Casino International: What is the BonusBox?

Damien Connelly: It’s a separate unit, in that it’s not part of a slot machine, which is attached to a slot machine. Within the unit you can have different prizes on display. If you had a Keno machine, you might have a low value prize; conversely if you were in a VIP slot area in Macau you might have a high-end watch or a model indicating a Porsche Boxster could be won. If the customer base is Keno, the player may well be older so they won’t be interested in a Boxster, so it’s no value for the casino to be giving one away as it’s not going to attract new players. You might be giving away a prize every million games or whatever the probability is at; the idea is that you give away prizes reasonably frequently to keep the excitement going on the slot floor.

Taking into account TITO, previously slot floors were noisy and entertaining, lots of exciting atmosphere with winning coins hitting the metal. That’s all gone; BonusBox allows there to be a bit more pizzazz. You win an extra prize, and can tie in light, audio and special effects as required.

CI: So it’s an opportunity to scale the prize according to the player, because a floor manager will know their customers...

DC: The casino chooses the prize, so if they know their customer is quite wealthy and they’re going to spend a lot of money on that slot machine, they’ll put a good prize in there. In a lower-spend area, you might comp a meal in there or some reason to make a player come back. If you have a lot of local players, that could be a good incentive.

CI: Is the Box tied in to the slot floor security system?

DC: There’s a security key to give access to the box and the BonusBox would be part of the slot machine system; the back-end integration into the casino system is a big part of the work that’s been put into this add-on. If you open a slot machine, a big red light flashes up on the casino management system saying that door has been opened. That triggers an alarm for the management, and the same thing happens with the BonusBox. In some countries, this is necessary, and it means you can show when it’s been opened and closed.

CI: Can BonusBox sit on a bank of machines, for example a bank of slots with a progressive jackpot?

DC: If you wanted to, it’s perfectly feasible. It just means rather than tying in to the individual machine it ties into the progressive jackpot so it takes the meter data from all the machines, in the same way that this data feeds the progressive jackpot display overhead.

CI: Is the win trigger set by the casino or random?

DC: We’re looking to have that triggered on a scheduled basis. Like with a mystery jackpot, it might be set between 500 and 1500 Euro. Between that threshold it’s random, but it can come any time. We’re doing much the same thing with BonusBox. On the example I gave earlier, the Keno machine, the operator might set a lower threshold because the prize is of lesser value, as is the denomination in the machine. So they might want that to go off four times a day, or even more.

CI: Does the top part of the Box serve any purpose other than alerting a winner?

DC: There’s an LED, a controlled light in the top of it which can go crazy when the prize is won. But this can also be used with different colours, so you can have competitions on the slot floor. Slots don’t have the same community atmosphere on the whole as table games, but with this you can have some people playing as the red team, some blue, some green. Say a rugby team went to the casino, the casino can set it up so you’re playing against each other in teams.

Many gaming companies are trying to encourage community gaming in slots, this is another way to do it.

CI: Does this work with all slot machines?

DC: It works with all the major manufacturers, yes. We wanted to make the box independent so it works across all the major slot manufacturers.

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