Bacta Establishes Technical Standards Working Group

UK gaming machine trade body Bacta has established a Technical Standards Working Group to ensure that all the relevant gaming machine industry standards are reviewed regularly and recommendations made to relevant bodies to keep them up to date and are fit for purpose.

The Group comprises machine manufacturers and operators as well as the Gambling Business Group. Alan Claypole, Head of Product at Blueprint Gaming, is Chair of the new group and Matt Ingram, Chief Product Officer at Reflex Gaming, takes the position of Vice Chair.

“The recent emergence of land-based digital gaming has introduced new technologies, applications and enhanced player experiences into the gaming industry. It would now seem appropriate to review the existing BACTA industry standards. Therefore, in the short term the main objective of the Working Group will be to revise, expand and enhance the current standards,” Alan Claypole said.

“The use of industry- agreed technical standards provides machine operators with certain commonality across different technologies and gaming cabinets, therefore improving serviceability and configuration. The Working Group will have a very good amount of knowledge and experience from across the gaming industry, I look forward to working with the members,” he added.

“This is a big programme of work and we are very grateful to Alan and Matt for taking it on. Until now the industry standards were ably curated by Bos Anderson Director of Technology at Bell-Fruit Games and Bob Lawrence who was formerly at Barcrest but who is now retired. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bos and Bob enormously for their hard work over the years. The fact that many of these industry standards have been successfully employed in machines over many many years is testament to their work. Bos will shortly be leaving the industry and we wish him well for the future,” John White, CEO of Bacta, said.