July 2010

What’s The Attraction? by John Grochowski

What attracts you to a slot machine? The jackpot perhaps, or several jackpots in the case of modern multi-tiered systems. Maybe it’s the game theme, or a bonus event that looks like fun. Maybe it’s a game you’ve known and liked for years, like Bally’s Blazing 7s or IGT’s Double Diamond, or maybe it’s a variation on an old favorite, like one of WMS’ Monopoly games.

But it takes more than spinning reels, flashing lights and exciting bonus events to keep slot players happy. It takes a wide range of products to keep you comfortable and give you the experience the casinos hope will keep you coming back.

Chairs and bases: Those who have been around casinos for a couple of decades will remember when backless stools were the seating of choice at most casinos. There was no way to lean back and relax at a slot machine.

Player comfort has taken a much higher priority as slot directors have realized it’s worth spending the money on better seating if it will keep players at the machines longer. Operators have turned to manufacturers including Gasser Chair and Gary Platt Manufacturing for products designed to keep you in your seat.

Gasser Chair, a leader in furniture throughout the entertainment and hospitality industry, features its dual flex slot seats. The dual flex back action adjusts to the motion of the player not only in the upper back but in the lumbar region.

That adds to the list of comfort features Gasser has employed over the years, with its easy glide roller system, making it easier for slot employees to move around chairs without having to lift weighted bases, adjustable height chairs, and chairs with contoured foam and lumbar support.

Height of the chair is important to comfort, too. The player must be at a comfortable level for viewing the reels or screen and for reaching the game’s button panel or touch screen.  Gary Platt, which pioneered contoured seats in casino environments a decade ago, touts its Xtended Play series of chairs with molded high density foam and ergonomic lumbar support. Standard seat heights are 24 inches for upright slots, and 22 for slant tops, though casinos that use lower bases sometimes look for lower seats.

Part of the challenge, of course, is that players come in all different sizes, and a chair that’s a comfortable height for one isn’t necessarily comfortable for all. Not common on slot floors yet are adjustable height chairs. And for casinos that use fixed-down chairs that players can’t move, A.C. Coin offers a chair that is adjustable in a couple of different ways. The seat itself can slide from front to back, so a long-legged player can get a little extra room. And the height of the chair is adjustable with a gas lift, within a five-inch range.

Slot machines don’t sit directly on the floor. They sit atop a separate base, designed in colors and laminates to blend in with casino surroundings. Ideally, the casino works with manufacturers to match the base and chair height. One comfort feature that has been added in recent years is a recess in the base, so players can stretch their legs under the machine. A.C. Coin was first in line there, with foot rests in the recessed bases. Other manufacturers have followed.

Slot cabinets: Slot reels, screens, the inner electronics and computer chips that give you your play experience all have to be housed in a cabinet. Slot machine manufacturers want you to be comfortable at their games, rather than moving on to a competitor’s product, and one of the tools they use is ergonomic design of the cabinet.

Take WMS Gaming’s Bluebird cabinets. The original Bluebird lowered the button panel for a more natural position for players’ hands and wrists, while raising the coin tray, back when we still used coins, for extra knee room. Non-glare screens were designed to reduce eye fatigue. When Bluebird 2 was introduced, it took the ergonomic concepts to a dual-screen product, with two 22-inch non-glare screens.

Atronic/Spielo, which already had an adjustable height screen in its eMotion cabinet, has taken another leap in its new prodiGi Vu cabinet. Players can pick up a handheld remote unit to press play or repeat bet without having to reach for the button panel.

Bill validators and ticket printers: When I started playing in casinos, there was no sliding currency into a bill validator to put credits on a machine. And there certainly was no printing of bar-coded tickets when it was time to cash out. For every play, you had to drop coins into a slot. And every time you won, coins would drop into a tray.

No more. Bill validators became a must in the late 1980s, with ticket printers starting a rise in the ’90s that has gotten us to the point that most slot machines no longer have coin slots.

The validators and printers are made by cash-handling specialists including JCM, Global Payment Technologies and CashCode. It’s not just at the slot machines where the validators are used. They’re a key component at kiosks where players can redeem their cash-out tickets instead of going to the cashiers’ cage. Along with the validators, redemption kiosks have brought a need for ever-larger internal cash boxes, with some boxes now stacking 1,000 bills and tickets.

At Global Payment Technologies, the Advantage validator is designed to fill casino needs, both validating bills and stacking currency and the bar-coded tickets in the inner cash box in less than 3.8 seconds, all the better to get you your cash and back out on the gaming floor. With the growth of gaming worldwide, validation of international currencies is a growing concern, and Advantage was designed to accept currencies up to 85 millimeters wide, the width of the British 50-pound note.

The validator also must be able to identify and reject counterfeit currency, and for that Advantage incorporates Motorola’s DSP processor to support anti-counterfeiting programming.

And the validator must be efficient at identifying bills the first time through. For a player, it’s frustrating to have a bill rejected and returned, leading to another try at getting the device to accept the bill and put credits on the screen at the machine or to dispense cash at the kiosk. Canada’s CashCode aims high, saying its FL bill validator verifies at a 96-to-97 percent rate on first pass.

The tickets themselves have been evolving, too. JCM’s Epic950 printer, for instance, allows for both cash voucher and coupon printing, so that casinos that want to award promotional coupons can do so right at the game. It also gives slot marketers the option to use two-color printing.

But the use of bill validators and ticket printers is by no means an end point. The day of electronic fund transfers is coming, and is already here in a few casinos. When MotorCity Casino in Detroit opened in 1999, it teamed with Acres Gaming on a Wager Account Transfer system based on a system in use at Crown Casino in Australia. Players can sign up for a players club card, register a PIN, put money in a machine and transfer to an account. MotorCity uses the system in tandem with ticket in, ticket out payoffs for non-registered players, or players who just prefer to use the tickets. Only registered players are allowed to use the Wager Account Transfer, because player accounts bring the casino under banking regulations.

