best gaming experience possible, and of managing revenues across the property more effectively, is more revenue. And if directing features at players makes your casino more fun to play at – then your casino has the edge over competitors.

Despite being talked up as an imminent, new, revolutionary change in casino management, server-based gaming involving downloadable games has yet to sweep like a firestorm across properties. This is partly because the market is still uncertain as to what it really needs, and what the business case and business models should be, as John Taylor, Atronic’s Product Line Manager for Server Assisted Gaming explains: “The main obstacle is figuring out what the market requires. Right now, no-one really knows. Initially, everyone said that once you have download and configuration, then that’s the scoop, right there.”

“Recently, I had a discussion with an operator, and they said that if it was just the knowledge that had been gained from doing these field trials, if the system only really gave them terminal management, they wouldn’t do it. There has got be something in it for the player, or it won’t be accepted. The big thing right now is figuring out what is the silver bullet that is really going to make it attractive and acceptable to the players.”

“One of the key elements is figuring out what this functionality is that really makes it beneficial for your casino, and then getting all the manufacturers to implement it.”

The Open Network

Server-based gaming is not a new concept – indeed, games like Rapid Roulette, and wide area progressives that link players in locations that are remote from one another, have become standard fare in gaming locations.

Variants of server-based gaming are already up and running and have been making good money for operators for years. What is getting the industry talking and analysts excited about the next big replacement wave in the casino industry, is the potential offered by networked, integrated casino management systems.

As a result of this history, at least one major player, Bally, doesn’t believe that ‘server-based gaming’ is a helpful term. “We don’t really care for the name ‘server-based gaming’,” says Bruce Rowe, Bally’s Senior Vice President, Business Development. “We prefer to think of this as the ‘networked floor of the future’. We think that ‘server-based’ is a technologist’s description of how things get done, but it doesn’t in any way describe what is being done to add value.”

“We understand it’s a term that is in the industry, but we don’t think it is very descriptive, because as soon as you say it, you spend the next ten minutes trying to define what it is. It leads to discussion, but it doesn’t lead to any conclusions.” And he could well be right – as Andy Ingram, Senior Vice President, IGT Network Systems, explains: the real potential of server-based gaming will only be achievable once a true Ethernet, packet-switched backbone network is delivering applications and services.

It’s not so much the servers, but the connections, it seems…

And for that network to really deliver, Ingram says, there has to be a move towards open standards: a move that IGT is fully committed to. Indeed, IGT seems prepared to ‘bet the farm’ on an open network, which is a culture shift for the company. As Ingram concedes: “when we go around saying we are committed to being open, people do a kind-of double take. And yes, we are very committed to it. It’s not just marketing speak. We are putting all our eggs in that basket,” he says.

Perhaps the more significant shift for the industry is not in the replacement wave of machines, as predicted by analysts such as Deutsche Bank, but in a shift away from ‘closed’, proprietary systems. For most of its history, the gaming industry has been built on very proprietary, single-purpose implementations to build connections between a slot machine and a central system. ‘Open’ is a very different route to be taking.

Open is good, according to Ingram: “It will be interesting to see how all the vendors play out on this – and if everybody is equally as committed. If we all are, there is so much more value to the operator. They will have so much more choice, and because the network is open, there will be so much more innovation, so much more creativity being applied as to how we can overall enhance the gaming industry. And the more we can enhance it, the better the gaming industry does as a whole…”

And with an open network, the future possibilities remain open, he says: “The wonderful thing about the architecture is that once you get the basic framework correct, it is very extensible. You can continue to be building new services and new features and new interfaces to downstream systems. We can see that we can continue to build on this for a long time to come.”

Betstone’s Head of Business Development and Sales, John Gevisser, sees the roots of the current moves towards server-based gaming as being firmly in the internet – and regards ‘true’ server-based gaming to involve central determination, where game results are generated remotely from the player’s machine. “…you have to go back about fifteen years when internet gaming systems were starting to be developed, “ he says. “In essence, that’s when the architecture was ultimately set up, and now that provides a great challenge for the big businesses and the growing businesses – to be able to develop systems that take into consideration the map that was put in place fifteen years ago.”

