Professor Game Podcast

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

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

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

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

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