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Professor Game Podcast

Rob Alvarez

#1 Gamification Podcast | Insights and Real-World Strategies to Boost Engagement, Loyalty & Retention.
Professor Game helps innovators, product leaders, and educators use gamification and game thinking to create engagement that lasts.

🎙️ Hosted by Rob Alvarez — TEDx Speaker, consultant, and host of the #1 Gamification Podcast — each week brings you practical insights, case studies, and frameworks from 400+ global experts and proven real-world examples.

Expect interviews with top practitioners in gamification, game design, and behavioral strategy, plus solo episodes where Rob breaks down practical frameworks you can apply in your team, classroom, or product.

Join the movement to make engagement, motivation, and loyalty truly meaningful — with stories and strategies that transform the way people learn, work, and play.

💡 Listen. Learn. Apply Play to Your Strategy.

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  • 25 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 20 min
  • English

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  • #468
    Monday · 15 min

    Why People Quit Your AI After One Mistake | Episode 468

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down algorithm aversion, showing why people abandon an AI tool after its first visible mistake, even when it outperforms them. He covers the 2015 and 2018 Wharton studies by Dietvorst, Simmons and Massey, where letting people adjust a model's forecasts by as little as 2 points out of 100 lifted the share who chose it from 47% to 68%, and connects them to Core Drives 3, 4 and 8. He also explains why he keeps using the AI that helps prepare this show, despite it inventing proof every week. Listeners learn how to design a small, bounded handle for AI rollouts and how to tell a real control from a placebo button. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways In Dietvorst, Simmons and Massey's 2015 Wharton studies, people who watched a statistical model make forecasts were less likely to bet on it, even after seeing it outperform a human forecaster. In the 2018 follow-up, only 32% chose a forecasting model they could not change, while 76% chose the same model when they could adjust each forecast by up to 10 percentiles. The size of the handle barely mattered: 71%, 71% and 68% chose the model when allowed to adjust by 10, 5 or 2 points, against 47% when no adjustment was allowed. People who could adjust the model were less shaken by its errors and later handed over completely more often, 30% versus 12%. A small handle is how people learn to let go. Two rollout failures mirror each other: full autonomy dies at the first visible mistake (Core Drive 8, Loss & Avoidance), and approval on every step turns people into rubber stamps. An approval step nobody ever uses to change anything works like the door-close button in most US elevators. Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback) needs a control that really changes the outcome. Topics Covered 0:00: The AI that lies to me every week 1:17: Gartner's 40% and what their list leaves out 2:16: Why we fire machines for mistakes we forgive in people 4:11: Two points of control changed the numbers 6:17: Calibrated trust and Core Drives 3 and 4 8:55: Full autonomy vs approval on everything 10:10: Approval steps as placebo buttons 11:35: How to build a small, bounded handle 13:16: Four questions for your own AI rollout 14:06: Where the research stops 14:52: What could they have done about it? Mentioned in This Episode Algorithm Aversion: People Erroneously Avoid Algorithms after Seeing Them Err (Dietvorst, Simmons & Massey, 2015) Overcoming Algorithm Aversion: People Will Use Imperfect Algorithms If They Can (Even Slightly) Modify Them (Dietvorst, Simmons & Massey, 2018) Gartner: Over 40% of Agentic AI Projects Will Be Canceled by End of 2027 Understanding Algorithm Aversion: When Do People Abandon AIs When They See Them Err? (MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy) The Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #467
    October 19 · 20 min

    Earned, Not Given: Rewards Beyond Points and Badges | Episode 467

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe, co-founder and CEO of Trophy, a gamification layer that powers features for around two million consumer-app users, makes the case for rewards beyond points and badges: rewards people earn instead of rewards they are handed. He walks through a gym guest pass that nobody uses when it is free and that members value once they earn it with three straight months of attendance. Rob and Charlie also debate where A/B testing helps gamification and where it hides long-term motivation such as Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning & Calling). Listeners come away with practical alternatives to points and badges and a clearer sense of which features they can test and which need judgment. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways A gym guest pass earned after three consecutive months of attendance beats a free pass nobody uses: earning it triggers Core Drive 6 (Scarcity & Impatience), and an expiry date drives both retention and referrals. Gamification can work without points and badges when rewards tie back to why users act; progress indicators and tangible real-world perks, such as bringing a friend, are practical alternatives. Trophy ran its own podcast for seven to eight months to generate leads, then shelved it when the audience never reached critical mass; a shareable report of insights from its platform data proved easier to make and spread further. The most common gamification mistake Charlie sees is "set it and forget it": teams ship a feature and move on instead of cohort-testing it against engagement KPIs such as frequency, session length, and retention. A/B testing has a floor: with 100 users split 50/50 you will not reach significance in a reasonable timeframe, while 100,000 users can give a usable answer within a couple of weeks. Short test windows favor short-term motivators. Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning & Calling) rarely shows up in a one-month A/B test, yet it keeps users for years; Charlie argues tests pay off at early drop-off, while long-term features take more intuition. Topics Covered 0:00 Meet Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe of Trophy 2:19 Why Trophy shelved its own podcast 4:22 Design by subtraction and saying no 6:04 Iterating features until they stick 8:16 Inside Trophy's pilot programs 9:59 Why set-and-forget gamification fails 11:59 Why A/B tests miss long-term motivation 14:01 A book pick, a superpower, and Elden Ring 16:36 Gamification without points and badges 18:12 The earned gym guest pass 19:38 Trophy's Gamification Intelligence Report Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD About Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe is co-founder and CEO of Trophy, the gamification layer for consumer apps. Trophy helps consumer apps ship gamification features that lift engagement and retention, and powers those features for around two million users. With a technical background, Charlie splits his days between sales, product, and helping customers map their users' motivations to the right mechanics. Find the Guest Online Website: trophy.so LinkedIn: Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe Trophy on LinkedIn: Trophy Labs Mentioned in This Episode Some links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Recommended book: How I Built This by Guy Raz Trophy's Gamification Intelligence Report (linked from the Trophy home page) Octalysis Framework (Core Drives 1, 5, and 6) Favorite games: Clash of Clans and Elden Ring Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #466
    October 12 · 13 min

    Nobody Decided to Keep It | Episode 466

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob explains subtraction neglect, the tendency of teams to fix problems by adding features, programs and pilots while rarely considering what to remove, using his own decision to stop publishing Professor Game on video as the case study. He walks through the 2021 Nature study by Adams, Converse, Hales and Klotz, including a Lego experiment where people paid to add bricks and a university call for ideas where 89% of suggestions were additions. Listeners learn the questions that expose things nobody decided to keep, and how to present a removal to leadership as a trade-off with a number attached. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways In the 2021 Nature study by Adams, Converse, Hales and Klotz, people paid 10 cents per added Lego brick to stabilize a platform, yet only 41% found the better fix: removing a single block for free. When an incoming university president asked the community for ideas, 89% of the suggestions added something to the university and only 11% proposed removing anything. Shown an additive and a subtractive solution side by side, more than eight in ten people choose removal. Subtraction gets overlooked far more often than it gets rejected. Professor Game's full video episodes began as a way to feed social clips. When the clipping stopped, the video ran for about two years with modest views, because nobody ever decided to keep it. Removal tends to come to mind only when something looks visibly bloated or odd, like a 15-ingredient soup. Things that look normal, such as video on a podcast, get a free pass. Present a removal as a trade-off with a number: what it would cost to make the thing work, how uncertain the return is, and where that money and effort will go instead. Topics Covered 0:00 - The last video episode of Professor Game 0:26 - Why the show started audio-only 1:27 - How video crept in, one sensible step at a time 3:06 - The reason left, the video stayed 3:54 - Dashboards, pilots and features nobody decided to keep 4:59 - The Nature study on why we overlook removal 5:40 - Paying for Lego bricks instead of removing one 6:31 - Why removal never comes to mind 7:48 - Could I make video work? The wrong question 9:11 - How to report a removal without spin 10:55 - Questions to ask about any feature 12:00 - The first move of the relaunch Mentioned in This Episode People systematically overlook subtractive changes (Adams, Converse, Hales and Klotz, Nature, 2021) Riverside The Octalysis Framework Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #465
    October 5 · 9 min

