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To understand how, or even why bingo-based slot machines exist, it helps to have a quick background on Native-American (NA) gambling.
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act
The IGRA was signed into law in 1988 and established the framework for Indian gaming. It gave the authority to tribes to conduct, license, and regulate gaming.
Class I, II, and III Games
For legal reasons, the IGRA created 3 different classes of gambling. Class I refers to simple, traditional social games for small prizes and is not controlled by the IGRA. You won’t find these at casinos.
Class II games are games of chance based on bingo and similar games, like pull-tabs or lotteries. Class II games are most attractive to NA casinos because not only do they not require tribes to enter into state compacts, but tribes don’t have to pay taxes on Class II gaming revenue.
Mar 27, 2020 And yet, they are not slot machine games. A clever company in Franklin, TN, known as Video Gaming Technologies, or VGT, developed electronic bingo games for Native American casinos that use the results of those bingo games to emulate slot game action. How Bingo-Based Slots Work Many early NA casinos were nothing more than bingo halls. As time marched on and customers flocked to slot machines, companies innovated what essentially were (and still are) fancier displays of bingo games. #1 Bingo Games & Slots. Since 1996, as one of the first real money bingo games sites on the net, Bingo Mania continues to offer players the biggest bingo games prizes, free deposit bonuses and fun-filled games. When it comes to playing online bingo for money, discerning players have made BingoMania their preferred destination for the past 19+ years.As a member of the vibrant community, you. Many bingo halls have slot machines. Bingo players love to play slot machines and many slots players enjoy a game of bingo. So we combined the two! The 20 paylines and just 8 symbols on 5 reels, ensures lots of regular wins. Then There’s the Slots If that weren’t enough, there’s also a suite of slots, largely supportive to bet and potentially win more gold coins and/or Bingo Points. Like in the slots there’s a library of slot rooms you can enter, each with 12 achievements to collect. Collective achievements usually fall into one of a few patterns.
Finally, Class III is a catch-all classification for games that don’t fall under Class I or II classifications. Class III includes traditional casino games such as true slot machines, roulette, craps, etc.
How Bingo-Based Slots Work
Many early NA casinos were nothing more than bingo halls. As time marched on and customers flocked to slot machines, companies innovated what essentially were (and still are) fancier displays of bingo games.
When you play a slot machine at a NA casino and there’s a bingo card somewhere on the screen, that’s a good indication you’re playing a Class II machine instead of a true, Class III slot machine.
Whereas Class III machines operate in a independent manner, Class II machines are really just an elaborate display for the bingo games running in the background. When you hit the spin button, you enter into a game of bingo. Like real games of bingo, Class II games require at least two players. If you’re at a small casino that’s not busy, the reels may spin for an abnormally long time while it waits for someone else to join the game.
And while each slot manufacturer may design their Class II game slightly differently, they always involves the same bingo elements: multiple players attempting to match certain patterns on their cards compared to numbers centrally called.
Are Bingo-Based Slots Fair?
Native American casinos often get a lot of criticism for their self-regulating nature and lack of transparency, especially when compared to Vegas casinos which are required to publish all sorts of information like payouts and revenue.
But the fact is bingo-based slots can actually be more transparent than their Class III counterparts (if someone does the legwork). Within Class II machines’ paytable will be a list of all the winning bingo patterns and resulting pays. With a little bit of effort, you can actually calculate the odds of each pattern and win and combine them to create an “expected return” value which is equal to the game’s payout. Trying to figure out the payout on a traditional Class III machine is impossible without running it through millions of spins.
Class II vs Class III
Though what’s going on in the background varies between Class II and III games, the player’s experience is basically the same. Both types of games have a specific payout associated with them. The bingo balls and cards generated by Class II machines come from random number generators, just like Class III machines.
So while some are suspicious of Class II games and their operation, the end result is practically no different from any normal slot machine.
Many gambling enthusiasts in the United States are at least vaguely familiar with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, US law Pub.L. 100–497, 25 U.S.C. § 2701.
Passed in 1988, this federal law established how Indian (Native American) gaming would be managed and regulated. The act included definitions for 3 types or classes of gambling games. They are usually referred to as:
- Class I games
- Class II games
- Class III games
Congress passed the law to help Native American tribes and nations improve their economic status after more than a century of oppression and exclusion in mainstream US society. Many Native American groups wanted to build land-based casinos, which would not only attract tourists but create jobs.
There was considerable resistance to this movement in many states, most of which did not allow gambling of any kind. To help resolve the conflicts and provide some clarity between treaties, state law, and federal law, the US government established a framework that eliminated some barriers to Native American investment in gambling industries. The law also provided some regulatory limits to respect state laws.
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act introduced some confusion into the worldwide lexicon of gambling games because the distinctions are only observed within US jurisdictions. Other nations regulate gambling with different definitions.
