A gaming system is disclosed herein that provides game play in exchange for monetary input per game played. The gaming system includes: a game server, a plurality of game units connected to the game server via a network, and a progressive controller. The progressive controller enables time based progressive gaming in which a progressive award is incremented by time unit. The progressive controller manages the progressive award that is incremented over time at intervals rather than being incremented by coin input. In one embodiment, the time intervals are random. In another embodiment, the incrementing intervals are calculated during the course of a game to produce a dynamic progressive increment rate. In still another embodiment, communication with the game server is only required once at a beginning of a game to downloading an incrementing rate and the progressive award.