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

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Episode Summary

Rob breaks down why enterprise AI adoption stalls even with paid licenses and training, while a group of students beat a locked, proctored exam with ChatGPT and no support at all. Reading both cases through the Octalysis Framework, he shows how the exam accidentally stacked Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance), Core Drive 6 (Scarcity & Impatience), and Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment) into a ferocious, if mispointed, motivation engine. The enterprise bought the most capable tool and surrounded it with zero motivation, so nobody opened the app. Listeners learn why AI adoption is a motivation problem wearing a tooling costume, and leave with a two-part diagnostic question to ask of any AI initiative.

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

• Students beat a lockdown, proctored, face-to-face online exam by getting ChatGPT to answer questions live through a Chrome extension, with no license, no training, and no change management. Adoption was instant, total, and creative enough to defeat the security.
• The exam accidentally stacked three Black Hat Core Drives: Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance, failing is high-stakes), Core Drive 6 (Scarcity & Impatience, one timed shot), and Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment, clearing the hurdle to the grade).
• Enterprises buy the paid license, training, IT support, and a leadership mandate, then adoption stalls because none of those things are motivation. There is no personal loss for ignoring the tool and no personal win for using it.
• Motivation pointed at the wrong goal produces flawless adoption of exactly the behavior you did not want. The students aimed AI at passing, not learning, and got it.
• As AI removes capability constraints, the human motivation layer becomes the only constraint left, which is why behavioral design matters more in the AI era, not less.
• The diagnostic: ask what your team personally gains by using the tool and what they personally lose by ignoring it. If the honest answer is "nothing much either way," no rollout plan will save it.

Topics Covered

• 0:00 - Students hacked a locked exam
• 0:52 - Same tech, opposite outcome
• 1:44 - Adoption was never the problem
• 2:39 - The exam's accidental motivation engine
• 4:31 - Almost entirely Black Hat motivation
• 5:18 - Why the funded enterprise stalls
• 6:30 - Adoption and direction both matter
• 7:41 - Why behavioral design matters with AI
• 7:55 - Your diagnostic question for today

Mentioned in This Episode

• The Octalysis Framework, developed by Yu-kai Chou
• ChatGPT (OpenAI)
• Core Drives in the Wild, the 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
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Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide and see behavioral design applied to real products and services: professorgame.com/WildCD

Episode Summary

Eleanor Ross, Creative Director at Expert Theory and one of the youngest recipients of the National Training and Simulation Association's Top Under 40 award, breaks down how she designs wargames and simulations that put learners inside high stakes decisions instead of watching from the outside. She walks through the moment a Team USA group tried to buy Greenland mid game, the Logic, Function, Form framework she uses to build every simulation, and a year long Taiwan resilience exercise she ran for the Irregular Warfare Center. Listeners come away with two best practices that make any simulation stick, a debrief discipline and deliberate role reversal, plus a clear view of how AI tools now let a team produce news articles and role player materials in under ten minutes. Ross also makes the case that heavy topics like terrorism, invasion, and irregular warfare land harder when they are engaging, and that good design starts by deciding what people should feel when they walk out.

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 an early Arctic simulation run as an alpha test for the Canadian Department of National Defense, a Team USA group went off script and tried to buy Greenland, a move no one had prepared for, which forced Ross to build the response live.
• Ross and her team at Expert Theory adjudicated that unplanned move and used their AI backend to produce news articles, tweets, and formatted materials for a role player in under ten minutes, a turnaround the wargaming community historically treated as impossible.
• Her Logic, Function, Form framework stacks design like a pyramid: Logic defines what players should know and feel on the way out, Function defines the actors and goals that get them there, and Form covers constraints like the 30 or 90 minute time box.
• A quality debrief is the most important best practice in simulation design, because the takeaways people carry out are set up by the structured discussion, not by the game itself.
• Putting participants in roles they would never hold, such as US military officers playing the Somali government or the US embassy in a Fort Bragg deployment game, forces the perspective shift that makes the lesson land.
• Ross builds her design philosophy on Rutger Bregman's Humankind and its claim that people are inherently good, using games to surface the nuances behind how opposing sides actually see themselves.