Betstone’s approach involves taking the structure of an internet system and applying its essence to a land-based territory. “It’s is not as seamless as one would think,” says John Gevisser. “You have to think about land-based issues, which will be anything from how buttons work on a machine, integration of peripherals like hoppers and note readers, thermal ticket printers, key-in-key-out procedures – basic floor procedures, as well as Customer Relationship Management. All these procedures are very particular to the land-based gaming market - land-based skills and land-based needs that very much flavour how server-based gaming adapts to the market.”

“We see server-based gaming emerging from an old school fit of tried, trusted and agreed principles from the land-based, standalone days, and the new school, the revolution where the internet operators use technical dynamism. Each element in it is evolving constantly, its live, its real - it’s not stagnating in any way.”

“Betstone looks at server-based gaming from what we see as the true perspective, in other words we have got an architecture and a platform that can deliver games to remote terminals anywhere in the world, and change or switch off that content at ease. We see it as structurally different from the approach being taken by a number of players – we understand that some of the big players in the casino industry are working on downloadable content: that’s not us…”

More exciting content

Elements of this futuristic casino are already in place. Atronic Systems, for instance, offers Crystal Web that can link slot machines into Tournament games - and not just Atronic’s own e-motion machines. Such marketing tools can help increase play during quiet times, boost play on specific machines, encourage players to play as fast as possible, and increase the players’ experience on the floor by adding tension, a sense of group play and overall excitement. According to Atronic’s John Taylor, the average casino game lasts three to six months, which requires a lot of game conversions. “There’s a theory that cabinets will need to last longer, and the game lifespan will become shorter,” he says. “It’s just a theory, and there’s no data to back this up. But we’ve heard this comment several times. If you are going to burn through more content on your floor, that is more costly to the manufacturers, and more costly to the casinos themselves; it will be interesting to see what happens. It’s just a ‘wait and see’ at this point.”

And ‘back office’ management systems that look after elements of the hospitality, entertainment and gaming business that runs in a casino are not new, although few, if any, currently seem capable of linking together, sharing data in real time and allowing the operator to make dynamic changes that manage and improve revenue across the whole property and all its business elements.

WMS Industries, for instance, is completing work on its WAGE-NET products (Wide-Area Game Enhanced Network) with the aim of providing what it describes as an “agnostic” server solution - one that will interoperate with any third-party system that the casino chooses to implement. “

“WMS is committed to the player experience and aims to provide more flexibility for our customers in making the right decisions for their particular floor,” explains Rob Bone, VP Marketing for WMS. WMS, along with a few others, has already submitted its commercial WAGE-NET products for laboratory review and approval.

The company is well-known for its next-generation Bluebird 2 cabinet, with CPU NXT2, which has been designed to be ‘futureproof’ and capable of delivering all functional capabilities needed in a mature, server-enabled environment, according to Rob Bone.

Content is king with server-based gaming, and the technology will drive the gaming floor through player-driven innovations that allow new and current players to be entertained in ways they never thought possible, argues Rob Bone. “WMS provides players with the most engaging content, and I don’t see us slowing down as server-enabled technology proliferates,” he says.

With an open network in place, this potential is wide-ranging, and should lead to more innovative game content, much better and more personal experiences for players, and increased yields, revenues, efficiencies and profits for operators. So long as the standards and protocols can be agreed, adopted and followed and the regulators’ issues addressed, harnessing the power of networking and inter-operable hardware and systems should allow operators to manage entire properties, and entire estates, in new and more profitable ways.

Much of the potential will be realised by connecting to players and providing personal experiences. IGT’s Andy Ingram explains: “we have a concept we call ‘My Slot’ – it’s down the road a bit, but the player can plug their card in, which defines their preference for the game they want to play, and that machine becomes their slot environment. They have their favourite game or favourite games that they can toggle between, and they can have a picture of their lucky four-leaf clover, or their dog up in the corner, or whatever. Just as you can customise your desktop on your laptop, you can customise your slot environment.”

The downsides, however, are not completely trivial, and, some argue, the business benefits are not yet clear in terms of return on the significant investment that is going to be required, not only to re-cable a large property with a true Ethernet network, but to replace or convert ‘legacy’ machines so that they can be connected to the networked system. “While new facilities can easily plan for the necessary architecture to accommodate server-based gaming, existing facilities will need to update their ‘back-room’ technology, systems, and employee training to allow for this technology to be offered, says Rob Bone, VP Marketing for WMS Industries.

