There are a lot of things about slots that have changed over the years – mechanical reels have given way to video reels, many slots have more reels, more unique reel layouts and so forth vs. the standard three reels that were popular.
Another thing that has changed is the move from change, as it were. For awhile slots operated using coins or tokens, depending on the denomination, and would dispense coins or tokens to pay out a player. This came with a lot of moving parts, as well as a lot of work for the casinos to refill machines. It also meant some denominations, like penny machines, weren’t really viable.
That changes with the Ticket-in/Ticket-Out, or TITO system that became popular on casino floors around the turn of the century. For casinos, they no longer had to fill machines with coins, only deal with emptying out bill acceptors periodically. For players, they no longer had to worry about carrying around heavy buckets of coins, or getting their hands dirty handling coins or tokens for hours at a time.
Players can feed in a bill or ticket, which shows as a credit balance on the machine. When they cash out, a ticket is printed, which can be used on another machine or cashed in.
These systems have allowed for a proliferation of denominations on slots, including making penny denomination slots much more viable. It also makes multi-denomination slot machines easier to offer. And some casinos have even implemented the ability to take a ticket in and convert it to table chips, and vice versa.
TITO systems are a standard feature at casinos now, but cashless gaming is beginning to take hold. As a generational shift it isn’t looking as immediate or as transformative as moving from coins to TITO, although there’s still potential benefits for both sides. But for now, most of us will continue to primarily interact with a TITO system when playing electronic games like slots.
