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