Then there are regulatory and operational issues, as IGT’s Andy Ingram points out: “We’re keen to be in pilots with our customers to make sure that we have it correct operationally, and we’re working very closely with the regulators to share with them the kind of things that are possible, to identify where there is, perhaps, need for changes, or where there is concern that we should be addressing – and, of course, there are quite a few jurisdictions to do this for…”

Octavian, on the other hand, a systems and games product provider that has been focussed on server-based gaming for the last three years or so, approaches from a different direction. Octavian is active primarily in the VLT and lottery markets outside North America, but is gaining the edge – if only with regulators in jurisdictions that are becoming familiar with its street locations, which should ease regulatory problems for Octavian when it moves towards the casino floor with its product. “Server-based, or downloadable games system are definitely moving forward,” says Robert Dykstra, General Manager, Octavian Europe. “We’re very happy that we started early with it.”

Issues with evolving standards and regulatory compliance have yet to be addressed fully, although progress is being made with regulatory approvals – IGT, for instance, has secured approval for its ‘sb’ server-based gaming products from GLI, which is being tested and trialled in the field. GLI-21, the technical requirements document created by GLI to address server-based gaming products, is complete and available for adoption by any GLI jurisdiction. That said, there’s still work to do with locations and regulatory authorities, and this may need to be catalysed by operators with properties in jurisdictions, rather than by the casino industry itself.

Speed of change

Three or four years ago, supporters of the ‘paradigm shift’ that server-based gaming would bring to casino management were bullish. In 2004 one commentator wrote ‘Downloadable games will become more than a futuristic mantra. It is hurtling towards reality with features that should prove compelling to the casino operators.” Today, Bally’s Bruce Rowe looks back to that prediction and observes wryly: “I am not sure what that definition of ‘hurtling’ is…it’s nothing faster than three years, I can tell you that.”

Bally’s first test site went live in 2005, and hasn’t moved past 100 games yet. There’s a lot of learning to do, as Rowe points out: “The fellow who is running that test describes this as ‘server-based gaming is like flying the space shuttle with a compass’ and the implication of that is that the technology is above the navigation tools. In order for this to proceed, there has to be a technology as well as a human capability to pilot this thing. Or people can get hurt.”

“As a company, we are evaluating this. We are not over-reacting to it,” he continues. “We’re building the capability into our games, we’re building it into our systems, we’re working with our customers to understand what their real value proposition is – meaning what problems are they really trying to solve and in what order. And then we will meet those needs. We are the biggest systems company in the business, so we get to have a lot of big chats with our customer base…”

Other companies, perhaps not so well-entrenched in the traditional, proprietary casino market, are moving at a different pace. In England, for instance, where the regulatory environment is perhaps more relaxed, companies such as Inspired Gaming Group are approaching from a different direction. And companies such as Videobet, less than ten years old, already have practical experience of systems that run millions of transactions over IP networks, as John Bertakis, VP Marketing and Business Development at Videobet, explains: “server-based gaming is built around true wide area IP broadband topologies…we understand and have experience of high volumes of IP traffic that needs to be secure. We have been the world leader in this area for the last couple of years, and have a lot of experience coming in to the market with our parent, Playtech.”

It’s clear that new players and new approaches are coming in to the casino industry and the ‘old’ model of bespoke, proprietary gaming systems is starting to crumble - or has the potential to start to crumble…

But how soon will the massive roll-out of new technology be ready? One of the constraints is that the networks in most large facilities are not Ethernet, so the infrastructure to support the new standards and protocols required to take server-based gaming towards its real potential is not in place. “There is an infrastructure component that is not insurmountable, but it is by no means inconsequential,” says Bally’s Bruce Rowe.

And there is not the driver, in the US Casino market at least, that lay behind TITO and the adoption of ticket gaming standards across the board. TITO enabled low denomination games in the United States – in the absence of tokenisation, penny product wasn’t possible. “You don’t have TITO in Australia, because you don’t need it – you have tokenisation,” quarrel Bruce Rowe. He goes on to make the case that comparisons made between TITO and server-based gaming rollouts are not germane: “The comparison of those two is being made by people who really don’t understand what TITO and server-based gaming, as it is described today, are intended to do. There’s the assumption by Deutsche Bank that ‘we believe that the majority of the current North American installed base is a candidate for replacement’. Well that’s not necessarily agreed to by operators – it’s Wall Street speaking. They go on to say that assuming the same replacement cycle of TITO, then around 80 percent can be replaced in three to four years, beginning in 2008.”

