a short history of radblue

In 2001, Russ Ristine and Marty Wegner were brought together by the Gaming Standards Association (GSA) to create a pair of simulators for the GSA's brand-new Best of Breed (BOB) gaming communications protocol. Russ (with over 25 years of gaming experience) and Marty (with almost as many years of experience in emerging  technologies) worked closely with the BOB committee to refine the protocol as they built the first implementation of the protocol, along with Mr. Tony Antonucci of Digital Dynamics. The demonstration-oriented simulators they created were then sold by GSA to a number of member companies. They were also used in a series of BOB Boot Camps sponsored by GSA for development teams in the US and Europe, which culminated in an industry-wide boot camp at G2E 2005. Omey Nandyal, Marty’s long-time business partner, brought his extensive web technology and GUI development skills to the mix as the third partner in this new endeavor.

In September 2004, Radical Blue Gaming, Inc. was formed when the need grew for an independent technology company that could help all parties (development teams, operators, and test labs) move from serial-based protocols to the web-services-based protocols being actively developed by GSA.

When the BOB simulators were completed in mid-2005, RadBlue turned their focus toward building simulators that could be used for development efforts, rather than products that simply educated people about the protocols. At the 2005 Global Gaming Expo (G2E, RadBlue’s BOB Data Scope helped the WMS and Bally Technologies teams prepare for, and demonstrate, their BOB implementations at G2E 2005. It was also during this time that IGT decided to rejoin the GSA protocol development movement, and Russ was asked to manage the merger of GSA's BOB protocol and IGT's SuperSAS protocol. The resulting merged protocol became GSA's Game-to-System (G2S) protocol.

In late 2005/early 2006, while the G2S protocol was under development, RadBlue turned its focus to System-to-System (S2S) tools for system vendors, building simulators and S2S engines that could be used in Class II gaming. However, once the Game-to-System protocol reached its final stage, the RadBlue boys returned to their true love: building  GSA protocol simulators and test tools. The G2S development tools they created (RGS and RST) are now used by most  major EGM development teams (and many system vendors) for their G2S and S2S development efforts.

RadBlue continues to grow and serve the GSA community with the addition of new innovative offerings.

more about Russ and the Boys

Russ Ristine has over 25 years of experience in gaming system development, building systems for Atlantic City casinos and Bally Gaming & Systems, as a consultant to the Gaming Standards Association and other leading corporations in the gaming community. Nowadays, Russ spends most of his time engaged in searching out new opportunities for RadBlue.

 

Omey Nandyal and Marty Wegner have worked together for 20 years in a number of diverse fields such as telecommunications, enterprise messaging, office automation and Application Service Provider (ASP) development. They have worked on several Internet standards bodies on behalf of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Since 2003, Marty and Omey have worked as consultants for GSA and other leading gaming industry vendors, but now they too find their efforts consumed by the fascinating projects that Radblue is engaged in.

 

 

 

 

the radblue team

RadBlue's team has over 130 years of experience in gaming, gaming systems, Internet standards, and highly scalable back office solutions. This amazing blend of talent is what allows RadBlue to move gaming developers, operators and testing agencies to the next generation of slot floor technology.

 

Fred Barrie has over 12 years experience designing and implementing gaming systems. While working at Bally Technologies (formerly Bally Gaming & Systems), Fred developed accounting, ticketing, and network communication applications for the slot floor. Fred is also the co-inventor of Veronica, an Internet search engine for the Gopher protocol.

Devendra Bayya has 10 years of experience in software development, with seven years in the gaming industry. His areas of expertise include developing and integrating mission-critical client/server and multi-tiered enterprise applications using modern object-oriented tools and processes.

Richard Angelini brings 25 years of software development experience to RadBlue as the primary developer of an industry-leading slot floor system for 20 years. Most recently, Richard has served as a consultant to several major casino corporations.

Samantha Ascheri-Phillips has worked in the Technical Communications field for over 10 years, with more than eight years in the gaming industry. Her areas of expertise include content management, usability, and single-source solution implementation.

Barbara Buckley Ristine is our company administrator and handles various non-technical aspects of the back office. After practicing law for almost 20 years in NY, NJ and NV, she brings her legal and business experience to the company.

 

Join our team!