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Slot Manufacturer Profile: IGT (Part 2)

Therefore, the payouts were lower. Regardless of the size, however, machines were limited to just three reels. If they had any more, the machines would be too wide for casinos to fit as many as they normally would. Even the biggest machines were limited to about twenty pictorial symbols per reel. Jackpots never exceeded more than a few thousand dollars, because machines lost their profitability if they went any higher.

IGT swooped in and changed all this, courtesy of one very important (albeit tiny) invention – the random number generator, or RNG. The year 1981 was a milestone one for IGT and the slot machine gaming world in general. It was the year of the RNG, and a revolution in the world of gambling. These itty-bitty microchips were inserted into slot machines. They churn out thousands of random numerical sequences a minute, twenty-four hours a day. The amount of numbers generated by the RNG could be anywhere between three and five BILLION, depending on the device. Although post-RNG slot games still have reels, the RNG takes away their function. When a player activates the machine by pushing a button –arms have since become obsolete, except for show- the game captures the numerical sequence that the RNG was “thinking of” at the precise moment the trigger occurred. Basically, wide ranges of numbers correspond to just three outcomes – lose, win, or jackpot, in descending order of probability. The machine “knows” the results; whatever comes up on the reels is just its way of letting you know, too.

Continue to part 3 here.

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