    Your Login Numbers Can't Tell If the Bar Is Right | Episode 465

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down adoption target difficulty, showing why login counts cannot tell you whether a goal is set right. He covers a 2026 Journal of Marketing Research study of the Australian micro-investing app Raiz Invest and a randomized test in a popular free-to-play puzzle game, drawing on both to explain why missed targets are associated with lower retention a year later. Listeners learn to measure the valuable action instead of the login and how to re-tune difficulty for each person. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways A 2026 Journal of Marketing Research study of the investing app Raiz found a goal feature helped most users but left a substantial segment no better or worse off, a split linked to how hard each goal was for the person. In Raiz's email test, five message versions went to 10,000 customers each; among the 329 who adopted within two weeks, suggesting a recurring amount beat plain goal setting, while suggesting only an end goal did not. Login counts did not differ across any Raiz test group, so a login-based metric would have missed what people were actually doing in the app, which is the valuable action a business needs to track. In a randomized test of about 330,000 puzzle-game players, easier boards for players who had been playing less lifted win rates about 14 points and added about 10 rounds over 30 days; they used fewer boosters per round, yet total spending rose, against the company's expectation. Missed targets were associated with lower retention a year later, a horizon that a seven-week test or a sprint review would never catch, which is why Rob recommends tracking the miss rate by segment and by period. Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback) acts as the feedback loop that keeps Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment) meaningful when difficulty is re-tuned for each person. Topics Covered 0:00 - Who set the bar on your last adoption target? 0:35 - Three ways a bar goes wrong 1:50 - The Raiz email test: recurring amounts beat plain goal setting 2:20 - Why login numbers miss real behavior 3:14 - The puzzle game test: easier boards, higher spending 4:24 - Five moves for setting the bar 6:57 - Would the person thank you if they could see the dial? 8:18 - Where to start: the Core Drives in the Wild guide Mentioned in This Episode Both studies below are published research, not client work. An, Bonfrer and Eckert (2026), "Increasing App Engagement Behaviors via Goal-Enabling Technology Features: The Role of Goal Difficulty Dimensions," Journal of Marketing Research (the Raiz Invest study) Ascarza, Netzer and Runge (2025), "Personalized Game Design for Improved User Retention and Monetization in Freemium Games," International Journal of Research in Marketing (the puzzle game test) The Octalysis Framework The Octalysis Group and Procter & Gamble sales gamification case study Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #464
    September 28 · 2 min

    Nine Years, 400+ Episodes, and I'm Changing Three Things | Episode 464

    Want in before anyone else? Join the Engagers and get early access to the November relaunch: professorgame.com/relaunch Episode Summary Rob marks Professor Game's ninth anniversary by announcing the biggest format change in over 450 episodes, moving from one episode a week to several episodes on the same Monday, all answering a single question. He reveals the first of at least three changes coming to the show and invites the Engagers, his core community, to get early previews, private launch details, and an exclusive reward before the public announcement. Listeners learn how to join the early access group ahead of the early November relaunch and which Core Drives are shaping the new format. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Professor Game turns nine in early November 2026, and for the first time in over 450 episodes, a single Monday will carry multiple episodes instead of one. Rob is changing at least three things about the show's format, revealing them one at a time between now and the relaunch instead of all at once. The Engagers, Professor Game's core community, get early previews, private details on how they can join the launch, and an exclusive reward before the public reveal. The relaunch design itself draws on Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning), Core Drive 5 (Social Influence and Relatedness), Core Drive 2 (Achievement), and CD7 (Unpredictability and Curiosity). Signing up at professorgame.com/relaunch takes about 30 seconds and puts a listener inside the early access group before the relaunch goes public. Topics Covered 0:00 — Something Rob's never done in over 450 episodes 0:21 — At least three things are changing 0:40 — Exclusive access for the Engagers first 1:17 — The Core Drives behind the relaunch 1:40 — How to join before the public reveal 1:56 — Game over, for now Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #463
    September 21 · 33 min

    Personalization Is Overrated, with Kristen Berman | Episode 463

    Don't experiment on your own revenue with broken game mechanics. Get our guide "Core Drives in the Wild" to learn how to apply real behavioral science to your product: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Kristen Berman, behavioral scientist and CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, argues that personalization is overrated in product design, and she brings the experiment to back it up. She walks through a published onboarding test with Headspace where asking new users a few questions and then recommending the same Basics course to everyone doubled course enrollments, outperforming both the personalized recommendation and the version with no questions at all. She is just as direct about the limit: enrollments doubled, yet people did not meditate more, because the rest of the product never reinforced that first commitment. Listeners come away with a barriers-and-benefits lens for any signup flow and a clear order of operations: get the fundamentals of human decision making right first, then layer personalization on top. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Headspace's onboarding experiment with Irrational Labs doubled course enrollments by asking new users a few questions and then recommending the same Basics course to everyone, with no personalization behind the answers. Personalization pays off when the match is right and loses the user when it misses, and a handful of signup questions rarely reveals enough to get it right. Kristen Berman's advice: design first to avoid getting it wrong. Doubling Headspace course enrollments did not get more people to meditate. The enrolled course sat at the bottom of a list instead of on the Today tab, which shows that fixing one step of the funnel does not fix the next one. Forced choice beats a Continue button: in an Irrational Labs experiment, showing Accept or Decline led more people to accept, because the cost of saying no becomes visible instead of staying hidden behind an X. A meta-analysis from around 2020 found no effect of personalized health feedback on behaviors ranging from smoking to physical activity. With reminders, whether you send them and how often matters far more than small copy changes. Duolingo times reminders to the hour a user signed up, and Netflix improved its recommendations by moving from five stars to thumbs up or down so more people rated. Past behavior is the most reliable personalization signal. Topics Covered 0:00 - Doubled enrollments, no more meditation 0:13 - Meet Kristen Berman of Irrational Labs 2:56 - Where irrational decisions cost the most 5:06 - Why game designers get to be paternalistic 7:48 - Forced choice: accept or decline beats continue 10:02 - Friction versus motivation in fintech and health 13:58 - The Headspace onboarding experiment setup 17:45 - Non-personalized questions doubled course enrollments 19:46 - Why more enrollments did not mean more meditation 22:21 - Pre-commitment, lost streaks and why willpower fails 25:24 - AI personalization and the health meta-analysis 28:44 - Reminders, Duolingo timing and Netflix ratings 32:08 - Where to find Kristen Berman Don't experiment on your own revenue with broken game mechanics. Get our guide "Core Drives in the Wild" to learn how to apply real behavioral science to your product: professorgame.com/WildCD About Kristen Berman Kristen Berman is a prominent behavioral scientist and the CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, a leading behavioral design firm in Silicon Valley. Irrational Labs partners with top companies such as Intuit, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Meta, and Microsoft to drive behavior change for the greater good. Kristen's expertise in behavioral economics began as a founding member of the behavioral economics group at Google, where she worked with over 25 teams to launch innovative interventions, and she went on to co-found Duke University's financial decision making lab, Common Cents. She also publishes Product Teardowns, a Substack where she takes apart a popular app in about five minutes to show how a behavioral scientist thinks about design, pricing, incentives, and loyalty. Find the Guest Online LinkedIn kristenberman.com Product Teardowns on Substack Irrational Labs Irrational Labs case studies Mentioned in This Episode Lessons on habit formation from an experiment with Headspace Headspace onboarding experiment recap by Purchasely, the third partner in the study BJ Fogg's Behavior Model (motivation, ability, trigger/prompt) Ulysses contracts and pre-commitment Forced choice (Accept or Decline versus Continue) Meta-analysis on personalized health feedback (circa 2020) Duolingo's reminder timing, Netflix's move from five stars to thumbs, and Uber Eats notifications Core Drives in the Wild guide Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #462
    September 14 · 18 min

