Casino International: Tell us about the Remote Gaming Server system, it sounds very exciting…
Tom Kenny: Remote Gaming Server [rgs] enables a casino operator to take WagerWorks games which, I think it’s fair to say, are acknowledged to be the best in the internet casino space. It means the casino operator can take those games without necessarily having to take WagerWorks' whole back end system. So if the casino operator has a system from Playtech, Orbit, Boss, Crypto, Microgaming, or anybody else, via the rgs delivery mechanism, they can keep their existing player registration, verification and banking, and simply run our games alongside their existing offering. And it’s that that’s really sort of opened the floodgates to the level of interest that we’ve had at this show. Because the operator can take the games but without the headache of a major system.
In the same way that in the land-based world casino operator is free to choose the games that his customers like the most, we’re now enabling them to have that freedom in the online world.

CI: With customer confidentiality paramount, presumably the games run on your system while the customer information – excepting available credits to play – is held in their existing back office.
TK: Yes. Our games will be displayed on the menu alongside the games from your existing provider. When the customer clicks on one of our games, they will – in a way that is transparent to the customer – actually be playing on our server in Alderney. So we host the games in Alderney. All that’s passed to the game from your system is a unique identifier that identifies the customer, but without passing over any name, address, date of birth, confidential information. So we don’t know who the individual customer is, and an accounting entry lets us know how much money the customer has got available to play the game. That opens up in a browser window, they play the game, the accounting entry is periodically kept up to date during game play, and then when the customer has finished the window closes and the final accounting entry is sent back to your system.

CI: What else does rgs make possible? You have a Progressive Jackpot system, don't you?
TK: MegaJackpots. Because rgs is a networked system, the way that it works is that the games are all hosted on our servers in Alderney, so we might have another operator in Alderney, we might have one in Malta, we might have one in the Isle of Man, they’re all having those rgs games hosted on the same data centre in Alderney. This is effectively a network, and we’re leveraging that to enable networked progressive jackpots; MegaJackpots is the online equivalent of Megabucks, which is the land-based network progressive in Nevada which IGT has been running for some years. It’s got the highest brand recognition of any networked progressive jackpot in the state of Nevada. We’re going to do the same online. IGT seeds the jackpot meter at £1.5 million, so that’s where it starts. As players play and as time goes by, the meter ticks up. All the operators that participate in the progressive network are obviously going to be displaying that meter and promoting the games.
The first two games that we’re doing this with are Monopoly and Cluedo, which are obviously Hasbro brands, massive popular appeal, household names, and that in tandem with the truly life-changing prize that we’re going to be making available for a £2 stake, we think that’s going to be a big draw for customers. 

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