Slot Systems – A story only 3 people could love.

The early days – 60s to 80s

In the beginning, slot machines, one-armed bandits, and table games were all just that, individual game machines and games being played for all-intents-and-purposes as stand-alone entities. This meant that if a casino wanted any information from a game in any fashion, it must be manually recorded, manually counted, and manually verified. But in the early days, profits were good and things were a bit more “loose”, not just on the game side but also in the handling of paperwork, processes, and very little regulatory oversight. And when it came to “fixing” accounting related issues, it was little bit of the wild-west as every property had their own “way” of handling issues, some more respectable than others.

The “Tightening Up” Era – Say hello to regulations and competition.

As time rolled on, between the desire to “reduce inventory loss” and tightening regulations owing to taxation, the need quickly arose to accurately record, store, and disseminate all gaming related data at casinos. Quite a tall order for a busy, often 24/7 operation that generated significant quantities of data during that time. At first, thru the 80s and into the 90s for many, this process was as bad as it sounds. Manual data collection at most locations, audit tickets collected by hand from individual games, and small armies of personnel to parse, collate, identify errors, then fix, note changes, and then summarize this into a variety of workable Performance and Accounting Reports… every day! Needless to say, even a modest sized, 300 game facility, would employ a number of accounting related personnel in order to produce daily data which could then be consumed by various casino admin, outside auditors, and the owners. This was an expensive, laborious, and error prone process that was begging for automation and it was industry (world) wide.

Bigger properties – Better technology – A star (protocol) is born.

Coming into the early 80s, Bally with its SDS brought us some of the first casinos where all games could be connected together. At first, these systems were fully proprietary and largely targeted at simply collecting accounting data, often with errors since many slot machines would report all manner of values when they malfunctioned. Even with the malfunctioning, it meant having orders of magnitude less labor to compile daily/weekly/monthly accounting reports and thus the answer was clear, this was the future of casino operations.

As the 80s progressed, an aggressive competitor, IGT, eventually saw the value in standardizing the protocol between accounting systems and the games, perhaps thinking this would improve their position since it would be a standard of their design. Releasing for free at first, IGT SAS (Slot Account System) Protocol was born in 1991 to give outside vendors, game manufacturers and eventually other systems providers a foundation to build on. As time progressed, Acres, Octavian, Aristocrat, and dozens more companies popped up to provide a variety of slot system options, progressive systems, as well as virtually every gaming machine manufacturer would, by the end of the 90s, be expected to have SAS integrated into their machine just to stay “in the game”, virtually world-wide. IGT had succeeded controlling the language of slot accounting.

Of particular note, besides standardizing the industry a bit, the most revolutionary feature to come out of the 90s in gaming was the introduction of a new funding method, cash with TITO (Ticket In / Ticket Out). This enabled virtually all slot machines to transact reliably with tickets and cash instead of coins like decades past. Revenues increased for all sorts of reasons, larger denominations could be played, cash allowed players to more easily carry large sums, and most importantly, TITO allowed players to easily move from one game to the next without having to go to a cash desk first to cash out. Curiously, besides the benefits to the player, operations costs were also positively impacted particularly as it related to Worksmans Comp claims by employees (coin buckets are heavy and backs are expensive to fix).

More features, more game options.

The addition of a standardized gaming protocol lead to a future where, by the 2000s slot systems could not only reliably collect accounting data from virtually any ‘standard’ SAS capable slot machine, but could also enable a casino to have access to a variety of new player focused features such as vendor agnostic progressive prizes, ticket in / ticket out / cashless and cash oriented play, system initiated bonuses and credit transference. In deed the players life was improved by many of these features though a few features which one would have thought would have been more popular just didn’t find a home for quite some time such as EFT / AFT and credit transference (except in a few global markets where cash simply wasn’t allowed).

The average casino player and why it held back a few technologies.

The average casino player, even today, is largely a ‘cash’ player. At first it was due to practicality, slot machines only accepted coin or cash, but as time went on, casinos in the US and many other markets have transitioned to Ticket In / Ticket out where hauling around a wad of cash is less of an issue but it is still needed to get started. For now, either players bring in their own cash or use on-premise ATMs. If you consider that, today, virtually all currency is really electronic first, then the player cashes out at a bank or ATM, just to reinsert it into a machine to get a ticket (making it electronic again)… this is a very inefficient process.

I give you.. . the next generation of players!

Though players aren’t likely to get away from cash use any time soon, due to most likely a sense of ‘anonymity’ that comes with using cash or perhaps keeping a vice off the radar for a spouse or similar, the newest generation of players come from a different world. Coming of age now, these players grew up with DEBIT cards and Pay-by-App for most, if not all, of their adult lives. They are much more comfortable with the process and have far less apprehension than generations past. In fact, when polled, we found many would ‘prefer’ if there was a way to load cash and play a regular slot machine or table game via Debit card or App, they nearly expect it.

Slot systems and the new generation.

Based on what I’m seeing in the industry, slot systems are taking on two areas with a stronger emphasis, one area is old, that is, slot analysis and player analysis. Every year we get a few new tools, services, and now AI to allow us to develop deeper and better player insights, develop better (arguably) marketing plans, and perhaps maintain more personable (arguably) interactions with larger player bases with the help of advanced automation.

Second, probably most importantly, is the addition of new funding sources via DEBIT cards and Pay-by-App options directly to the slot or table game. That one seems simple, but its likely the biggest innovation in casino gaming since TITO (Ticket In / Ticket Out) which revolutionized, reduced costs, and reshaped how money was handled in modern casinos. Once fully realized, this again, will revolutionize, reduce costs, and ultimately lead to more options for the player once implemented. Today is bonanza period, the incumbents (Light and Wonder, Evri, Aristocrat) are trying to buy-up any company that has a working product, and new ones are furiously building their product now to try and be the first to capitalize on this new industry-wide (world-wide) conversion. Its worth noting that this conversion will likely coalesce around the Western-world and EU markets since it leans heavily on electronic banking, still, these markets represent the bulk of casino revenues and play, and thus are expected to ‘drag’ along many other markets are its benefits (and cost reductions due to less hard currency handling) are realized.