    Everyone Did Their Job Right and the Product Still Broke | Episode 462

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down why a product can feel stitched together even when every team involved did excellent work, using Conway's Law as the lens: organizations that design systems are constrained to produce designs that copy their own communication structures. He walks through three real cases, a regional sales dashboard at Procter & Gamble where each region had picked a defensible and incompatible way to count sales, a client engagement where technology decision rights sat with a team that carried none of the consequences, and a project where several functions held contradicting views on what the design should optimize for. The argument is that functionality degrades gracefully under that fragmentation while motivational design does not, because the effect lives in the loop between Core Drives rather than in any single mechanic. Listeners learn where organizational seams show up inside the product and how to test for alignment before any design work starts. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Melvin E. Conway argued in Datamation that organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs that copy their own communication structures, which is why a product built across four departments reaches the user as four products. At Procter & Gamble, every region had chosen a defensible way to count sales, with its own aggregation rules and its own view of the target, so a single regional dashboard failed on reconciliation rather than on SKU volume or technical complexity. When the team that picks the technology carries none of the consequences of that choice, the decision optimizes for minimizing spend rather than for the problem the product owner is accountable for delivering. Functionality degrades gracefully under organizational fragmentation, because a fragmented dashboard is still a working dashboard. Motivational design does not degrade gracefully, because the effect lives in the loop, so reordering or removing pieces collapses it. Contradicting business metrics across functions is the failure that stops a project rather than slowing it. Business metrics are the first input to the design, so changing them after delivery means redesigning a significant part of the experience. Before any design starts, ask four people from four different departments what this product should optimize for. Matching answers mean design can begin. Different answers mean the alignment work comes first. Topics Covered 0:00 - Opening hook, everybody did great work 0:30 - The single sales dashboard problem 1:35 - Where Conway's Law comes from 2:18 - First case, every region counted sales differently 5:06 - Second case, decision rights sat elsewhere 8:34 - Why functionality degrades gracefully 9:05 - Why motivational design does not 11:29 - Third case, contradicting business metrics 14:53 - Comparing the three failures 16:30 - Specialization and owning the whole result Mentioned in This Episode Conway's Law, from "How Do Committees Invent?" by Melvin E. Conway, Datamation, 1968 The Octalysis Framework and the 8 Core Drives Core Drives in the Wild, the free Professor Game guide Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #461
    September 7 · 29 min

    Monobank Gave Away 5 BMWs by Accident | Episode 461

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Mykhailo Rogalskyi, co-founder of Fintech IT-Group and the fintech unicorn behind monobank (11 million users), shares how a viral in-app scavenger hunt called Lemon Hunt turned into the bank's biggest gamification win, and its costliest infrastructure failure. He walks through what happens when a 50-hidden-lemon prize draw for one BMW spirals into five cars given away and a 10,000X spike in server requests, plus the AI bot cheating problem now hitting leaderboard-based games. Listeners come away with a concrete framework for building an exit plan into any gamification mechanic before it becomes impossible to remove. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways monobank's Lemon Hunt event, a 50-hidden-lemon scavenger hunt tied to a BMW prize draw, drew 3.5 million users within days and forced the bank to give away five BMWs instead of one. The viral spike caused a 10,000X increase in requests to some services, breaking uptime and pushing monobank to redesign how it allocates server load across the whole app instead of service by service. monobank's embedded banking-app games now face a new failure mode: AI bots that can top leaderboards undetected, which is why Mykhailo Rogalskyi says never attach a valuable prize to a leaderboard that AI can exploit. When monobank retired its badge system for a cat-avatar dress-up feature, it faced months of user backlash, a reminder to plan an exit strategy for any gamification mechanic before removing it. Keep any in-app game mechanic explainable in 15 to 30 seconds, Rogalskyi says, since over-complication is the most common mistake gaming-industry veterans bring into product gamification. Topics Covered 0:00 — Opening hook 1:35 — monobank hits 11 million users 3:04 — Splitting the day between banking and AI 5:32 — The Lemon Hunt event that broke the app 10:01 — A supply chain lesson in distributing risk 11:28 — Why Lemon Hunt couldn't become permanent 12:51 — Embedded games and the AI cheating problem 16:32 — Offline finals level the playing field 17:25 — Lemon Hunt's viral aftermath and brand offers 19:47 — Best practices: simplicity and a sunset plan 22:12 — Badges backlash after the cat avatar swap 24:05 — Duolingo, a book pick, and Walkable Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD About Mykhailo Rogalskyi Mykhailo Rogalskyi is a Ukrainian entrepreneur and finance professional, best known as one of the co-founders of Fintech IT-Group, the company behind monobank, Ukraine's first neobank. With his involvement, monobank grew into a major digital fintech product with 11 million users, while its developer company evolved into Fintech IT-Group, a holding that attracted investment and received a valuation of over $1 billion, becoming Ukraine's first fintech unicorn. Find the Guest Online Website: https://fintechitgroup.com/en/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogalskiy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rogalskiy TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rogalskiy Mentioned in This Episode Some links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Proposed guest: someone from the Duolingo team Recommended book: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara Favorite game: Walkable, Mykhailo's own city-walking app Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #460
    August 31 · 13 min

