There has been a lot of recent skepticism regarding the future of gambling following a drop in the number of young players that are spending their money at casinos. Millennials just don’t seem to have
much interest in many of the current options these days, from table games to lottery tickets. In order to figure out how more young people can be motivated to get involved, the BCLC will be trying a new method of research.
The British Columbia Lottery Corporation will be hosting their very first hackathon. A hackathon is an invent where a large group of people come together in order to create unique ideas typically centered around computer programming. It is usually done as a competition in order to offer an incentive for creating these ideas and putting them on display. Some hackathons only require that participants come up with a plan for the project, while others have them go as far as creating a prototype over the course of just a couple of days.
The BCC hackathon is going to take place this weekend and is going to have a grand prize of $5,000 for the team that comes up with the best idea. The goal will be for teams to figure out gambling games that will appeal to young people. It is expected that a majority of the participants are going to be young or middle aged, which will give a fresh perspective on the issue. Strategically, the event is going to happen at the same time as the Vancouver Startup Week.
Jim Lightbody, who is the CEO of the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, stated that the whole point behind hosting the event is so that players can be excited about offering new ideas to the industry. He doesn’t expect any of the projects to be fully completed over the weekend, but is hoping that teams will have something to present that is well planned out. At the end of the weekend a panel of judges will determine which team has the best idea and the prize will handed out with a likely chance of having it continued on with the BCLC as a long term project. It will need to meet the standards set for regulation and will likely be refined.
This isn’t the first move that the BCLC has made in order to figure out new games. They have partnered with the Centre for Digital Media that is placed out of Vancouver. One idea was to add messaging between players to make gaming a bit more social and allow for a higher level of engagement. Most online casino platforms don’t use messaging systems between players in a live format.
There are about 200 people signed up for the hackathon event, which is going to take place down in Telus Gardens located in downtown Vancouver. While programmers can work on any project that they would like, only certain projects will be eligible for the grand prize.
