Affiliated Gaming Method

Abstract

A method of providing a gaming or non-gaming feature across affiliated properties, comprising: associating a plurality of properties so that each is affiliated with the others; locating a first gaming device in a first affiliated property; locating a second gaming device in a second affiliated property; and communicating via a server with each of the gaming devices located in the affiliated properties to provide a gaming and / or non-gaming feature only to those gaming devices located in the affiliated properties.

Description

COPYRIGHT NOTICE [0001] A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0002] This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 470,606 filed Sep. 6, 2006, entitled SYSTEM GAMING APPARATUS AND METHOD, which in turn claimed the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application No. 60 / 714,754, filed Sep. 7, 2005, entitled SYSTEM GAMING APPARATUS AND METHOD, and continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 225,770 filed Sep. 12, 2005, entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GAMING-CONTENT CONFIGURATION AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, all of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. This application...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0041] In another preferred embodiment, a system displays real-time pushed data of tournament scores. In a plurality of gaming machines, at least a first and a second of the gaming machines each have a display. A chat server is connected to the network, wherein the chat sever pushes real-time tournament data to the first and second gaming machines for presenting tournament data on the display to facilitate competition between the first and second gaming machines.

[0055] In another preferred embodiment, an embedded additional user interface is incorporated into a gaming machine. The gaming machine includes a gaming presentation and a gaming processor. The embedded additional user interface includes a display screen, wherein the display screen presents information to a user via the display screen. The embedded additional user interface includes an embedded processor that employs an internal operating system and communicates with the gaming processor. The embedded processor reads incoming data and maps the data to the display screen. A game state recovery system provides protection against losses due to power failures and other outages.

[0059] In another embodiment, system gaming may be practiced only across affiliated properties. That is, games such as primary games, progressive games, system games, and bonus games can be limited to use in only those casinos that are affiliated with one another through common ownership, management, and / or control. In this way, games having specific themes relating to only these affiliated casinos or properties can be implemented to provide unique and exciting gaming experiences to casino patrons.

Problems solved by technology

Older game titles do not have these newer secondary games or bonus rounds due to high game software and hardware upgrade costs, and / or lack of interest of game manufacturers to re-code or configure legacy software, which is often a very difficult task.

Also game resubmission to regulatory agencies is prohibitive in cost, time, and resources.

As such it is difficult to provide players of these older gaming devices a secondary win opportunity

While these bonusing techniques are a significant improvement over non-bonusing systems they as of yet do not allow the player to choose the system bonus game they want to play.

These systems do give the player an ability to win additional bonus awards on top of the base gaming device, but the player is not in control of the bonus game process in any way.

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