    Your Customers Don't Remember What You Think They Do | Episode 460

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down the peak-end rule, the finding from Daniel Kahneman and Donald Redelmeier's 1996 study that people remember an experience by its most intense moment and its ending, not its average. He walks through how cruise lines engineer both moments with nightly raffle dinners, a captain's dinner placed near the end of the trip, and a deliberately overinvested farewell, mapping each to Core Drives 1, 5, and 7 from the Octalysis Framework. Listeners learn why the remembering self, not the experiencing self, drives repeat purchases, how to cap sessions while desire is still climbing, and where the ethical line sits between honest peak design and covering up a bad experience. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways In Kahneman and Redelmeier's 1996 study, deliberately extending a painful colonoscopy so it ended on milder discomfort increased total pain, yet those patients remembered the procedure as less bad and returned for follow-ups at higher rates. The remembering self, not the experiencing self, makes the decision to come back, and it is a terrible statistician: it keeps two data points, the peak and the ending, and discards the average entirely. Cruise lines run the peak-end rule as a business model: nightly raffle dinners built on Core Drive 7 (Unpredictability and Curiosity) and Core Drive 5 (Social Influence and Relatedness) rewrite a mediocre day with a manufactured high. The captain's dinner adds Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning and Calling) near the end of the trip, and disembarkation is deliberately overinvested because cruises live off travelers who rebook every year, not first-timers. A concrete design move: cap the session while desire is still climbing, so the last memory is "I wanted more" instead of "I was starting to get bored." The ethical line: peak-end design is honest when the peak and the ending tell the truth about the experience, and manipulative when those two moments are used to cover up an experience that was genuinely terrible. Topics Covered 0:00 — The peak-end rule and a painful paradox 1:34 — Inside Kahneman and Redelmeier's 1996 study 2:55 — Experiencing self versus remembering self 4:07 — Rob's reluctant cruise vacation 5:47 — How cruises manufacture nightly peaks 7:38 — Overinvesting in the ending on purpose 9:55 — Cap the session while it's climbing 11:26 — The ethical line of designed memories 12:11 — Diagnostics: did you design your ending? Mentioned in This Episode The peak-end rule Daniel Kahneman and Donald Redelmeier's 1996 study on patients' memories of painful medical procedures The Octalysis Framework and the 8 Core Drives Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #459
    August 24 · 27 min

    Chess Beat Behavioral Design to Flow State | Episode 459

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Dan Shapiro, author of Decoding Genius: The Unexpected Lessons of After-School Chess Club, shares how a father-son hobby turned into a study of why chess has held people's attention for more than 1,500 years. He walks through Miguel Najdorf's feat of holding 45 blindfolded chess games in his head at once, the built-in rating system that keeps every match in a flow state, and the habit of chess notation that teaches players to review their own decisions. Listeners come away with a clearer picture of why well-tuned difficulty curves matter, why chess maps onto Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback) and Core Drive 7 (Unpredictability & Curiosity), and how curiosity itself works as a design tool. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Miguel Najdorf played 45 simultaneous games of blindfolded chess in an exhibition, tracking every board from another room purely through memory. Chess's built-in rating system pairs players against evenly matched opponents, a real-world example of designing for flow state as difficulty rises with skill. Chess notation, the practice of recording every move, teaches players a habit of reviewing their own decisions that most people never apply outside the game. Judit Polgar broke Bobby Fischer's record to become the youngest grandmaster in chess history and remains the strongest female player of all time. Chess has held its relevance for roughly 1,500 years, traveling from the Gupta Empire through Persia and the European Renaissance. Dan Shapiro names curiosity as his personal superpower, mapping directly onto Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback) and Core Drive 7 (Unpredictability & Curiosity). Topics Covered 0:00 — Opening hook: 45 blindfolded chess games 1:38 — Meet Dan Shapiro, author of Decoding Genius 2:17 — A day in Dan's life during launch week 3:29 — The tournament failure that hooked him on chess 8:19 — Chess notation and the discipline of reviewing decisions 11:46 — Miguel Najdorf and the memory behind 45 blindfolded games 13:47 — How beginners can start with chess.com puzzles 15:34 — Dynamic difficulty, flow state, and Mario Kart 16:36 — Why chess has survived 1,500 years across cultures 17:45 — Designing for long-term engagement instead of short loops 19:44 — Dan's dream guest: chess prodigy Judit Polgar 22:18 — Curiosity as a superpower, and Core Drives 3 and 7 24:34 — Chess as Dan's favorite game, and other brain games 25:38 — Where to find Decoding Genius, plus closing advice Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD About Dan Shapiro Dan Shapiro is the author of Decoding Genius: The Unexpected Lessons of After-School Chess Club, a book that explores what chess can teach us about memory, strategy, resilience, and human potential. His journey began as a father trying to support his son, Harry, and grew into a deeper exploration of why chess has been connected to genius for more than 1,500 years. Dan makes the game accessible to parents, new players, and anyone curious about how focused effort, preparation, and strategic thinking can help people of all ages grow. Find the Guest Online Website Book: Decoding Genius LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Mentioned in This Episode Some links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Proposed guest: Judit Polgar, record-breaking chess grandmaster and the youngest player ever to reach grandmaster level Recommended book: How to Win at Chess by Levy Rozman, creator of the GothamChess YouTube channel Favorite game: Chess, plus crossword puzzles and other strategy and word games Resource mentioned: chess.com, for beginner puzzles and rated games Dan's book: Decoding Genius: The Unexpected Lessons of After-School Chess Club on Amazon, or read more at decodinggeniusbook.com Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #458
    August 17 · 18 min

    Factory Workers Who Wanted Safety Training | Episode 458

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down Gartner's prediction that 40% of large warehouse operations will adopt gamification by 2028, showing why the definition attached to that number (points, badges, leaderboards, and rewards) is the setup for the White Hat to Black Hat drift rather than a win for the field. He covers the frontline cases already on record, from Disney's 2011 "electronic whip" laundry leaderboard to Amazon's FC Games and Tae Wan Kim's 2026 Carnegie Mellon paper on gamifying meaningful work, then walks through Aperam's safety training project with The Octalysis Group as the counter-example built on Core Drives 2, 3, and 5. Listeners learn how to spot extractive gamification and how to test a system by asking what would be left if the leaderboard disappeared tomorrow. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Gartner predicts 40% of large warehouse operations will adopt gamification by 2028, and defines it as points, badges, leaderboards, and rewards, which is the most extrinsic and most drift-prone stack available for work that runs on a multi-year horizon. The White Hat to Black Hat drift is dangerous on a warehouse floor in a way it is not in a consumer app, because a frontline worker cannot uninstall the job. Instead of churn, the cost shows up as overwork, injury, or people pushed out of their living. Amazon's FC Games offered warehouse workers virtual pets while injury rates ran above average, and workers publicly compared the program to the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits." Carnegie Mellon business ethics professor Tae Wan Kim's 2026 paper "When Work Becomes a Game" found that gamifying meaningful work can shift a worker's reason for doing it from the purpose of the job to the points, a textbook over-justification effect measured on people at work. Aperam, one of the world's largest stainless steel producers, ran its 2017 safety training project with The Octalysis Group on Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback) and Core Drive 5 (Social Influence and Relatedness), giving workers a voice in safety improvements and turning safety into a group quest instead of a ranking. The Aperam results were strong adoption, workers requesting early downloads of safety material, and a significant reduction in workplace accidents, because the target metric was fewer injuries rather than time spent in the training. Topics Covered 0:00 — The electronic whip and a 40% prediction 2:29 — What Gartner's definition actually contains 3:27 — White Hat to Black Hat drift, and who pays 5:06 — Amazon FC Games and virtual pets 6:08 — Tae Wan Kim on gamifying meaningful work 7:28 — Over-justification and Gartner's own warning 9:15 — Gamification can do this job well 10:06 — Aperam's safety training with Octalysis Group 12:45 — Black Hat as an on-ramp, not the engine 13:18 — Fewer accidents, not more engagement 14:23 — Questions to ask before you buy 17:21 — Where you want to sit in 2028 Mentioned in This Episode Gartner: 40% of large warehouse operations will adopt gamification tools by 2028 Federica Stufano, Gartner analyst behind the warehouse gamification prediction Tae Wan Kim, Carnegie Mellon business ethics professor, 2026 paper "When Work Becomes a Game" Amazon FC Games, the warehouse gamification program with virtual pets and arcade-style mini-games Disney's 2011 hotel laundry leaderboard, known among workers as the "electronic whip" Aperam, one of the world's largest stainless steel producers, and its safety training gamification project The Octalysis Group Core Drives in the Wild, the free Professor Game guide Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #457
    August 10 · 32 min

