Audio Articles
Gaming Visionaries - Bob Luciano
June 1, 2012
Gaming Visionaries - Bob Luciano
By Amanda Huggett
Bob Luciano
President and Founder
Sierra Design Group
Though the company has since been acquired by Bally Technologies, one of this year’s gaming visionaries founded his own company that came up with many of gaming’s core concepts. Sierra Design Group (SDG), which Bob Luciano started in 1996, was a leading supplier of Class II and Class III gaming devices, systems and technology, and also did research and development.
Many innovative games and products came out of SDG. Its initial offering, the highly successful Raining Diamonds™ slot machine, actually dispensed genuine diamond jewelry as the top jackpot award. And at a 2003 G2E, SDG debuted a bonusing concept that allowed all of the players on a linked bank of machines to receive additional bonus payouts when one player initiated the bonus round.
Bally purchased SDG in 2004, and Luciano went on to become the chief technology officer there. Before that though, he was the vice president of engineering at IGT for 14 years and held several engineering positions in a variety of non-gaming companies such as Soabar, a division of Avery International and Mobil Oil Corp.
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