Conference Series on Gambling

Featured for the first time in North America, the documentary Ka-Ching! Pokie Nation is a ground-breaking expose in which trade insiders break the silence around this highly secretive industry to explain how Pokies (ie. slot machines and video lottery terminals-VLTs) are rigged to keep people hooked. Presenting a powerful case that Pokie machines are programmed to be addictive, it reframes the way we view "problem gambling" shifting the focus off the "problematic" individuals and onto the predatory machine design.

Watch the trailer

Dr. Natasha Dow Schüll, an international expert featured in the documentary, is a respected and highly accomplished scholar in the field of gambling addiction and current professor at New York University (NYU-Steinhardt). Her most recent book, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, draws on extended research among compulsive gamblers and slot machine designers to explore the relationship between technology design and the experience of addiction.

Dr. Magali Dufour is an associate professor at the University of Sherbrooke, and an expert on the treatment of gambling addiction. She is active in the research on internet gambling, and has published extensively on youth gambling. She is a senior researcher at the University Institute on Addictions at the research center of the Charles Lemoyne hospital.