    Why Points and Leaderboards Don't Fix Retention | Episode 457

    Recently funded and aiming for sustainable retention? Intro chat (no sales pitch): professorgame.com/chat Episode Summary Travis Clapp, co-founder and CEO of Coursebox AI, joins Rob to explain how AI is reshaping course creation and delivery for a platform used in 180 countries with over 300,000 courses built on it. He walks through Coursebox's "Break My Brain" feature, an AI mode built for personalized, adversarial learning rather than points and leaderboards, and explains why the platform now generates in 10 minutes what used to take him days to compile by hand. Travis also shares two gamification experiments gone wrong, an overbuilt golf training module and a crossword in an endangered Aboriginal language, and where he draws the line between fun and function. Listeners come away with a clearer read on why surface-level game mechanics rarely move the needle, and what deep personalization through AI looks like in practice. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Coursebox AI now generates the five-document compliance package Travis used to build by hand for RTOs in about 10 minutes, work that once took him days per client. Coursebox's "Break My Brain" feature lets a learner, or Travis himself testing it on his own sales calls, get challenged and questioned by AI instead of clicking through a linear course, engaging Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback) and Core Drive 4 (Ownership & Possession). Travis's own team told him not to talk about leaderboards, points, certificates, or badges going into this episode, because platform-level leaderboards rarely produce deep engagement on their own, just a carrot on a stick. A German trucking client turned Coursebox training into a fully hands-free, podcast-style experience so drivers could complete quizzes and assignments by voice while on the road. Coursebox is used across 180 countries, has generated over 300,000 courses, and one flagship edX MOOC built on the platform reached more than 20,000 learners. An early gamified golf training module Travis built in 2011 nailed the learner experience but got flagged internally as the most expensive, overpriced piece of work the company had shipped, a reminder that engagement design still has to answer to budget. Topics Covered 0:00 — Opening hook: "don't talk about leaderboards" 1:18 — Travis Clapp's path to Coursebox AI 2:42 — New fatherhood and running a global startup from Australia 6:03 — Favorite fail: an over-engineered golf training module 9:03 — A crossword in an endangered language, gamification taken too far 10:57 — Why leaderboards and points rarely drive real engagement 12:57 — "Break My Brain": AI's personalized deep-learning mode 16:24 — Killing the step-by-step method for open, prompt-based design 18:02 — Tesla's Grok, Porsche, and voice-driven learning everywhere 20:55 — German truck drivers turning training into a podcast 21:41 — AI risk, specialization, and what never depreciates 27:20 — Book picks, favorite game, and where to find Coursebox AI Recently funded and aiming for sustainable retention? Intro chat (no sales pitch): professorgame.com/chat About Travis Clapp Travis Clapp is the co-founder and CEO of Coursebox AI, an AI course creation and training delivery platform used across 180 countries with over 300,000 courses created on the platform. He spent 15 years as an instructional designer before building Coursebox, working with companies like Johnson & Johnson, Electrolux, Michael Hill, and SA Health. At Open Colleges, he built the five-document compliance packages by hand that every RTO needs; Coursebox now generates the same packages in 10 minutes. One of his courses reached over 20,000 learners as a flagship edX MOOC. He knows what good learning takes because he spent years doing it the slow way. Before Coursebox, he founded and ran a social-based LMS for seven years, which became the foundation for what Coursebox AI is today. Four years ago he launched Coursebox AI, not to automate course creation, but to get to the part that matters: delivery. The AI tutor, the grading, the 24/7 coaching, the outcomes. Course creation, in his words, is about 1% of what the platform does. Travis still checks customer support messages at 4am. Find Travis Clapp Online Website: coursebox.ai LinkedIn (Travis): linkedin.com/in/travisclapp LinkedIn (Coursebox AI): linkedin.com/company/courseboxai Instagram: instagram.com/coursebox.ai TikTok: tiktok.com/@coursebox.ai Facebook: facebook.com/courseboxai X/Twitter: x.com/Coursebox_ai YouTube: youtube.com/@CourseboxAI Mentioned in This Episode Some links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. TOG / P&G gamification case study The Octalysis Framework Book: I, Robot by Isaac Asimov Book: The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley Book: The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott & Jennifer Ash Rudick Favorite game: SimCity 2000 (1993) Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #456
    August 3 · 13 min

    Your Engagement Program Is a Loan You're Still Paying | Episode 456

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real engagement programs: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down behavioral debt: the borrowed motivation hiding inside every legacy points, discount, or bonus program, showing why cutting an engagement program off cold is the fastest way to blow it up. He walks through JCPenney's collapse under Ron Johnson, a Fortune 500 rewards program employees now budget around like income, and how LATAM Airlines and Caixa Econômica Federal restructured their own behavioral debt using Octalysis Core Drives instead of switching it off. Listeners learn how to read their program's real balance sheet and start servicing behavioral debt without triggering a JCPenney-style default. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways JCPenney's Ron Johnson scrapped every discount and coupon overnight, replacing them with everyday low pricing; sales fell 25%, roughly $4.3 billion, and he was gone within two years. Ron Johnson later admitted only 1% of JCPenney's sales happened without a discount, meaning 99% of purchases depended on coupons the company had just eliminated. LATAM Airlines kept its miles intact but rebuilt the experience around Core Drive 7 (Unpredictability & Curiosity) and Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback), driving a 153% increase in credit card acquisitions. Caixa Econômica Federal's incentive program had drifted to roughly 10% participation before a rebuild around collective purpose pushed it to 90%, adding $1.06 billion in revenue. Points tied to reaching performance targets ran on Core Drive 4 (Ownership & Possession) and Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance), turning a reward employees didn't need into part of their household income. Topics Covered 0:00 — Behavioral debt hiding under green metrics 0:25 — A Fortune 500 rewards program families budget around 1:39 — Why most engagement advice assumes a blank slate 2:51 — Why behavioral debt hides behind green dashboards 3:29 — Borrowed motivation compounding like real interest 4:17 — JCPenney's Ron Johnson cuts every discount overnight 6:04 — Core Drives 4 and 8 inside the Fortune 500 case 8:07 — Why behavioral debt has no repayment plan 8:59 — Why you can't just switch off behavioral debt 9:20 — LATAM Airlines: servicing debt while building the replacement 11:23 — Caixa's jump from 10% to 90% participation 12:37 — Closing: most loyalty programs are just debt service Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real engagement programs: professorgame.com/WildCD Mentioned in This Episode LATAM Airlines Gamification Case Study (The Octalysis Group) Caixa Econômica Federal Banking Gamification Case Study (The Octalysis Group) The Octalysis Framework JCPenney's 2011-2013 "everyday low prices" strategy under CEO Ron Johnson Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #456
    July 27 · 14 min