Change is starting to happen, but the massive roll-out is still a way off – at least, according to the major players who deal with the largest estates. Bally is currently working with its customers to understand the value proposition with its customer – of where they think the technology can actually add value to their players and then to their shareholders, according to Rowe. “This technology has to make money for the people who are buying it, or they are not going to buy it,” he sums up.

From the point of view of Octavian, the rate at which server-based gaming will move into the casino market has a lot to do with the business model of the provider of the system. “The business models of publicly-traded companies are the main barrier to the adoption of server-based gaming”, the company’s General Manager for Europe, Robert Dykstra says “You can’t just throw away one business model and replace it with another – it will be a slow process before server-based gaming enters the casino market, but it will come.”

IGT is moving towards its third-generation systems at five pilot sites, and towards the end of 2007 will be rolling out Version 3 that will test out the G2S, or Game-to-Server, protocol that is being defined by the Gaming Standards Association and its members. Mass adoption and wave of machine replacement seems a way off yet.

IGT’s Senior Vice President Network Systems, Andy Ingram, points out: “server-based gaming is not something I see in production, and I know that our competitors have come to their trial sites behind us, and they are learning the same lessons we learned earlier about the challenges of rolling it out, what’s possible and these types of things.”

Ultimately, protocols, standards and regulatory issues present challenges and milestones that have to be reached on the journey to server-based gaming’s true potential of integrating casino management, games management and player management. But the bottom line, as Inspired Gaming’s Alvarez points out is simple enough: “If it doesn’t make any difference from the player’s point of view, then it’s not going to influence how much money the player puts in, so its therefore not going to trigger a huge replacement cycle.”

SERVER-BASED GAMING IN A NUTSHELL

Servers are not new to the gaming industry, or to the gaming floor, and are already used in casinos in different ways. That is why the term ‘server-based gaming’ can mean different things to different people in the casino industry, rather like the term ‘sustainability’ can be used to represent widely-differing concepts in other arenas. And it explains why Bruce Rowe, Bally’s Senior Vice President Business Development, doesn’t like the term when the future of gaming is the topic (see main story).

That said, here’s a primer:

Client-server gaming: the result is determined by a game server that is separate from the end-point machine or terminal, which can be quite a powerful machine in its own right. An electronic table game with roulette that involves a real roulette table is one example of this. The real table is connected to a server, and that server takes the results from the real roulette wheel, turns them into a data stream that is fed to 20, 30, 40 electronic roulette positions, whether its Rapid Roulette or Power Multi Win Roulette, Touch Bet and so on. Those are all client-server implementations. This is a form of server-based gaming, where the result is generated outside the machine that the player plays.

Central determination: the result is generated in a server not only away from the end-point machine, but actually outside the venue. A random number may be generated in a data centre many hundreds of miles from the machine, or in the case of a wide area progressive, lots of different machines in different clubs and casinos all connected to a central, progressive server. And its what drives a lottery, what’s called Class II gaming in the US.

Server-managed gaming: the core attribute is the update of content to a machine via downloading, so that you can have a multiple of content, fairly frequently changing and in addition to that the remote support of machines from off-site, such that when it breaks you can fix it automatically and quickly over the wire rather than waiting for an engineer to arrive or for a customer to complain.

Of these three outlines of ‘server-based gaming’, it is sever-managed gaming that is causing the interest and excitement in the gaming industry – because of the possibilities and opportunities it presents to operators to increase yield by running more efficiently, enhancing player experiences, and increasing revenues.

Inspired Gaming and the Gala Coral Group

In the UK, Inspired Gaming’s Open Server-Based Gaming system, Open SBG, is at the heart of the Gala Coral Group’s Gala Gaming Platform. This is an open server-based gaming platform that allows Gala Coral to download content remotely, and monitor incomes and play data in real time over the network.

The system is ‘open’ because it has been designed to allow Gala Coral to use multiple suppliers of gaming hardware, and also opens up game content to third-party developers who can write content using Inspired Gaming’s Application Programming Interface, or API. Companies with an ‘open’ approach to their gaming platforms are likely to provide a Software Development Kit (SDK) that will help game developers write games that will run on their machines, and the theory is, that if those machines adhere to the emerging standards, those games should work in any fully-wired, compliant casino.

