Magic interactions? Game design to counterattack gambling irresistible illusions

Magic Interaction is an experimental design project aimed to provide a new user perspective on gambling, providing an interactive and emotional experience with a rhetoric value. The objective of the project is to increase awareness about the mechanisms that produce addicting play. The questions leading this experimental project were: how do gamblers perceive the play experience? What makes games of chance so appreciated and compelling? How can digital design cope with this irresistible interaction? In gambling players are immerse in intense perceptive experiences that depend on game features and play contexts: rules and mechanics, graphic features, sounds and rhythms of actions contribute to cognitive errors and illusions that could end up in pathological behaviours (Parke and Griffiths, 2007). These perceptions and cognitive phenomena are explained in terms of play rhetoric (Frasca, 2007): games are designed to produce meaningful experiences affecting players’ thoughts and emotions. Considering three of the main gamblers’ cognitive errors - illusion of control (Langer, 1975), near miss (Reid, 1986) and suspension of judgment (Griffiths, 2007) – the project intends to offer an answer to the questions: is it possible to change gamblers experience of gambling? Is it possible, through game play, to improve users’ awareness about their cognitive errors? Magic Interaction is a set of digital interactive artifacts (Fast Roulette, Invisible Roulette, Slot Machine What if?) providing micro gambling experiences; these meaningful games intend to lead gamblers toward a new consciousness about illusions of gambling. Each game is an adaptation of an existing game of chance, suitably revisited to enlighten a specific cognitive error related to play, through meaningful play experiences.