    The Same Bonus Can Motivate Your Team, or Wreck It | Episode 455

    Real cases pulled apart through the Octalysis Core Drives, sent to your inbox over a few days. Get the free guide: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down why the same reward can pull a team forward or quietly wreck it, using three cases where the design decided the outcome. He walks through a school in Caracas where escalating fines for late pickups made lateness worse, the sales bonus patterns that produce burnout and sandbagging, and The Octalysis Group's project with Procter & Gamble's distributor Navo Orbico, where a gamified ship upgrade tightened the feedback loop instead of paying for the sale. Along the way he separates two mechanisms that often get treated as one: a fine turning a moral obligation into a price, and the over-justification effect crowding out intrinsic motivation on the reward side. Listeners learn how to match the reward to the job it actually has to do, and when to hand off to something more durable. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways A school in Caracas replaced the moral weight of collecting your child on time with an escalating fine, and lateness went up instead of down. Core Drive 5 (Social Influence and Relatedness) stopped doing its job the moment the delay carried a price. Gneezy and Rustichini's study "A Fine is a Price" documents the same reversal in day-care centers: a monetary fine for late pickups increased late pickups, and removing the fine did not bring them back down. A standing sales commission with nothing behind it pays for the behavior forever. Reps chase the next check to make ends meet, and with no other motivation in the system, the commission burns them out rather than building anything durable. Capped bonuses fail in two directions. Targets set too high get read as unreachable, so reps stop trying, and reachable targets get sandbagged, with closed-ready deals held into the next cycle so the company waits on revenue it wanted today. In The Octalysis Group's project with Procter & Gamble's distributor Navo Orbico, ship upgrades inside Masters of the Endless Seas cut the roughly week-long CRM lag on seeing whether a sale landed, tightening the Core Drive 2 (Development and Accomplishment) loop instead of paying for the sale. Rob was not on the project team and saw it presented at Brighton. Nearly every reward failure is one of two mistakes: treating the get-them-through-the-door reward as the whole engine, or bolting an extrinsic reward onto behavior that already had an intrinsic reason, which is where the over-justification effect crowds that reason out. Topics Covered 0:00 — The reward is a tool, not a motivator 1:56 — The Caracas school that fined late parents 2:45 — How a fine replaced a moral obligation 4:07 — A Fine is a Price, Gneezy and Rustichini 4:44 — When rewards do an honest job 6:07 — Standing commissions and sales rep burnout 7:07 — Bonus targets set too high to chase 8:06 — Hitting the number, then sandbagging deals 8:52 — The over-justification effect in action 9:27 — P&G's Masters of the Endless Seas 11:15 — Why the ship worked when the bonus failed 12:20 — Choosing the reward that fits the job Mentioned in This Episode Core Drives in the Wild, the free guide with real cases analyzed through the Octalysis Core Drives Episode 453: Why Users Agree But Never Start, where Rob covers the Procter & Gamble project in full "A Fine is a Price" by Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, Journal of Legal Studies, 2000 The Octalysis Group, and its project with Procter & Gamble's distributor Navo Orbico Masters of the Endless Seas, the gamified world built for the Procter & Gamble sales rep network The over-justification effect, and Core Drives 1, 2, 3, and 5 of the Octalysis Framework Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #454
    July 20 · 33 min

    Driving Ranges Are Replacing Bowling Alleys (Here's Why) | Episode 454

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Frédéric Guitton, who leads sales and marketing at iTargetGolf after a career across banking, startups, financial services, and investment firms, explains how driving ranges are turning dead space into an interactive, gamified experience. He walks through the company's product line, including the iTarget Night Saber target that connects to Toptracer, Inrange, and Trackman through an API, the in-bay lights that fire when a player hits their target, and the new Cash Cup Golf hole-in-one contest played with RFID balls. Guitton lays out the three levers a driving range has for revenue, why post-COVID golf growth came from entertainment rather than traditional rounds, and how instant feedback keeps a player buying one more bucket. Listeners come away with a working model of physical gamification and a reminder that designing around real human behavior beats asking people to behave better. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways A driving range has only three levers for revenue, according to Frédéric Guitton: sell more balls, sell more food and beverage, or sell the balls for more money. Every engagement decision at iTargetGolf traces back to one of those three. iTargetGolf's first targets were powder-coated metal and looked great, but ball picker staff bumped them and metal does not give, so it bent or broke permanently. The replacement is cut from utility sewer pipe and survives 400 to 500 pounds driving over it. Post-COVID golf growth came from entertainment, not from more rounds on traditional courses. Guitton describes the driving range starting to replace the bowling alley as the family night out, which brings in an audience that never came to practice. The iTarget Night Saber target connects through an API to Toptracer, Inrange, and Trackman ball tracking, so a landed ball triggers an animation within seconds. That instant feedback is Core Drive 2 (Development and Accomplishment) delivered in the physical world. Choosing low voltage over high voltage took permitting out of the install path. A California range that signed in mid-June started its install roughly four weeks later, which turned an infrastructure decision into a sales advantage. Guitton frames the B2B2C tension plainly: the range's success drives iTargetGolf's success, so the company treats itself as a consequence of its customers' results rather than a driver of them. Topics Covered 0:00 — Opening and introduction 2:17 — Inside a week at iTargetGolf 3:25 — Favorite fail: metal targets that bend 6:34 — Sewer pipes and the strike point redesign 9:01 — The four products iTargetGolf builds 11:31 — How a general contractor started the company 14:58 — Golf as entertainment after COVID 15:57 — Three ways a driving range makes money 17:46 — Making it fun and creating new golfers 19:35 — Best practices: listen and stay locked in 22:45 — Football intelligence and instant feedback 27:47 — Outliers, favorite games, and goodbyes Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD About Frédéric Guitton Frédéric Guitton leads the sales and marketing strategy at iTargetGolf, where he is helping redefine the driving range experience through interactive down-range technology. He relocated from France to Central Florida in 1996 and built a career in banking before expanding into startups, financial services, and investment firms, developing experience across business strategy, operations, sales, marketing, and executive leadership. At iTargetGolf he works on a product line that combines interactive illuminated targets, skill-based cash prize games, and integrated ball-tracking technology to increase player engagement and open new revenue for golf facilities. His current focus is building scalable systems, strengthening customer relationships, expanding strategic partnerships, and positioning the company in the evolution of golf entertainment technology. Find the Guest Online Website: itargetgolf.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fguitton Instagram: @itarget_golf TikTok: @itarget_golf Facebook: iTargetGolf on Facebook Mentioned in This Episode Some links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Recommended book: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Proposed guest: Scott Armstrong, involved with TGL, the indoor golf competition on ESPN Ball tracking platforms iTargetGolf integrates with: Toptracer, Inrange, Trackman Topgolf, referenced as the far end of the golf entertainment spectrum iTargetGolf products discussed: iTarget Night Saber, iTarget Strike Point, in-bay lights, and Cash Cup Golf Favorite game to watch: volleyball. Favorite sport to play: cycling. Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #453
    July 13 · 12 min