The Gala Coral Group is clearly committed to its Gala Gaming Platform, which is built on Inspired Gaming’s Open SBG technology – in July, a roll-out of a further 1,200 terminals across the Gala Coral estate was completed, and involved 600 Multi-Win Roulette terminals for SBG table gaming and 300 Atronic e-motion cabinets for SBG slots, as well as 300 SBG bingo seats. By the end of September this year, Gala Coral plans to be operating 500 Gala Gaming Plaform terminals in its Bingo businesses, offering both digital bingo and digital slot products.

Note how non-proprietary hardware, in the form of those Atronic e-motion cabinets, is part of the Inspired Gaming open server-based gaming solution that underpins the Gala Coral Group’s Gala Gaming Platform.

John Taylor, Atronic’s Product Line Manager for Server Assisted Gaming, explains the alliance with Inspired: “If the market wants to have a server-assisted version of our Harmony cabinet, either the slant or the upright, it totally possible but we’re not going to do it unless the market requires it.

“We’re working with Inspired Gaming in the UK market, as a way of leveraging their expertise and of leveraging our expertise to really come up with a top-class solution. As far as remote terminal management is concerned, Inspired has a great background and history, and their knowledge base, aligned with the international Casino management knowledge that we have, and the gaming experience we have, makes a perfect fit.”

“With Inspired we have a line that is server-based gaming, but also server-supported or what we call server-assisted gaming as well. It’s sort of a dual solution – not really for the US market, more our international activities. In theory, we’re working with Inspired for all territories outside the US. This is partly because the US regulations tend to be a bit stricter than they are elsewhere, particularly in the UK in this area, and a lot of the international markets will accept the UK functionality.”

Peter Hannibal, Electronic Gaming Director, Gala Coral Group, explains, the business case for server-based gaming is sound: “Since GCG and Inspired first implemented the Gala Gaming Platform in January 2006, its success is proven, giving us a return on investment in less than twelve months.”

“Technology is the future of our business and 80p to 90p of every pound we take in the future will come from electronic gaming. We will have more and better content through server-based gaming, greater brand leverage, maximum customer choice, and an accurate view of our customers and their activities, that will help retention and customer yield. Everyone in the value chain from content providers to customers will benefit.”

And, as Inspired Gaming’s Luke Alvarez points out, the Gala Gaming Platform not only allows the Gala Coral group to deal with multiple suppliers of gaming hardware, but also to use ten or so game developers. And it allows the operator of a Gala casino site to make changes quickly and easily to the kinds of games that are on offer. For instance, terminals can offer skill content before gaming hours, then gaming content when casino hours start. The nature of the games and denominations can be quickly and simply changed by the operator to suit the kind of players that are on the floor at different times of the day and week, catering to players’ needs – and increasing revenue.

Server-based: the need for a more complex regulatory process

The complexities of regulating server-based gaming are not trivial. Ian Hughes, Director of Engineering and Client Service for Gaming Laboratories International, the independent testing organisation for gaming devices and systems, outlines the issues:

“With server-based gaming, the game is the system and the system is the game, inextricably intertwined, which leads to the challenge – that primarily, server-based gaming is an entirely new area for most jurisdictions, and regulations simply do not exist at this point to fully address server-based gaming in every jurisdiction.”

“The first challenge will be for a regulator, working with experts like GLI, to analyze the potential impacts of server-based gaming in his/her jurisdiction and to decide what will be allowed and how. Regulators will have to develop a more intense way of regulating the gaming environment in their purview.”

“Once regulatory guidelines have been established, the testing process will theoretically be the same as for other gaming equipment, with the notable exception that from a testing standpoint, because of its inherent complexity, test labs cannot test server-based gaming with just 10 or 15 engineers.”

“The reality is, a test lab must have to have a complete team of qualified engineers who specialize in very distinct areas. Accurate and complete testing of server-based gaming will require network security people, system engineers who can understand servers, experts who understand the software and hardware on the terminal level, and their interconnectivity.

“Regulatory approval of server-based equipment is likely to leverage much more on main stream IT systems and in such cases will involve non-gaming software and hardware vendors.”

“Once the regulations for server-based are established, the manufacturer can rely on the test lab to certify that the device meets regulatory guidelines for each unique jurisdiction. Then, as with all electronic gaming equipment, the operator should be asking the manufacturer for proof of certification from a reputable and qualified test lab.”