But as the internet became a worldwide communications network in the 1990s and 2000s, most of the content published about gambling dealt with US law and casinos. Although non-US casinos have to observe their own laws and regulations, players who research gambling law on the internet must be careful to distinguish between USA gambling definitions and other gambling definitions.
What Are the 3 Classes of Gambling Games?
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Class I gambling includes all traditional Native American gambling games, most of which are only used for ceremonial purposes or in the contexts of cultural-specific celebrations and ceremonies. These games, which are only available at small stakes, are completely regulated by the Native American tribes and nations.
Class II gambling includes all variations of bingo games, player-vs-player card games like poker (where the house does not play a hand in the game), tip jars, pull-tab games, punch card games, and anything similar. Some people mistakenly include lottery games in this category, but the law clearly excludes state-run lotteries and similar games from Class II.
Class III gambling consists of everything that is not included under Class I gambling or Class II gambling. That means the lottery games you play are Class III gambling games. Slot games, roulette, dice games, and card games like blackjack where the house is also a player all fall under the Class III gambling games category.
So How Can There Be Class II Slot Machine Games?
If you’ve ever visited a Native American casino–like the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma, you’ve almost certainly played some Class II slot machine games. They look much like traditional slot machine games. They have 3 to 5reels with symbols on them, they pay jackpots, and they do everything else you expect of a slot game.
And yet, they are not slot machine games.
A clever company in Franklin, TN, known as Video Gaming Technologies, or VGT, developed electronic bingo games for Native American casinos that use the results of those bingo games to emulate slot game action.
In other words, the slot machine cabinets contain two screens, one that displays the results of the bingo game and one that displays the results of the simulated slot game. This dual visualization of the gambling game takes advantage of the fact that at the core of all gambling games is a simple principle:
You’re making a wager on an unknown outcome. What the Class II slot games do is take the result of the bingo game to determine what happens in the slot game.
What’s cool about this approach is that VGT was able to add bonus games to the bingo games that work like slot machine bonus games. They’ve developed a huge selection of bingo games that play like slot games. VGT is so successful they were acquired by Aristocrat Leisure Limited in 2014, although the former VGT still operates as an independent subsidiary company of Aristocrat.
How Do Class III Slot Machine Games Work?
The key to the hybridization of bingo and slot machine games is the Random Number Generator. Mathematicians have been developing algorithms to calculate unpredictable numbers for hundreds of years. For a detailed look at the concept, read “How Do Random Number Generators Work?” on Jackpots Online. Although the RNG does not produce a truly random number, in typical circumstances the number is random enough. Even so, slot game designers use random numbers in multiple ways.
Before I continue, I should mention that US law requires slot game designers to work by different rules from other countries’ slot games. In the United Kingdom, for example, the outcome of a slot game is determined by a single random number. In the United States, the outcome of the Class III slot game is determined by several random numbers.
To begin with, an electronic slot machine or online slot game uses a software concept called an array to represent each reel. Computer arrays work like rows of boxes, where each box holds one piece of information. The arrays for slot reels may have anywhere from 22 to 256 slots. Each slot in the array holds a symbol marker that tells the slot machine game what to display on the screen.
Slot game designers use special algorithms to decide how often each type of symbol should appear in each slot array. The frequency of the symbol’s use in the array and the size of the array determine how likely or unlikely it is for any single spin of the slot game reels to create one or more winning combinations. The game’s software may award prizes for one or more winning combinations at a time, depending on how many pay lines the game offers.
The random number generator produces a new number every few milliseconds. The number is placed in a temporary memory location called a register. The slot game software grabs the latest random number from the register and uses that to determine what happens next. For example, a 5 reel slot game needs 5 random numbers to pick how many slot positions will be spun on each reel before the reels stop in new locations. If the slot game awards random prizes like progressive jackpots, these are determined by additional random numbers.
How Class II Slot Machine Games Differ from Class III Slot Machine Games
What VGT did was create bingo game software that determines the actual prizes awarded to players.
But to make the bingo games look like slot games, they used the bingo game’s random results as if they are the random numbers that Class III slot games use.
To ensure that the slot game winning combinations match the bingo game prize values the VGT games work more like slot games in the United Kingdom. The game determines what prize was won and then creates a short video simulation of the slots landing on that winning combination.
Conclusion
How do class II slot machines work?
Either way, the slot games award prizes on a random basis. You could say that US gaming laws are paranoid in that Class III slot game software is required to closely emulate the physical spinning of slot reels. In fact, physical slot reel games have been displaying results of these virtual, in-memory array games for more than 20 years. So even when you see physical reels spinning, their stop positions have already been determined within microseconds of your pressing SPIN.
The Class II slot gaming experience is a fun gaming experience.
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But the bingo game is displayed on a small screen, because VGT’s designers have found that players don’t enjoy looking at bingo patterns as much as they enjoy looking at 3 to 5 reels spinning and stopping on various symbols.
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For the player, what matters is that they’re gambling for real money on an unpredictable outcome–and they can enjoy an entertaining evening with friends or loved ones.