Background

In 2022 Ontario opened the market to legalized online gambling. Since then, the volume of gambling has dramatically increased along with a spike in gambling-related harms, particularly amongst young males.

Studies have shown that the illusion of control is one of the key behavioural factors driving gambling harm. We needed to debunk it without bruising the ego – if you explicitly suggest to young males they’re not in control, or lack mastery, they’ll reject the message.

Idea

To debunk the illusion of control in a way that could translate to all forms of online gambling and is linked to where our audience is largely gambling – on their phones – we built The Randomizer, a modified version of the classic video game Snake.

Snake is played by people across generations and ethnocultural groups and was one of the first mobile games. A familiar game turned into a surprisingly difficult challenge: Randomized game controls mimicked the random variables dictating gambling outcomes, showing people no matter how much skill or knowledge they brought to the game, winning is a matter of chance.

Results

4 million+ digital impressions

3,430 interactions with students on Ontario post-secondary campuses

Among those who engaged with the Randomizer in person:

o   92% had a strong / very strong understanding of the illusion of control

o   93% intend to incorporate what they learned into future gambling behaviours

o   77% learned new information