Tucked away on a top floor of a Harrisburg office building — behind three locked doors — is a secret casino of sorts. Only a handful of people can play there.
You can find one of every game and related equipment in operation at Pennsylvania casinos there, but the machines are usually silenced, and the payout is money they can’t keep.
It’s the testing lab of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
This is where all games and equipment go to receive the board’s stamp of approval to make sure they meet the state’s player fairness and gaming integrity rules.
Most of the 16 people employed by the Bureau of Gaming Laboratories in Strawberry Square spend their days checking out the behind-the-scenes math and engineering of slot machines, table games, sports wagering, VGTS, iGaming, card shufflers and player ticket redemption kiosks, among others.
"The main purpose of all this in here is to test to make sure all the equipment is meeting all the laws, regulations, the technical standards,” said Heather Worner, director of the gaming lab, standing in the crowded room where machines, some disassembled, some intact, sit in rows similar to a casino floor without the chairs or fancy decor.
All of the equipment and gaming software in the lab is on permanent loan from the manufacturer, along with equipment needed to test them.
So if a problem arises with a machine or the software, the statisticians and engineers can troubleshoot it in the lab by replicating the problem and figuring out a solution without having to travel to the place where the issue occurred.
"If a game maker becomes aware of a problem, they need to tell us as soon as they know,” said Charlie Leister, gaming lab manager of the statistician group. "Sometimes, there might be a bug discovered in another state and when they find out about that, they send information to everyone they sold it to. They can’t knowingly be operating anything that has an issue.”
But that doesn’t happen very often, he added.
Most of the lab employees’ time is spent approving new games.
This year, they are averaging 130 new game submissions a month. In all of last year, Mark Dinse, gaming lab manager for the engineering group, said they gave 1,800 approvals.
A majority of the funding to operate the gaming lab is borne by the game manufacturers, said gaming control board spokesman Doug Harbach. They reimburse the agency for employees’ time.
https://www.altoonamirror.com/News/Local-News/2023/11/Not-Just-Fun-And-Games-States-Casino-Machines-Testing-Lab-Ensures-Fair-Play-Is-No-Roll-Of-The-Dice/