Topics Covered

• 0:00 - A wargamer who hates video games
• 2:59 - Inside a wargame designer's week
• 4:18 - When Team USA tried buying Greenland
• 7:45 - Why failure is a junior mindset
• 13:02 - A Taiwan resilience wargame for DOD
• 17:26 - The Logic, Function, Form framework
• 20:34 - Best practices: debrief and role reversal
• 24:30 - The books behind her design philosophy
• 26:33 - Perspective taking through languages
• 29:27 - Making heavy topics engaging
• 31:12 - Her favorite game: Votes for Women
• 33:01 - Building games in six minutes with Providence

Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide and see behavioral design applied to real products and services: professorgame.com/WildCD

About Eleanor Ross

Eleanor Ross is Creative Director at Expert Theory, an AI powered simulation startup building immersive learning experiences for clients including the U.S. Department of Defense, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Georgetown, and Penn State. She designs and facilitates simulations that restore agency to learners by placing them inside complex, high stakes decisions, and her co-authored research with the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center has shown that simulations measurably deepen learning while strengthening confidence, teamwork, and decision making. She chairs programming for the Women's Wargaming Network and is one of the youngest ever recipients of the National Training and Simulation Association's Top Under 40 award. Her work focuses on the Arctic and high north, irregular and gray zone warfare, and leadership.

Find the Guest Online

• Expert Theory (website)
• Eleanor Ross on LinkedIn
• Expert Theory on LinkedIn

Mentioned in This Episode

• The Art of Wargaming by Peter Perla
• Humankind by Rutger Bregman
• Votes for Women, Eleanor's favorite game (by Fort Circle Games)
• Proposed future guest: Yuna Wong
• Proposed future guest: John Curry
• Providence, Expert Theory's platform for building games in minutes

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
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Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD

Episode Summary

Rob breaks down why the most durable loyalty has almost nothing to do with points, contrasting a typical airline miles program with a neighborhood barber who keeps a customer for ten years with no app, no tiers, and no expiring rewards. He shows how the same Core Drive can run in opposite directions: airline programs fake Core Drive 4 (Ownership and Possession) with a points balance they control and devalue, while the barber builds real ownership through a relationship the customer actually owns. Along the way he names the over-justification effect, the moment a relationship becomes a calculation, and how Black Hat motivation can win in the short term while quietly corroding loyalty. Listeners come away with a clear diagnostic and a way to tell a real loyalty program apart from a price promotion on a delayed schedule.

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

• Most loyalty programs build a transactional dependency rather than loyalty: the customer ends up loyal to the points, not the brand, so the moment a competitor offers more points they defect.
• Airline miles run on a Black Hat stack of Core Drive 4 (Ownership and Possession), Core Drive 6 (Scarcity and Impatience) through tier status, and Core Drive 8 (Loss and Avoidance) through expiring miles, which shifts the flyer from chasing something they want to avoiding a loss.
• The over-justification effect is the damage mechanism: a flyer who genuinely liked an airline starts booking the worse flight (longer, worse time, sometimes pricier) purely because it earns miles, the moment the relationship becomes a calculation.
• A relationship turned into a calculation is trivially beatable. A competitor with a slightly better offer doesn't just win one trip, it reveals there was never loyalty to begin with.
• A ten-year barber relationship survives real inconvenience (further away, closer cheaper options nearby) using the calm side of the same Core Drives: Core Drive 5 (Social Influence and Relatedness) plus genuinely owned personalization the customer cannot port to a competitor.
• The diagnostic: strip the points, discounts, and digital rewards entirely. If the honest answer to "why would anyone stay" is nothing, it isn't a loyalty program, it's a price promotion with a delayed payment schedule.

Topics Covered

• 0:00 — Loyalty to the points, not the brand
• 1:16 — The Black Hat machinery of airline miles
• 2:25 — The over-justification effect in action
• 4:13 — The ten-year barber with no points
• 5:11 — Same Core Drive, opposite direction
• 6:12 — Inverting Core Drive 8 into a safe choice
• 7:36 — Run the strip-the-points diagnostic

Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD

Mentioned in This Episode

• Core Drives in the Wild (Professor Game free guide)
• The Octalysis Framework and its Core Drives (Yu-kai Chou)
• Black Hat and White Hat motivation
• The over-justification effect

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
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Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD

Episode Summary

Victoria Ichizli-Bartels, author of fourteen books on gameful living and coiner of the term "self-gamification," explores how the role of the tabletop RPG game master maps onto the inner conversation we have with ourselves. She walks through Jill Bolte Taylor's "brain huddle" concept (a 90-second pause that resolves inner conflict by letting the 12 different players in our heads come to the table), three diagnostic questions for stressful moments ("what is happening inside myself," "who is talking," and "what is the goal of this person"), and a Justin Alexander hack borrowed from RPG handbooks: instead of treating a stressful thought as a crisis, respond with "yes, this can happen, now what do you do?" Listeners come away with practical reframes for daily self-management and a clearer way to spot which inner player is driving a given thought.

