Their popularity sparked an entire genre of video gambling machines bearing popular-culture graphics - everything from Elvis and Terminator machines to Betty Boop and Wheel of Fortune. One Las Vegas psychologist, Thompson said, has called video poker machines “the crack cocaine of gambling.” “The downside is the machine hooked a lot of people.”

“Video poker machines made amateur players think they were playing a casino game rather than just pulling a handle,” he said. It went public a year later.Ĭoinciding with Redd’s introduction of video poker machines was the growth of so-called neighborhood casinos appealing to local residents and, Thompson said, “his machine became the most important device” in attracting players. He founded International Game Technology in 1980.

When he decided to sell the distribution company to Bally Manufacturing in the mid-1970s, he negotiated the right to continue developing video-based slot machines. Bally, however, didn’t share Redd’s enthusiasm for the potential of video gaming machines.

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