Your Payment is Being Processed...

Payment Failed. Please check your payment information and try again.

Sorry, unfortunately the times selected are no longer available. Please try again.

Blog

Virtual Reality to Counsel Lottery Winners


If you’re anything like me, you are probably expecting to the win the lottery some day. Sure, we probably both know the odds are against us but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream, right?


Almost every person who has ever bought a lotto ticket likely carried some small belief they’d be the lucky one. I mean, who hasn’t begun a conversation with the words “When I win the lottery...”?


Dreaming of a sudden windfall is a nice diversion from day to day life for many people. Thinking of the kinds of things you might buy, the ways you’d change your life. But the truth is that while sudden wealth is an incredible opportunity, and one that most of us won’t ever have a chance to experience, for many lotto winners, it turns into a nightmare.


Sure there are the stories of winners blowing through their money, eventually spending their way back to where they were before their wins, but while those sad tales do exist, they are often the exceptions. But all winners, whether they handle their finances properly or not, do still have difficulties with their new life. Whether they’re being hit up by family members or old friends, or even just find themselves a target for any one looking for a buck.


With this in mind, Lotto Quebec is turning to virtual reality to help new winners cope with these kinds of requests. Designed to be used alongside other counseling it gives to its winners, the virtual reality experience is believed by the agency to be better sensitize the winners than any of its other tools.


The lottery offers counseling to those who win over $25,000, which amounts to about 1,500 people a year and while each winner’s situation and how they deal with it is no doubt going to be different, the one constant will likely be how they interact with people.


It’s with this in mind that the eight minute virtual reality experience they’re offered after their win are little situations where the winner is being talked to in virtual reality. The experience puts them in the shoes they will likely wear in future social situations. Maybe they’re at a party with friends and someone lets it slip they need some help or have an investment tip.


Winners are already taught to seek help from professionals, learn to say no and to think things through before making decisions. Now, with help from VR, these lessons can be put into action in a virtual setting. And hopefully it will be there for us all to learn from when we finally win the big one.