'Gamification for good': can game design help keep gambling safe?
When a gambler starts to lose control, the trouble begins long before the money runs out. It starts in the brain.
That was the central message from a Gaming in Europe webinar, held as part of the European Gaming and Betting Association’s (EGBA) European Safer Gambling Week, which explored how “gamification for good” could help prevent and reduce gambling-related harm without alienating customers.
Hosted by Gaming in Europe founder Willem van Oort and moderated by content director Jeroen Laemers, the session brought together Dr Kim Mouridsen, professor at Aarhus University and founder of Mindway AI, and Dr Mary Donohue, CEO of the Digital Wellness Center.
What happens in the gambler’s brain
Laemers opened by asking Mouridsen a simple but unsettling question: what happens in the brain of a gambler who is losing control?
Mouridsen began by describing the brain as a learning engine. One that feeds on rewards. “The word ‘reward’ is pretty central here,” Mouridsen explained. “And of course, that’s what we are looking for in gambling. We are looking for ways of enhancing reward sensitivity.”
He explained that the brain’s reward system, driven by dopamine, gradually shifts from reacting to actual wins to reacting to the expectation of a win.
“What we see in gambling is that that reward actually might come a little bit earlier,” he said. “What actually feels good is not the outcome of the game in itself, but the expectancy that something good is going to happen in this game.”
“As you’re starting to play that game, you have neurons in the brain that start firing,” he added. Near misses, outcomes that look like wins but are actually losses, are especially dangerous, he said, because “these negative outcomes don’t register in the brain.”
The speed of many games, he suggested, is linked to the matter. “Especially in games that are very fast, because immediately another game starts and you raise your expectation again that something good will happen. Then something bad might happen, but it doesn’t register. That’s the vicious circle you get into.”
In most people, a kind of internal brake eventually kicks in. But for vulnerable players, that brake may not work as it should.
“We have a little center in the brain, a small stop region. It’s actually a brake that we have in the brain,” Mouridsen said, referring to an area of the frontal cortex. “This is the brake that’s supposed to step in if we are doing a behavior that’s actually not good, if it’s not sustainable in the long run.”
“In people who are susceptible to problem gambling behavior, that part of the brain might not activate as it’s supposed to,” he warned.
Stress then makes a bad situation worse. As losses mount, “that elevates your stress level, it elevates your cortisol level. And in turn, what that does is it actually turns off the frontal part of your brain,” he said. “Once that happens, your behaviour becomes much more automatic. You’re not registering negative inputs; you just keep playing.”
Using games to identify risk
From there, the discussion turned to prevention, and how gamification can be used to spot risk in a way that feels natural to players.
Mouridsen argued that while brain scans could, in theory, identify at-risk individuals, “of course, in real life that’s impossible and not really viable.” Self-report questionnaires help, but have obvious limits. “They’re predisposed on the assumption that people will answer truthfully,” he said. “People who might be in some sort of trouble, will try to hide it. It’s just like with alcohol addiction. If you ask people how much they drink, you might not get the right answer.”
Instead, he described simple, purpose-built games that can be played in a couple of minutes and quietly reveal how a person responds to risk and reward.
“One of the ways is to construct games in such a fashion that they’re very simple, they’re very short, they’re not addictive in themselves, but they sort of present the hallmarks, the archetypes of gamblers’ behaviour,” he explained.
Mouridsen explained how a simple two-minute card game can reveal who is vulnerable to harmful gambling patterns. Players choose from four decks without knowing that each deck has been deliberately designed. “The objective of the game is to win as much as possible in a relatively short time… The player doesn’t know that we have actually constructed these decks of cards in a particular way,” he said.
When researchers compare results, the difference between healthy players and those with problems in the brain’s “brake” region becomes clear. The healthy group gradually avoids the losing decks; the other group keeps choosing them. “You can see in the lower curve. The people who have a problem in that part of the brain simply don’t learn,” he said.
What’s striking is that their understanding of the game is intact. “If you ask them what the probability of winning is, they will actually give you the right answer,” Mouridsen noted. “So they actually have a sense for probability. The problem is that they make the wrong decision.”
Micro-breaks, mood and trust
Where Mouridsen focused on diagnosis, Donohue concentrated on what can be done before players hit a crisis point.
“My area of expertise is behavior modification, and I still work on the basic principles of classical conditioning,” she said. “We offer short, joyful moments digitally to interrupt routines that people already have. So we allow them to reset, and they begin to associate our experiences with relief.”
“What this means is we’re working to avoid the stress response in the brain,” she argued, pointing out that the human brain “hasn’t adjusted yet to digital” despite smartphones being ubiquitous. In North America, she said, “82% of people can’t put down their phone to take a shower.”
She described these brief, tailored “micro breaks” as “emotional regulation before someone goes down the path that Kim just talked about.”
Her team’s research suggests the way these breaks are delivered is critical. “The less friction to get to emotional regulation, the larger the mood change,” she said.
In one 90-day campaign, players had to click three times from a responsible gambling page to reach the Digital Wellness Center content. “Over 90 days, we had 1,700 people give it a try. We had over 961 people play. They played for just about a minute, and the mood lift was 42%,” Donohue said.
To fill these breaks, her team uses short videos on topics such as “how your brain works, how your relationships work, why you’re stressed at work”, as well as movement, meditation, and sleep tips. Delivery is key. In earlier work with companies including Microsoft and Walmart, she said, “We sent them an email that asked them a silly question, ‘Are you as happy as a rocket ship taking off or as sad as a bunny in a hole?'”
“People just laughed at that question, and laughter is a reset,” she said. With the right content and format, “they moved from stressed to happy in less than three minutes, when we gave them the right break, the right reset.”
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