Standards

Sorting out the protocols for interoperability today lays the foundations for the applications and services that can benefit operators in the future. It’s a fact that open networks are coming to the gaming industry, argues the Gaming Standards Association (GSA), and the whole point of networks to the casino operator is the direct connection to the player that can be achieved. Agreed, industry-wide standards are central to this revolution in casino management.

This is a view supported by many leading players in the gaming industry, as evidenced by the GSA’s membership roster – and by Bruce Rowe, Bally’s Senior Vice President Business Development: “We have been a very big supporter of the Gaming Standards Association (GSA) for a long time, and have implemented GSA standards into our products – we believe that is the only way that some of this can migrate.”

In the short term, greater management and control of slot machines is becoming available, but before long the benefits of managing slots will extend to the pit. The fully networked casino of the near future will allow the casino operator to manage all aspects of the business in an integrated way, delivering the best game content to customers when and where those customers are likely to spend the most, and maximizing profits by having a better understanding of the behaviour of individual customers, and what it is costing the operator to keep each individual customer on the floor.

“Right now, it is very hard to obtain a true picture of the net worth of a customer,” argues Peter DeRaedt, President of the Gaming Standards Association (GSA), the international gaming trade association set up to link manufacturers, operators, regulators and suppliers and to develop open standards for the gaming industry. “For example, how many times are we comping him into the hotel, or into the restaurant? What is the customer spending with us in the hotel, our restaurants and shops?”

The GSA’s System-to-System, or S2S standard aims to open up major opportunities for casino operators by allowing different computerized management systems on a site, or indeed, on a group of sites, to communicate with each other using a standardized communication protocol. Don’t get hung up on the technical aspects, which are all tried-and-tested, commonly-available computer technologies including TCP/IP, XML, SOAP and Ethernet. What is really important is that the S2S standard allows all the management systems involved in running a property, or an estate, to talk together – gaming systems, point of sale and hospitality systems can co-operate and deliver the casino operator data on patron activities in real time. The real value of an individual customer can be delivered to the operator as that customer moves around the property, and with server-based gaming, it will ultimately become possible to tailor and deliver the most profitable games and gaming experiences to individual customers. And the network can be used to deliver marketing and promotional messages to players, throughout the property, as well as game content.

Without standards linking hardware and making exciting content deliverable on gaming terminals, the opportunities for improving profits by better management of players are likely to be much reduced. “Interoperability is what drives innovation,” argues Peter DeRaedt. “The S2S standard allows different management systems to share information and allow the operator to manage a site more profitably, while the Game To System, or G2S standard, aims to ensure that gaming machines can link to the network running in the property. The GDS standard aims to ensure that the internal components of gaming machines communicate with each other, making it easier for the whole device to link seamlessly into a casino operator’s network that runs on the S2S and G2S standards.”

So why are standards important for the future of the gaming industry?

The GSA’s ‘Primer on Gaming Standards’ argues that open standards help create interoperable and affordable solutions for everyone. They also promote competition by setting up a technical playing field that is level for all market players. This means lower costs for developers, manufacturers, and, ultimately, for gaming operators.

In straightforward terms, while it might be possible to get different proprietary systems to link together over a network, it’s unnecessarily difficult and its hard to make changes. The choice is between chaos on the casino floor, or harmony driven by adherence to an agreed standard of co-operation and inter-operation.

Why open standards as opposed to proprietary protocols, specific to individual manufacturers?

Proprietary protocols have resulted in more than 30 different “languages” required to allow various types of gaming equipment to function properly and communicate with each other. In many cases, communication between machines and management systems is impossible.

Open standards will enable gaming operators to have more valuable information to run the business, to increase operations efficiency, and to ensure innovations that will change the face of the gaming industry.

GSA open standards are developed by many different groups – including manufacturers, operators, and suppliers. The standards that results are a cross-pollination of ideas; a much richer protocol than can be developed by a single company, alone.

That said, standards are still evolving, and there will be challenges to face in terms of ensuring compliance to standards by individual manufacturers as standards continue to evolve. Some companies are keeping a watching brief, and staying with their own systems for now…

“I think it’s wide open. I don’t think that there’s a standard necessarily that is winning at the moment. I think the big operators are interested in very much the same way as the Betamax-VHS argument of years ago, or the HD-ready argument at the moment. There are competing desires here,” says John Gevisser, Head of Business Development and Sales, Betstone Ltd.

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