Kiosks: Cash handling and ticket redemption are just part of the way kiosks are used on today’s slot floors, although they’re an awfully big part. Western Money, casino industry cash handling specialist since its incorporation in Nevada in 1982, has seen the needs evolve from processing coin to tickets, along with the need for speed in getting cash into the hands of the customers.

To that end, Western Money offers its CX2 kiosk, with ATM function on one side, and ticket redemption and bill breaking on the other. And for employee use, there’s Jackpot XChange, enabling casino employees to access cash for hand-pays.

Kiosk use in casinos really began with ATM machines, and machines for credit card cash advances. The cash dispensers on slot floors today are really modified by ATMs, with expanded use and functions driven by ticket in, ticket out play on the slots. NRT Technologies, one of the largest kiosk distributors for casino use has its QuickJack 2 kiosk for casino customers, and its QuickJack for casino employees. The kiosks can be set up for multiple currencies so that a U.S. gambler playing in Canada, for example, can redeem tickets for U.S. dollars before heading home.

But kiosks aren’t for cash handling alone. At some casinos, you swipe your player rewards card through a reader at a kiosk. Or you go to a kiosk for a map of the resort, or a directory of services. One provider is Micro Gaming, whose product essentially turns a kiosk into a player rewards employee. The kiosk can interface with the player rewards system and be used to play electronic, ticketless drawings, to issue promotional tickets and comps such as restaurant vouchers, show tickets or tournament on the spot, without a visit to the rewards booth.

It’s possible to put all that functionality in a single kiosk, but early experience suggests putting too many functions in too few spaces is a trap to avoid. Any business wants to save money, and a multifunctional kiosk may be less expensive than spreading the tasks over two or three kiosks. But it’s a false saving if it turns off customers. That can happen if a player looking to do a simple ticket redemption or to break a $100 bill into $20s, gets stuck behind someone carrying out a time-consuming credit card transaction. So on most casino floors today, ATMs are separate from kiosks for ticket redemption and bill breaking, with player rewards and promotions on still other kiosks.

Slot management systems: In order to bring you the games, casinos have to know how much money is going in and how much is going out. They need to know how much you’re playing to offer appropriate comps and perks to keep you happy and coming back for more. And in today’s casino environment, they need to give you the chance to download reward credits, check points or order drinks right at the machine, without taking a time out from play.

Bally, which pioneered electronic slot management systems with the introduction of SDS in 1976, continues to be the market leader with products that have been so updated, upgraded and modernized. Bally today offers its products across multiple platforms, Windows, Unix, and IBM’s iSeries, formerly known as AS/400.

That’s becoming increasingly important as casinos move toward server-based slot machines. Bally’s Download Control Manager not only can download games to machines, but can schedule game changes such as turning nickel games into quarter games at specific times, or requiring players to bet a minimum number of lines during a high-occupancy period such as a Friday night. That’s something that can’t be done until gaming boards give the OK to server-base gaming, but when it comes in the near future, it’ll make the slot floor parallel the table games pits, where minimum bets are typically raised in high-demand times.

The Control Manager not only downloads games. It can download marketing and media content to Bally’s iView interactive touch screen, a player communication device. Separate from the main game screen, the smaller iView screen can display marketing information, points, comps, rewards and offers to players. It can stream media or video content. Pending licensing agreements, it in theory could enable a casino to stream video of a big sports event to the iView screen, provided, of course, the operators didn’t worry about the game distracting the player and slowing play too much.

It also can be used to update bill validators when currency is redesigned. In recent years, when the United States redesigned paper money, it required changing recognition chips at each bill validator to accept the new currency. Once new systems such as Control Manager are in common use, casinos will be able to download currency recognition software to bill validators from a central server.

That’s really just tip-of-the-iceberg stuff, with Bally offering business applications that can consolidate the slot management system, casino management system, player tracking, bonusing applications and table management applications into one data warehouse, and generate specialized reports for casino managers’ needs. It’s the kind of thing that players will never realize is there, but is important in running increasingly complex slot operations as we play the latest and greatest games.

Bally isn’t alone in advancing slot management products, of course. All the large slot manufacturers, including IGT, WMS, Aristocrat, Konami and Atronic/Spielo have made large investments in developing back of the house systems. One that figures to make a big impact with players is the Service Window on IGT’s networked slot products.

The Service Window was first shown on video slots, a display that can open to run the length of the main game screen to deliver marketing content to the player while the game display compresses and continues to run. That left open the question of what to do with reel-spinning games, where IGT remains an easy market leader. The solution was to put an elongated video panel the width of the cabinet below the reels. Most of the time, the panel displays game title graphics. When the Service Window is in operation, the graphics compress to allow for the marketing content.

Beyond that, IGT can deliver a Service Window on what seems to be a reel-spinner through its MLD line of video slots that use multi-layered screens to give a three-dimensional effect.

Specialized chairs and bases, ergonomic slot cabinets, bill validators, ticket printers, kiosks for cash handling and promotions, electronic management systems, it may seem strange to those of us who started out by playing games where you dropped coins in the slot for every spin while sitting on backless stools. But today it’s all part of the same slot world as spinning reels, video bonus rounds and progressive jackpots, one where our slot entertainment depends on a lot of behind the scenes support.

— John Grochowski is the author of The Casino Answer Book, The Slot Machine Answer Book, The Video Poker Answer Book and the Craps Answer Book, available online at: www.casinoanswerman.com.