oday, virtually every computer user in the world can easily plug in a USB key. No matter what company makes the USB key and no matter what computer or operating system, users can buy their choice of USB, plug it into their choice of computer, and it will work. Imagine if every company that made USBs made them different sizes. Or imagine if every computer company made a different size port, forcing the user to buy only the type of key that fit, regardless of price or memory capacity.
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This story roughly illustrates what was happening in the gaming industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. To help protect their market share, manufacturers frequently created devices and systems that operated on proprietary computer language protocols. At one point, almost 50 different protocols were being used and supported within the gaming industry.
Although proprietary protocols effectively “locked up” a customer opportunity, they also introduced a number of challenges for operators and for manufacturers themselves. Devices and systems from the same manufacturer would easily “talk” to one another; however, getting devices from multiple manufacturers to “talk” to a system from another manufacturer often forced operators to invest millions of dollars each year into IT “patches” on each casino floor. Frustratingly, oftentimes as soon as the patches were made and implemented, the slot director would buy new games, and the process would have to start all over again.
With millions of dollars at stake each year, operators began to push back, and during a conference at the 1996 World Gaming Congress & Expo in Las Vegas, Acres Gaming founder John Acres addressed a group of attendees representing some of the industry’s largest equipment suppliers about the issues pertaining to communication standards. His thought was, let’s organize the industry’s manufacturers to eliminate some of the technological communication problems that were facing the industry.
By the end of 1997, 65 people representing 20 companies had come together, and by May 1998, the Gaming Manufacturers Association (GAMMA) was officially formed as a nonprofit organization. Since then, it has grown to include more than 53 members and affiliates, and work began on a global scale to standardize the technologies operating in the gaming industry, just as other global industries had done.
The members soon realized they needed support from the industry’s operators if they were going to be successful with the association’s mission, and in 2001, GAMMA became the Gaming Standards Association, to reflect the diversity of its membership
and clearly state its goal and focus. Then, membership was extended to regulatory advisors and other affiliate organizations that share the technical vision of promoting open standards. Today, GSA has a diverse global membership comprised of operators, suppliers, test labs and other affiliated companies.
From the beginning, GSA has taken the lead in the migration toward protocol standards. As an international trade association, the GSA facilitates the identification, definition, development, promotion, and implementation of open standards to enable innovation, education, and communication for the benefit of the entire industry.
Peter DeRaedt - GSA President
One of GSA’s major projects was to help the industry grow from the SAS protocol into a new generation of more powerful protocols. GSA assumed change management of the SAS protocol in 2001, and by the end of 2009, the industry no longer extended the capabilities of SAS. Although the SAS protocol will remain in existence for the foreseeable future, GSA has spearheaded development of three standard protocols that will drive the development of new systems, games, and peripherals.
As a result of GSA’s work to date, the industry’s vision of a fully networked, high-performance gaming floor connected with back-of-house operations, real-time player activity, and guest services is on its way to becoming a reality. Networked floors are based on advanced IP network architectures that deliver data, voice, and video to enable dynamic bidirectional polling, game configuration, and data and content transport to and from digital gaming devices. Data generated by each device can be captured to improve gaming floor performance, understand player and game interaction, and drive marketing, loyalty, and promotional strategies.
GSA’s protocols are Game to System Protocol (G2S), Gaming Device Standards (GDS) and System to System (S2S). The award-winning G2S is the communication protocol that unlocks the power of networked gaming and revolutionizes the way information is exchanged between a gaming device and the back of house systems. Based on proven computer industry standard technologies, such as Ethernet, TCP/IP and XML, the G2S protocol supports software download and remote configuration, which
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