Three years ago, WLA member Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (ONCE), together with the Complutense University of Madrid (the largest in terms of number of students in Spain, and a leader in research), created a project entitled "Extraordinary Chair on Responsible Gaming and its Communication", to promote research in Responsible Gaming, and with the help of communicators, to assist citizens in understanding this concept. This commitment is directly related to the activity of the Spanish Organization, which has 86 years of experience in managing and marketing a social, safe, and responsible lottery.
The Chair was endowed with a principal researcher who, supported by a joint working team, has recently promoted a series of practices and initiatives which form a set of activities (compiled on the website https://catedraonceucm.com) that aim to raise awareness of Responsible Gaming for all audiences, facilitate its understanding, and make analysis (sometimes using neuroscience methods) their form of daily action and work.
The group have organized and participated in university and scientific congresses; conducted multiple focus groups on different realities; continuously collected information and research that is made publicly available; and maintained awareness towards informers, with meetings and other initiatives.
Within this wide range of actions, it was concluded that there is a need to reach young people over 18 years of age, so that they are aware of responsible gaming, and what better way than to involve university students in it, especially those related to communication.
Responsible Gaming hackathon
Thus, the first idea and the first edition of the hackathon "Practice Responsible Gaming" was born. This contest is aimed at students of audiovisual communication, journalism, and advertising degrees, or students with university master's degrees and postgraduate courses related to these topics.
Students had to develop and define creative and original projects, to communicate the scope and benefits of Responsible Gaming. The first objective was for participants to understand this reality – defined as the rational choice of gaming options. This considers the player's personal situation and circumstances and preventing this activity from becoming a problem. The next step was to design a creative and innovative campaign for social networks, describing the strategy and action plan to make the general public and especially young people (18 to 25 years old) reflect on the consequences of pathologies that could result from excessive gaming activities.
An innovative winning proposal
The proposals were presented in 2023 Q4 and the jury selected the winner in January 2024.
More than 50 students participated in the first edition, framed in 14 proposals, all of quality and within the scope, according to the jury that evaluated them.
There were five finalists, with works named, "Don't Lose What You Love, Play Responsibly," "The Luck of Life," "Responsible Generation," or "I Play with My Head," which highlighted the interest of young people in the topic and their good ideas to inform about it.
The final winner was a project from the Pontifical University of Salamanca, which was also awarded a prize of EUR 5,000 among the four members (two Spaniards and two Erasmus students of European origin), who shared 1,000 euros in cash plus another 4,000 euros exclusively for training actions related to audiovisual communication, journalism, and advertising.
The winning proposal suggests creating a podcast where real experiences of people who have overcome disordered gaming problems are shared, telling their story and how they overcame it. All this would be uploaded to all platforms in different formats (YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, or TikTok). Additionally, it proposes promoting collaboration with educational institutions and youth organizations for adults, talks and workshops, or participation in events and fairs. In this way, interaction with the public can be achieved, and feedback can be collected to improve the strategy with a tone of communication that must be respectful, sincere, and understandable.
Marketing professor Sandra Lizzeth Hernández Zelaya at the Pontifical University, who tutored the winners, highlighted the usefulness for students of this type of initiative that leads future professionals to face the reality of having to communicate different issues, noting that the best thing is to "put yourself in the shoes" of what you want to tell – in this case, Responsible Gaming.