Inside Asian Gaming

May 2013 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 51 FEATURES an opportunity for the CRA to present those proposed changes to the manufacturers and find out if there are any concerns. The CRA have made some slight changes to their requirements for the layout of player information displays. There are also some changes relating to card-readers, electronic card shoes and shufflers. Really technical, mechanical-type matters, but nothing that would cause concern. Not like a year ago, when personal information displays were introduced. It’s just maintenance of existing requirements. There were also some changes to the licensing process for suppliers. We’re still going through the documents and updating test scripts that they relate to. But, again, nothing too challenging for the majority of suppliers. What else has kept you busy? Obviously, it’s important to keep standards up to date with technology. Standards maintenance is very important, and that’s one of the things we’ve been doing with our standards, keeping them up to date and releasing them to the industry as technology changes, particularly as we see a lot of systems convergence. The Macau standards that came out were very specific in some areas, dual language being the primary one, which meant some major changes for some manufacturers to support dual language, especially if that wasn’t native to their operating system. And some manufactures found it easier than others. But that was a move all manufacturers were looking to make anyway as their platforms become more international. So multi-language support is certainly something that we’re seeing more of in platforms. Even platforms going into English-speaking countries will have support for multi-language, just to be appealing to the player. That’s a change we previously saw happening online. When players go to an online site, they always have the option for multi-language. And we’re seeing that same functionality for terrestrial gaming as well. The most languages I’ve seen on a gaming machine are maybe three: Chinese, Spanish and English. Online we’ve seen 11 to 15languages.Whensuppliersaredeveloping a terrestrial platform, they know their target markets, where they’re coming from. Online suppliers are going to the whole world. It’s a huge investment for amanufacturer to put the multi-language on, and it has to be correct. So we do a lot of multi-language support for manufacturers to make sure that it is correct. Not only if you’re doing a literal translation, but that it actually makes sense. Regulators want us to make sure that the player is correctly informed of the rules of the play, and so if the game is adequately described in English, then if somebody is reading it in Chinese, it has to adequately described in Chinese, without referring back to the English version. The English version might be the final legal language, but at the end of the day the player has to be correctly informed in the language that they’re being presented to. Were you testing for Chinese before? Yes. So if it’s in there, we’ve always tested it. But now there’s a requirement for it to be in the game and accurate. Is there anything else coming out of the new Macau standards that you’ve had to adapt to? We always work to what the regulator lays out. So prior to that new standard coming out, manufacturers had the choice to use GLI 11, Australia and New Zealand standards or Nevada standards. So there At the ready—GLI has added night shifts at two of its global offices in order to respond more quickly to urgent requests. “We’re noticing that in Asia—whether it’s a regulated or non-regulated jurisdiction—the reliance on lab results and the credibility of the machine have become ever more important.” Ian Hughes