Auckland gambling conference aims to break a habit

As gambling gets more sophisticated, researchers are planning a counter-attack using smart technology.An international conference in Auckland this week brings together gambling researchers developing methods to get people to kick the habit.Although fewer people might be gambling these days, that doesn't mean less money is being lost. "Over recent years, the rate of participation - or how many people are playing the pokies - tends to be decreasing," Associate Professor of Psychology at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Simone Rodda says. "Young people aren't really starting at the rate that they did 20 years ago, but the rate of problems remain the same - over a billion (New Zealand) dollars in expenditure last year and that's being done by a smaller number of people - that's a little concerning." Rodda is speaking at the International Gambling Conference, being held in Auckland this week by AUT and the Problem Gambling Foundation."When people develop a problem, they are spending more money than what they used to," she says."The opportunities to gamble have increased - not only do we have gambling venues but we can buy Lotto tickets online, we can do sports betting online, you can bet anytime of the day or the night now."One of the areas growing in prevalence is in "loot boxes", through online video games. Tegan Charnock is a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania, researching how excessive video game play can lead to gambling issues, and is also speaking at the conference.Charnock describes loot boxes as "a virtual lucky dip that gamers can buy with their real world money"."The items in the loot box are randomised, so you don't know what virtual items you might get. What you get inside them could be high or low value, but the really risky part is you don't know before purchasing - only after opening," she says."Psychologically speaking, if we think about how people learn behaviours, we know that the most effective way to teach someone a new behaviour is to reward that person for completing the desired behaviour. The trick here is though that you don't reward them every time, you reward them sometimes or intermittently. Some video games features and loot boxes in particular work very similarly to this." Charnock says although some countries, such as Belgium, have banned loot boxes, game users can find ways to access these loot box games if they really want to…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details