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

• Jill Bolte Taylor's "brain huddle" concept proposes that 90 seconds of pause is enough to resolve inner conflict, by letting the different characters in our heads (which Victoria counts as roughly 12 distinct players, including self-leader, self-coach, game designer, and game master) come together and find an appropriate response.
• The single most useful diagnostic question for a stressful moment is "what is happening inside myself," followed by "who is talking" and "what is the goal of this person" — the third one usually reveals that the inner voice is trying to protect or train you, not sabotage you.
• Justin Alexander's RPG game master hack, "yes, this can happen, now what do you do?", reframes intrusive or stressful thoughts (like "I want to quit my job") from a crisis into an exploration, which usually reveals you don't want the extreme outcome — you want a smaller change.
• RPG handbook rules ("respect your co-players, be patient, be curious, be open-minded") map directly onto self-talk. Open-mindedness toward your own impulses is the rule most people break without noticing.
• Victoria connects RPG engagement to Core Drive 7 (Unpredictability and Curiosity): players love active play and surprise inside games but resent it in life, even though the underlying motivator is identical. Recognizing this changes how you experience unexpected events.
• The strategic-game metaphor of map exploration ("the land becomes lighter as you pay attention") and cool-down phases (planting crops after taking a castle) gives a concrete vocabulary for energy management between high-output and recovery days.

Topics Covered

• 0:00 — Opening hook on RPG surprise
• 0:25 — Welcome and guest reintroduction
• 1:51 — 14 books in and still surprised
• 4:06 — Writing about TTRPGs without playing them
• 6:47 — The game master inside your head
• 9:48 — Why RPGs are collaborative storytelling
• 12:22 — Is there a map of the mind
• 16:47 — Rules of the inner RPG
• 18:29 — The 12 players inside us
• 19:05 — The 90-second brain huddle
• 23:30 — Self-care hacks from RPG handbooks
• 25:37 — The yes-this-can-happen reframe
• 26:56 — Closing thoughts and what is next

Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD

About Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Victoria Ichizli-Bartels is a writer, coach, and consultant with a background in semiconductor physics, electronic engineering (Ph.D.), information technology, and business development. While not a traditional gamer, Victoria coined the term "self-gamification," a gameful, playful approach to self-care and self-help that combines anthropology, kaizen, and gamification to enhance quality of life. With over a decade of experience living gamefully, she is the author of fourteen books and the instructor of two online courses on turning life into fun games. Victoria grew up in Moldova, lived in Germany for twelve years, and since 2008 has been based in Aalborg, Denmark, with her husband and two children.

Find the Guest Online

• Website: https://www.victoriaichizlibartels.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoriaichizlibartels/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/optimistwriter
• Substack: https://selfgamificationclub.substack.com/

Mentioned in This Episode

• Be Your Best Game Master by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels (the book this conversation is built around)
• So You Want to Be a Game Master by Justin Alexander
• Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor (the "brain huddle" concept and the four-characters model)
• The 5-Minute Perseverance Game by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels (her first book, published 10 years ago)
• Actual Real Life Role-Playing Games by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels
• 10,000 Hours of Play by Yu-kai Chou
• A.J. Jacobs and his life-as-experiment / puzzler books
• Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and tabletop RPGs in general
• Story Cubes (the dice-and-pictures storytelling game)
• Core Drive 7 — Unpredictability & Curiosity (Octalysis)

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
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Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD

Episode Summary

Tetiana Kobzar, product designer with 18 years of experience and creator of the Comportance Framework, joins Rob to share how behavioral design turns clinical and educational software into products people actually want to use. She walks through the seven steps of Comportance (goal, baseline, emotion, hypothesis, minimum validation, cadence, and iteration) and shows how it shaped a gamified speech therapy app for Alder Hey Children's Hospital and a mini-game replacement for 27 cognitive assessment tests. The conversation covers why founders overload products with functionality, why Duolingo's Black Hat motivation works for some users and burns out others, and how Octalysis fits inside a wider behavioral design practice. Listeners leave with a practical structure for designing engagement and a sharper read on when game-based beats gamified.