    The Reason Your Users Agree But Never Start | Episode 453

    Want a sharper read on motivation design? Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, real cases decoded through this exact framework, one short email a day: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob argues that Black Hat motivation, the urgency and scarcity most designers treat as the villain, is the on-ramp that gets people to act at all. He breaks down the Octalysis Group's award-winning project with Procter & Gamble's distributor Navo Orbico, which reached 99.5% voluntary participation on a non-compulsory rollout and a 28.6% revenue increase by starting with pressure and handing off to meaning. Drawing on Ocean Hero as the rare frictionless exception, he shows why White Hat drives like Epic Meaning seldom start action on their own. Listeners learn the Black-Hat-to-White-Hat handoff and two diagnostic questions to test whether their own system can make the switch. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways The Octalysis Group's project with Procter & Gamble reached 99.5% voluntary participation on a non-compulsory rollout and a 28.6% revenue increase, evidence that Black Hat urgency and White Hat meaning work in sequence, not opposition. In the Octalysis framework, Black Hat and White Hat motivation are not good and evil. Black Hat (urgency, scarcity, pressure) gets people to act now; White Hat (meaning, empowerment) makes them glad they stayed. Relying only on grand meaning and Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback) tends to produce a "someday," which in practice means never, because wanting to act is rarely a strong enough forcing function to overcome friction. The P&G rollout launched using Core Drive 5 (Social Influence and Relatedness) as pressure: getting into the system meant tracking down colleagues for an access code, which sparked FOMO (Core Drive 8) and curiosity (Core Drive 7) rather than belief in a grand vision. After the on-ramp, the system handed off to White Hat: reps became captains of trading ships, territories became open seas, and clients became colonies, activating Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning) and Core Drive 2 (Development and Accomplishment). Ocean Hero is the rare case where White Hat alone starts action, because switching a search engine is one click of near-zero friction, so Core Drive 1 can carry the behavior with no urgency at all. Topics Covered 0:00 — Opening hook: why products stall 1:14 — The P&G result: 99.5% voluntary 3:05 — Black Hat and White Hat serve different moments 4:53 — The frictionless exception: Ocean Hero 6:07 — Inside the P&G rollout 7:30 — The handoff: reps become ship captains 9:16 — When Black Hat never matures into more 10:09 — Two diagnostic questions for your system 11:27 — What a mistimed handoff looks like 12:06 — Black Hat starts, White Hat sustains Mentioned in This Episode The Octalysis Group case study with Procter & Gamble's distributor Navo Orbico (Gamification Project of the Year, first presented in Brighton): 99.5% voluntary participation, 28.6% revenue increase Ocean Hero, the search engine whose revenue funds clearing plastic from the oceans (a project supported by The Octalysis Group) The Octalysis framework: Black Hat and White Hat motivation, and Core Drives 1 through 8 Episode 446, the airline miles loyalty teardown Episode 450, Amazon's internal AI leaderboard Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #450
    July 6 · 33 min

    Why "More Effort" is Ruining Your Team (And How to Fix It) | Episode 452

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Michael Lukich, a marketing analytics leader with more than 20 years across consulting, data, and strategy, explains why the fix for a struggling team is almost never more effort. He walks through the closed-loop trap he built early in his management career, the systems thinking tools he now uses to find leverage points, and why over-measuring single marketing channels quietly starves the top of the funnel. Drawing on the Cabreras' DSRP model, Donella Meadows, and nearly 25 years at the poker table, he shows how to see a whole system instead of optimizing one piece to the detriment of the goal. Listeners come away with a practical way to map any system, pick a single North Star metric, and design loops that let a team improve on its own. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Michael Lukich's early management trap was a closed loop with no exit: he could not step away until the team improved, and the team could not improve until he stepped away, which pushed him to 75-hour weeks before he redesigned the loop instead of adding effort. Accepting work at roughly 70 percent of his own output, paired with a tighter review cadence, let his team feel the consequences of their own decisions and turned him from a micromanager into a player coach. The "if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist" credo pushes budget toward easily measured lower-funnel channels and leaves the top of the funnel leaky, because no one can defend upper-funnel spend in a boardroom. The fix is whole-system measurement through multi-channel attribution and mixed models, not more measurement. Zynga over-relied on data and stacked Black Hat Core Drives that drive urgency and scarcity, a reminder that an A/B test measures one week, not how a feature performs as a system over two years. Derek and Laura Cabrera's DSRP model (Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, Perspectives) gives a four-part way to map almost any system, then find the bottleneck where one move has the biggest outsized effect. Poker trains decision-making under uncertainty and incomplete information, including the faulty learning loop where playing well can still lose and playing poorly can still win, which is why Michael says half the frameworks in his book started at the poker table. Topics Covered 0:00 — The loop you cannot escape 0:20 — Meet Michael Lukich: data, teaching, poker 2:41 — Designing your own life as a system 5:46 — Promoted into a trap with no exit 11:14 — The marketing measurement trap 13:53 — Frankenstein products, Zynga, and Black Hat 17:34 — A practical system: pick one metric 18:56 — Mapping systems with DSRP 22:23 — The strategy dashboard and the North Star 24:07 — James Clear, Ryan Holiday, and one book 26:54 — Translation and poker as the perfect game 30:25 — Where to find Michael and closing advice Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD About Michael Lukich Michael Lukich is a marketing analytics leader with more than 20 years across consulting, data, and business strategy, currently running marketing analytics for a major US marketing agency. He spent five years as an adjunct professor and has played poker for nearly 25 years, two habits that shaped how he thinks about teaching and making decisions under uncertainty. He writes the Stoic Systems Thinker newsletter, where ancient Stoic philosophy meets modern systems thinking, and is the author of the book of the same name. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife and two daughters. Find Michael Lukich Online The Stoic Systems Thinker (website and newsletter) LinkedIn The Stoic Systems Thinker on Substack Mentioned in This Episode Some links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows James Clear and Atomic Habits Ryan Holiday Poker The Stoic Systems Thinker by Michael Lukich Derek and Laura Cabrera's DSRP model (Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, Perspectives) Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Zynga The Octalysis Framework and Black Hat Core Drives Kaizen and Kaikaku (continuous improvement versus radical change) Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #451
    June 29 · 9 min

