Michael Auer, Business Unit Manager of Responsible Gaming at neccton, talks to Casino International about mentor, a system to help players make their own informed choices concerning their gambling. Responsible gaming is always at the forefront of the gaming industry but mentor aims to put an extra level in to allow players to make their own choices; mentor basically acts as a wake-up call if problem behaviour traits become apparent in play, asking the player if they want to carry on and using imagery and information to help the player understand their choices. mentor also provides operators with a lot of useful insights into player behaviour which in turn can be used to improve player experience. Michael Auer explains…

1. MENTOR
38 APRIL 2013
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esponsible gaming is always at the
forefront of the gaming industry but
mentor aims to put an extra level in to
allow players to make their own choices;
mentor basically acts as a wake-up call if
problem behaviour traits become apparent in play,
asking the player if they want to carry on and using
imagery and information to help the player
understand their choices. mentor also provides
operators with a lot of useful insights into player
behaviour which in turn can be used to improve
player experience.
Michael Auer explains…
Casino International: What does neccton do?
Michael Auer: We specialise in business
intelligence, customer relationship management and
big data analysis, you could say. So we support
companies when it comes to managing their data, to
retrieving insights about customers from their data.
One aspect of our business is gaming, so we support
gaming companies when it comes to improving their
customer experience.
A couple of years ago we stumbled across the field
of responsible gaming, and as a result developed a
software called mentor, which can be used by either
online gaming companies or companies which make
use of player cards. The software supports and
encourages players to make healthy gaming decisions
and helps them to avoid risk or problem gambling.
CI: So it helps players to make a choice?
MA: Yes, it does. Information is provided to the
player visually as well as numerically. Additionally the
system analyses player behaviours and as soon as it
detects significant changes, like someone increasing
their stakes, increasing playing time or switching to a
riskier game, the software provides personalised
messages to the players telling the this information
and asking, for example, “Are you sure you’re not
playing for longer than you originally intended to?”
The player then has tools to investigate their
gambling behaviour. The system does not exclude
players, it simply provides information; it does not
identify problem gamblers in a clinical way, it is
entirely based on the concept of informed player
choice. This means that providing information helps
players to stay healthy or make a change if they see
they might be on the way to becoming a risk gambler.
We make use of the concept of Motivational
Interviewing which has proven to be successful
modifying gambling behaviour.
CI: You did a study with Professor Mark
Griffiths, Director of the International Gaming
Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in
the UK – tell us about that.
MA: The study started in 2008, and I met Professor
Mark Griffiths at a conference. We decided to explore
an idea with an arrangement where we had the
resources from a technical point of view, and he is the
expert in problem gambling and many other related
behavioural fields. He provided us with what we
should do in terms of a framework, and we provided
the technical expertise. I have been working on my
Ph.D with him and have published papers with Mark
too.
To us it’s very important that mentor is based on a
mentor
changing the way we play?
Michael Auer, Business Unit Manager of Responsible Gaming at
neccton, talks to Casino International about mentor, a system to help
players make their own informed choices concerning their gambling

2. MENTOR
APRIL 2013 39
scientific foundation and is not just analysing data;
the way it analyses, and presents information to the
player numerically or visually, the message it sends to
the player, is all based on scientific knowledge.
Previous studies and other tools were and are often
imprecise. We work on publications that show our
approach is working; one publication is about the
effect of voluntary limits on gambling behaviour. We
did one analysis with the data from Austrian
Lotteries, who are the only internet gaming operator
in Austria. In return for using our software, we used
their data to publish scientific papers. We discovered
that if players choose to set voluntary limits,
regarding their cash in amounts, or their playing
time, it had a lot of positive long-term effects on their
gambling behaviour. If you’re a high-intensity
gambler and you choose to limit yourself, of course
you might choose to continue to play the same way as
before, but we have found this is largely not the case,
and it has had an effect on the kind of games these
people play as well. For example, poker players might
spend a longer time playing but not spend so much
money because their bets are quite low; but if the
time were to be a problem, and they decided to limit
their own time, it has a positive effect on their future
gambling behaviour.
In another paper we have just submitted for review,
we have investigated the effects of a pop-up message
which appears after a player has been on a slot
machine for a certain time. The findings until now
have been quite ambivalent; most of the findings that
have been published so far are based on experimental
studies, so none of the researchers have had access to
the wealth of data that we have. What we found is the
pop-up message does have a significant effect so a
significant number of player do stop after receiving
the message, compared to the period of time when
the pop-up message was not in use for that operator.
CI: So mentor could be used with a player-
tracking system in a land-based casino or with any
online casino?
MA: Any online casino could immediately make use
of such a system because an online casino would have
to track player behaviour anyway; land-based casinos
can only use the system if they have player tracking in
place, otherwise the statistics for the individual
player would not be available for the system to
analyse. Another important aspect is that mentor can
and should be used by operators to gain more
insights into their player’s behavior. This knowledge
can then be used to improve player experience. From
that point of view the system can also be viewed as a
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
framework. And many jurisdictions, e.g. Germany,
clearly describe that operators have to actively
analyze their players. With mentor all that
information is easily accessible. Casinos learn which
players tend to play riskier and also how to advice
those players appropriately and which actions to take.
www.neccton.com
www.neccton.com/en/home-mentor-en.html
Or contact: m.auer@neccton.com