Alan Mattiassi
Applies psychology through games to understand human behavior and turn play into meaningful insight, learning, and motivation through powerful debriefing.
Alan Mattiassi, PhD, is a freelance game psychologist, independent researcher, and lecturer specializing in the psychology of play, game-based learning, and gamification. He is the Principal Investigator of the Committee on Research in Game Psychology at the GAME Science Research Center and collaborates with multiple Italian universities on teaching and research initiatives.
Alan’s work focuses on developing psychological frameworks that explain how games influence cognition, motivation, and behavior, and translating those insights into practical tools for educators, trainers, and organizations. His research bridges theory and application, helping practitioners design game-based experiences that are not only engaging, but grounded in how people actually think, feel, and learn through play.
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Beyond Fun: A Novel Psychological Framework for Games and Behavioral Change
This session challenges how games are currently understood, selected, and evaluated in learning and organizational contexts. Led by Alan Mattiassi, it addresses a core problem in the field: research and practice are fragmented across motivation scales, engagement models, and design checklists that rarely connect into a single, testable psychological framework. As a result, practitioners struggle to answer basic questions like which game to use, why it should work, and what outcomes to expect.
Alan presents a unified psychological theory that reframes games beyond genre, platform, or “educational vs. entertainment” labels. The framework integrates game-based learning, gamification, and play psychology into one coherent model that enables prediction rather than post-hoc explanation. Participants will see how this approach helps reinterpret existing research, resolve apparent contradictions in the literature, and provide theory-driven tools that designers, educators, and L&D professionals can use to make more confident, evidence-based decisions.
Takeaway: When games are understood through psychology instead of categories, design choices become clearer and outcomes more predictable.
