Bonuses such as progressive bonuses are based on the activity of many players playing at many machines. The machines may be made by different manufacturers and run different games. Prior diverse arrays of such machines relied on a hardware slot machine interface board (SMIB) that acted as a master and transmitted game activity to remote servers. A disclosed embodiment virtualizes the SMIB. In one implementation, protected processes allow for real time meter creation and destruction within different games, even after the game software has been certified and the hash cannot change.