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 Comportance Framework runs seven steps in order: define the goal, set the baseline metrics, design the emotion (motivation and positioning), state one hypothesis, build the minimum validation, set the measurement cadence, and iterate. Most founders skip the goal and emotion steps and jump straight to functionality.
• Tetiana's team at Alder Hey Children's Hospital replaced weekly-only speech therapy with a gamified app where clinicians set tasks as mini games, letting kids practice pronunciation between sessions while the therapist tracks progress.
• A separate Tetiana project replaced 27 pen-and-paper cognitive assessment tests with mini games on tablets, capturing extra signal (timestamps, finger tremor, voice recordings) that paper tests cannot measure.
• Most products fail not because users are irrational but because founders treat them as rational agents. Behavioral biases and cognitive overload kill engagement faster than missing features.
• The Pareto trap in client work: founders spend 80% of their attention on the 20% of clients who complain, while the 80% of healthy clients who quietly bring most of the revenue get under-served. Reverse the ratio to protect recurring revenue.
• Duolingo's streak mechanic is heavy Black Hat motivation. It drives high retention but creates rage-quit risk: a user who loses a 4,000-day streak rarely returns. The near-miss has to threaten loss without delivering it.
• Game-based design (where the experience itself feels like a game) opens more creative options than gamification (points, badges, leaderboards bolted onto a non-game product), but both belong inside a wider behavioral design practice.

Topics Covered

• 0:00 — Why Duolingo's Black Hat motivation backfires
• 0:24 — Rob's intro and the Core Drives in the Wild guide
• 2:47 — Daily life after the acquisition
• 4:14 — Favorite fail: design for the end game
• 8:16 — Alder Hey speech therapy app and 27 cognitive tests as games
• 11:26 — Game-based versus gamified, and where the line blurs
• 15:44 — Where Octalysis fits inside the Comportance Framework
• 17:11 — The seven steps of Comportance, walked end to end
• 23:50 — Cognitive overload and treating users as humans
• 27:24 — Duolingo streaks, near-miss design, and rage-quit risk
• 31:42 — Book picks: Cialdini, Yu-kai Chou, Don Norman
• 33:29 — Civilization, board games with the kids, final advice

Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD

About Tetiana Kobzar

Tetiana Kobzar is a product strategist and behavioral designer with 18 years of experience building software for healthcare, wellness, and education. She is the creator of the Comportance Framework, a seven-step methodology that brings behavioral science structure to product design. Her recent work includes a gamified speech therapy app for Alder Hey Children's Hospital and a tablet-based replacement for 27 cognitive assessment tests, and she shares behavioral design ideas through her #BehaviouralDesignThursday LinkedIn series and industry talks.

Find the Guest Online

• LinkedIn
• Tetiana-kobzar.com
• Instagram
• TikTok

Mentioned in This Episode

• Proposed guest: someone from Duolingo
• Recommended book: Actionable Gamification by Yu-kai Chou
• Recommended book: Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
• Recommended book: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
• Favorite game: Civilization series
• Duolingo Is Not A Free Language Learning App, It Is... (The Octalysis Group)
• Alder Hey Children's Hospital speech therapy app (Tetiana's project)
• Comportance Framework (Tetiana's seven-step methodology)
• 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
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• Facebook
• Start Your Community on Skool for Free
• Ask a question

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

Most apps lose 77% of their users within the first three days because they treat onboarding like a tax audit instead of a human journey. In this episode, Rob Alvarez breaks down why your "helpful" 15-step toolkit might actually be causing cognitive friction and driving users away. By moving from function-focused design to human-focused design, you can transform a bounce into a lifelong advocate. Rob explores the "Christmas Magic Mistake," the "Hello World" principle for instant wins, and the "Miyagi Method" of scaffolding to ensure your users actually want to come back for Day 2.

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.

Links to episode mentions:

• Core Drives in the Wild Free Guide
• The Magic Doesn't Start Where You Think It Does (Christmas experience episode)

Lets's do stuff together!

• Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Guide
• Let's chat about your gamification project
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Identify the exact strategies Sharon and Rob discussed so you can start increasing engagement in your own projects today. Grab our Core Drives in the Wild guide for free professorgame.com/WildCD

What if the secret to solving real-world isolation or preventing misconduct wasn't more rules, but better play? Sharon Wood, a veteran gaming executive who helped launch the original Grand Theft Auto, joins us to discuss her shift from commercial hits to "Serious Games" with a scientific edge. We explore the neurological reality that the brain cannot distinguish between real and virtual experiences, making games a potent tool for building empathy and confidence. From memory care apps that reunite families to clinical trials in schools, this episode moves past the "points and badges" surface of gamification to show how progressive mastery actually changes lives.

Sharon Wood is a seasoned gaming executive with over four decades of experience spanning sports marketing, entertainment, media, and video game development. Her career began in the fast-paced world of sports and entertainment marketing before she entered the gaming industry in 1996 during PlayStation's early days, where she orchestrated groundbreaking partnerships between major brands like Pepsi and Frito-Lay and video games.

Most notably, Sharon launched the original Grand Theft Auto on a modest marketing budget. While defending the controversial title in the media, she consulted with psychologists and discovered something surprising: games could actually provide safe environments for exploring moral concepts rather than encouraging negative behaviors. This revelation changed everything. Inspired by gaming's positive potential, Sharon collaborated with a psychologist around 2012-2013 to create "Luminous," a game designed to help women and girls build self-confidence. Within months of launch, it became a top-five app in 34 countries.

This success led Sharon to found Happy People Games (HPG), a company dedicated to creating "serious games": interactive experiences that merge scientific evidence with engaging gameplay to deliver real-world benefits beyond entertainment. Unlike simple gamification with badges and points, HPG builds games that create progressive mastery experiences, harnessing the natural reward response from achievement and channeling it toward positive outcomes.

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.

Guest Links and Info

• Websites:
  • happypeoplegames.com
  • thenewforevers.com
• Instagram: @thenewforevers

Links to episode mentions:

• Proposed guest: Christian Svensson
• Favorite game: Tekken

Lets's do stuff together!

• Let's chat about your gamification project
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
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• Facebook
• Start Your Community on Skool for Free
• Ask a question

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

Most companies treat user churn as a data problem, but looking at "where" someone leaves doesn't explain "why" they lost interest. We break down the "Engagement Leaks," a phenomenon where record-breaking marketing spend fails to fix a product that is effectively a sieve for users. By analyzing the high-touch onboarding of Superhuman, the "novelty hangover" of Robinhood's digital confetti, and the legendary community design of Harley-Davidson, this episode reveals how to use the Octalysis Framework to plug leaks in different stages of the user journey. A masterclass in transitioning from a product people merely start to one they actually stay with.

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.

Links to episode mentions:

• Superhuman
• Robinhood
• Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.)
• The Octalysis Group

Lets's do stuff together!

• Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Guide
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Exploring gamification for your product or org? Let's chat → professorgame.com/chat

We sit down with product leader and author Nesrine Changuel to explore the behavioral science of "Product Delight." Nesrine pulls from her extensive experience at tech giants like Google and Spotify to explain why emotional connection cannot be treated as an afterthought in product design. By distinguishing between purely functional requirements and deep emotional motivators, she reveals how features like Google Chrome's inactive tabs or Spotify's curated playlists solve core psychological needs rather than just technical problems. You can walk away with actionable frameworks for removing user friction, anticipating needs, and asking the ultimate design question: "If my product were a human, how would the experience be better?"

Nesrine is a product coach, trainer, speaker, and author the author of Product Delight Book. With a background in research and over a decade of product experience, she has built products used by millions like Google Chrome, Google Meet, Spotify, and Skype. Nesrine is known for her focus on emotional connection and user delight. Today, she helps teams create products people don't just use, but truly love.

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.

Guest Links and Info

• Website: nesrine-changuel.com
• LinkedIn: Nnesrine Changuel
• Product Delight Book

Links to episode mentions:

• Proposed guest: Elena Verna
• Recommended book: Emotional Design by Don Norman
• Favorite game: DiXit

Lets's do stuff together!

• Let's chat about your gamification project
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Start Your Community on Skool for Free
• Ask a question