Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | October 2009 18 In Focus R elyingonindividualsmallgamingmarkets tochangetechnologycompliancerulesto match the biggest markets won’t necessarily solve the challenges of convergence. “There is a need for the industry to move forward and to use fast communication and the ability to exchange information and extract information in a more efficient way,” says Peter DeRaedt, President of the Gaming Standards Association. “That means, firstly, doing it in a uniform way, so we can all agree on the method and we don’t have to develop and support different products in different markets. Secondly it means doing it in a way that allows you to expand and extend your product offerings. Communication is a vital component of that. If you simply look at the Internet today or your cell phone, you can browse on the Internet and you can order products online. That’s facilitated by the supporting technologies,” says Mr DeRaedt. TheGSAisafacilitatorofsharedstandards based on protocols agreed by industry peers rather than being a cheerleader for particular technologies, stresses the President. Referee not cheerleader “We support whatever the industry agrees on. We don’t seek to change the direction of the industry or develop standards independent of the industry. Why would we? The banking industry, for example, is using security algorithms that have been developed already. Why would we want to reinvent the wheel? The Internet uses transport mechanisms to bring information from Point A to Point B. Why would we reinvent that? It’s being used by the world,” states Mr DeRaedt. “The unique part of GSA’s proposition is that the gaming industry has unique information to exchange. GSA’s member volunteers are experts at defining the information that needs to be exchanged. That’s what the GSA does for its membership.” GSA membership is drawn from a wide cross-section of the industry, including t h e major manufacturers, explains Mr DeRaedt. “Every company has unique expertise that we bring together around the table. We discuss certain functional requirements and we agree on the format.” A practical example of how the GSA has helped to develop technology standards relates to so-called Class 2 [Native American casino] products in the United States. “We have enabled technology that previously was impossible,” states Mr DeRaedt. Talking progress “Class 2 is where you have a simple determination server linked to a number of terminals. Before the GSA got involved, servers from one vendor [equipment supplier] would ‘talk’ only to their own terminals. The server from company ‘A’ couldn’t talk to the terminals of company ‘B’. “That means as a customer [player] if you walk into a property and you have a slot ticket from one machine, you cannot walk across to another machine and use that ticket, because it [the machine] is on a different server. “Another issue is how do you manage accounting efficiently if you have multiple servers from different vendors and those servers don’t ‘talk’ to each other? Operators cannot collect information in that scenario. “Without the open communication standards that GSA was able to facilitate, operators previously had to go to each server to analyse the data to get a financial overview for the whole business. I’m just touching on two simple examples here.” Forward March The GSA plays an active role in facilitating technology development Constructive Competition Open communication allows gaming manufacturers to compete on functionality rather than user access T echnology competition in the past used to mean manufacturers racing to get their proprietary systems adopted as the industry norm. An early example of that from the consumer sector in the 1970s was the battle between Sony’s Betamax and JVC’s VHS format for dominance in the home video recorder market. As history shows, Sony lost that particular battle, but Betamax remained the analogue videotape standard for the professional television industry until the advent of digital video technology in 1995. The personal computer industry led the way in developing open technical standards so that peripherals such as external memory capacity could be developed and marketed as universal ‘plug and play’ equipment. There are caveats to that‘universality’. Within the basic USB format of a universal memory stick, for example, ‘driver’ programs still need to be written to make the equipment compatible with the varying computer operating platforms developed byWindows, Macintosh and Linux. That doesn’t happen by magic and needed people within that industry to sit down and discuss interoperability issues. Groundwork The Gaming Standards Association fills a similar role within its sector. One of the important benefits of the GSA for its