Counteracting Availability: Giving Control Back to Players Within Online Gambling

Gambling has become ever more available and begun to employ more techniques, such as gamification, in order to engage their players. Today, Gambling with the use of your computer or smartphone is not deemed very different from playing any other kind of game. This shortens the availability cascade, or chain of events, that in the context of Gambling can ultimately lead to severe economical or social consequences for the players. This thesis seeks to find out how the increased availability can be counteracted by giving control back to the players through the use of personal informatics as well as if, and if so how, the social aspect of Gambling affects responsibility and the perceived experience. By conducting in-depth interviews with 20 participants I gained insights into what would assist them in maintaining control as well as their perception of Gambling. In order to evaluate these findings they were, in conjunction with related research, translated into a design concept. The results of the evaluations of this design suggest that many of the same techniques used to increase engagement with Gambling can also be utilized to counteract the increased availability. The prospects for future research are outlined