Professor Game Podcast

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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.

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.

• 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.

• 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

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

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Want in before anyone else? Join the Engagers and get early access to the November relaunch: professorgame.com/relaunch

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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

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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.

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.

• 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.

• 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

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.

• LinkedIn
• kristenberman.com
• Product Teardowns on Substack
• Irrational Labs
• Irrational Labs case studies

• 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

• Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide
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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.

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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide
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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.

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.

• 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.

• • 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

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.

• Website: https://fintechitgroup.com/en/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogalskiy/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rogalskiy
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rogalskiy

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• Proposed guest: someone from the Duolingo team
• Recommended book: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
• Favorite game: Walkable, Mykhailo's own city-walking app

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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.

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.

• 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.

• 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?

• 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

• Core Drives in the Wild: Professor Game Free Guide
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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.

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.

• 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).

• 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

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.

• Website
  • Book: Decoding Genius
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• 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

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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.

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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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

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Recently funded and aiming for sustainable retention? Intro chat (no sales pitch): professorgame.com/chat

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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

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.

• 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

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)

• 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 engagement programs: professorgame.com/WildCD

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• 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