Education at the heart of preventing long-term harm to young gamers

If you are a gnarled old gambler who has served your time learning the punting arts you may wonder what the youth-focused charity YGam has to say to you. If you already know about 'loot boxes' and 'skins' and the damaging effects they are wreaking on teenage gamers then you are a step ahead of many who learn about such addictive elements the hard way when a child has emptied their parent's bank account to finance their purchases.

This is an area in which YGam specialises, educating parents and teachers as well as the youngsters on the risks associated with gaming and gambling in a digital world.

"In our parent workshops we put a photo of a loot box – which is now in most video games – and ask what it is. In a group of 30, usually one or two will know, whereas if you ask a classroom of eight-year-olds they'll probably all know," says Daniel Bliss, YGam's director of external affairs.

For the uninitiated, loot boxes are items embedded in games that can be purchased for random rewards, including skins, which change a character's appearance. The skins can then be traded on third-party websites for money.

When a player purchases a loot box they find out what is inside only when they have paid.

It may contain a prize valuable to playing the game, or it may contain nothing of use, so basically it is a gamble. And unlike the stringent checks which take place with all gambling operators to ensure players are 18 or over, no such scrutiny applies to gaming.

Daniel Bliss of YGam: 'Freshers at university tick all the boxes for a potential problem gambler'

"If your ten-year-old asked you to put a bet on for them would you do it?" asks Bliss. "But if your child asked you to buy Grand Theft Auto, which is an 18+ game, the answer might be different.

"When schools were closed this spring and kids were at home all the time the easy solution for parents was giving them £5 a day to let them entertain themselves gaming. Later on they realise a game that cost £30 to buy has had £300 spent on it a few months later."

YGam is a charity born out of tragedy and an unfortunate sequence of events. Co-founder Anne Evans' son Alan committed suicide in 2010 at the age of 40 after suffering for 25 years with a gambling addiction.

Fellow founder Lee Willows had a successful career in education and had never gambled until the day he found he had a fake ticket to a London show and decided instead to spend the evening in a casino. He won big that night and it was downhill from there: going to the casino every day, losing everything he had, taking out loans and stealing from his employer.

During Willows' successful recovery he realised there was no education process to prevent young people slipping down the same path and so he now uses his lived experience to help others.

Some of the most tragic cases are freshers at university. "They tick all the boxes for a young person potentially at risk," Bliss says. "They've just turned 18, have money in the bank for the first time, they're away from home so have a sense of freedom but also peer pressure and anxiety over their studies, exacerbated this year by lockdown."

YGam's student support programme is well developed, employing students across Britain for ten hours a week to deliver peer-to-peer awareness. It has the financial support of Ascot racecourse, who sponsor a student ambassador at nearby Royal Holloway.

It is a key part of the process of education to prevent future harm of which YGam can be rightly proud.

YGam.org

Gambling support helplines: ROI 1800 936 725, NI 08000 886 725, GB 0808 8020 133

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