    Why Driven People Can't Take a Real Vacation | Episode 451

    Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products, with one real-world example in your inbox each day: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down why disconnecting on vacation is so hard for driven people, and why it is a motivation problem rather than a willpower one. He maps the specific Octalysis Core Drives that keep high achievers tied to work during a break, including Core Drive 2 (progress addiction), Core Drive 8 (FOMO and Black Hat urgency), and Core Drive 1 (the mission needs me trap). Drawing on his own routine of leaving the phone at the apartment near the beach, he shows how to name each drive and switch off its trigger before the break starts. Listeners learn a pre-break diagnostic and how to design time off the same way they would design a user's exit from an engagement loop. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Driven people stay tied to work on vacation because their Core Drives keep firing in the background. This is a motivation issue, which is why pure willpower so often fails to deliver real rest. Core Drive 2 (Development and Accomplishment) shows up as progress addiction. With no momentum at work, a break can feel like your progress is being trumped, which pulls you back to the phone to make something move. Core Drive 8 (Loss and Avoidance) is Black Hat motivation built on FOMO. The fear that something breaks, or that everyone else is still shipping, creates urgency and pushes you to check in even when nothing is wrong. Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning and Calling), the sense that the mission needs you, is the noble sounding trap. It can justify sacrificing rest you have earned, so naming it is what lets you stop it from firing back. The fix is to design your break the way you would design a user's exit from an engagement loop: kill the notifications, remove the triggers (Rob leaves his phone at the apartment), and push yourself out instead of staying half in. A real emergency that truly needs you is rare, roughly 0.1 percent of the time. Plan ahead, brief your team on what actually counts as an emergency, and trust them to handle the other 99.9 percent without you. Topics Covered [0:00] Why driven brains can't switch off [0:49] Disconnecting is a motivation problem [1:21] Core Drive 2: progress addiction [1:54] Core Drive 8: FOMO and urgency [2:30] Core Drive 1: the mission trap [3:08] Name the drive, deactivate the trigger [3:54] Leaving the phone at the beach [4:50] Why productive resting backfires [6:00] Design your break like an engagement loop [6:36] Diagnose your pull-back drive first [8:05] Rest is switching off the drives Mentioned in This Episode Core Drives in the Wild, Rob's free guide (one Core Drive example per day) The Octalysis Group The Octalysis Framework and its Eight Core Drives (Yu-kai Chou), the basis for Core Drives 1, 2, 5, and 8 discussed here Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #450
    June 22 · 9 min

    Spent $200 Billion, Then Said: Use AI Less | Episode 450

    These engagement failures, and how to fix them, map directly onto the Octalysis Core Drives. Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Rob breaks down why Amazon shut down KiroRank, the internal leaderboard that scored staff on raw AI usage on its Kiro developer platform. He shows how stacking Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment) and Core Drive 5 (Social Influence & Relatedness) produced flawless compliance toward the wrong target, a textbook case of Goodhart's law: once a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Drawing on the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard and Toyota's Five Whys, he lays out the one question to ask before you measure anything. Listeners learn to measure outcomes instead of activity, and how to keep a proxy metric from quietly getting gamed. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Amazon shut down KiroRank, its internal leaderboard scoring staff on AI usage on the Kiro developer platform, after employees set autonomous AI agents on needless tasks just to climb the ranks and inflated the company's compute costs. Goodhart's law explains the failure: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. You get what you measure, not what you want, so raw AI usage climbed while productivity went unmeasured. KiroRank stacked Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment) through a progress bar and ranking, and Core Drive 5 (Social Influence & Relatedness) through public status, producing flawless compliance toward the wrong outcome. The more powerful and expensive the tool being measured, the more a gamed metric costs you, which is why Amazon paid in real compute money rather than a rounding error. The Octalysis Strategy Dashboard starts with business metrics by asking what outcome you actually want, using Toyota's Five Whys to move from "increase AI usage" to a result worth hitting, like productivity per employee. Engagement is the value created for users and the business, not click counts or usage volume, which is why most dashboards measure activity when they should measure the outcome. Topics Covered 0:00 - The $200 billion AI paradox 0:27 - Goodhart's law and gamed metrics 1:49 - The two Core Drives Amazon stacked 2:39 - Flawless compliance, the wrong target 3:38 - Amazon's KiroRank AI leaderboard 5:11 - Measure the right thing, not usage 5:38 - The Octalysis Strategy Dashboard 6:12 - Toyota's Five Whys for metrics 7:21 - When proxy metrics are unavoidable 7:58 - Measure the outcome, not the activity 8:33 - Get the Core Drives in the Wild guide Mentioned in This Episode Goodhart's law The Financial Times report on Amazon's KiroRank leaderboard Amazon's Kiro developer platform The Five Whys (Toyota / lean operations) A previous Professor Game episode on AI use and academic testing Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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  • #449
    June 15 · 22 min

    Stop Dumping Textbooks Into Your Games, with Alan Yeats | Episode 449

    Struggling with retention, churn, or adoption in your product, service, or program? Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide and see how to apply real behavioral design to your engagement: professorgame.com/WildCD Episode Summary Alan Yeats, CEO of Pocket Sized Hands, a co-development game studio in Dundee, Scotland, explains why the best learning games start with play and add the curriculum second. He walks through real projects, a knife-crime prevention game stopped cold by school firewalls and a stem cell science game built with Cambridge University, to show how co-design keeps everyone pointed at the same goal. Alan argues that the job is to find the underlying play and the real "why" behind a request, not to cram years of lessons into one product. Listeners come away with a practical filter for any educational or engagement project: build a genuinely good game first, then weave the learning in so people actually engage. About the Host Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key Takeaways Pocket Sized Hands built a polished Jackbox-style game to steer young people away from knife crime, then hit a wall when school IT firewalls blocked the phone-to-screen connection the experience ran on. The end user is never the only stakeholder a product has to satisfy. For Cambridge University, the studio corrected public misconceptions about stem cell science by running back-to-basics workshops to isolate the one message that mattered, rather than cramming an entire syllabus into a single game. Alan Yeats's rule for education clients who want to throw the whole textbook at a game: make it genuinely fun first, then layer the lessons in, because curriculum with no play earns no engagement to teach against. Co-design converts a client from someone who merely commissioned a product into an owner who evangelizes it, which is why Pocket Sized Hands opens projects with a workshop for facilitators and real users instead of a written spec. Pitching the visual register openly, from a corporate LinkedIn-style progress bar to a fully magical world, lets a team test how far it can push a client before the client pushes back with "that is too much fun." Topics Covered 0:00 - Stop cramming textbooks into games 0:16 - Meet Alan Yeats and Pocket Sized Hands 3:16 - A knife-crime game blocked by firewalls 5:23 - Design for the stakeholders you forget 8:08 - The Cambridge stem cell game that worked 9:03 - Make the game fun first 10:40 - Co-design and finding the real problem 12:33 - From corporate progress bars to magical worlds 14:54 - Focus on the play, not the game 16:25 - The future guest he would want to hear 17:46 - Why Deep Work sharpens his focus 19:04 - His superpower, favorite game, and final advice Struggling with retention, churn, or adoption in your product, service, or program? Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide and see how to apply real behavioral design to your engagement: professorgame.com/WildCD About Alan Yeats Alan Yeats is the CEO of Pocket Sized Hands, a co-development game studio based in Dundee, Scotland. He left school at 16 to work on games, dropped out of university, and founded the studio nine years ago. Since then, Pocket Sized Hands has helped ship titles including Pocket Mortys for Adult Swim, Oddworld: Soulstorm, and Bendy and the Ink Machine, working with clients ranging from indie developers to major publishers. The studio specialises in co-development, porting, networking, and live ops. Find the Guest Online Pocket Sized Hands: pocketsizedhands.com Personal site: alanyeats.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alanyeats X (studio): @PKTSizedHands Mentioned in This Episode Some links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Proposed future guest: someone who wants to use gamification but hasn't yet Recommended book: Deep Work by Cal Newport Favorite game: Ratchet & Clank 3 Free Resources and Get in Touch Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide Get Daily Value on Your Email Let's chat about your gamification project YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Start Your Community on Skool for Free Ask a question

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