Building Habit-Forming Language Learning: Gamifying Real Conversations

Language learning apps have long understood the power of gamification—streaks, points, leaderboards, achievement badges. But Teuida's approach to gamification goes deeper than surface-level rewards. By transforming the inherently uncomfortable act of speaking a foreign language into interactive challenges with real-world scenarios, they've created engagement loops that actually drive learning outcomes.

On the Levels Podcast, Ji Woong shared how Teuida built a platform that now serves over half a million monthly active users by gamifying the one thing most language learners avoid: actual conversation. For product teams thinking about how to use gamification to drive retention, Teuida's approach offers a masterclass in designing game mechanics around meaningful actions rather than arbitrary metrics.

The Challenge That Matters

Most gamified language apps focus on making easy things feel rewarding. Complete a lesson, earn points. Maintain a streak, unlock a badge. The mechanics are borrowed from games, but they're wrapped around low-stakes activities like matching words to pictures or filling in blanks.

Teuida took a different approach by gamifying the hardest, most valuable part of language learning: speaking. As Jason described the core product experience:

They're a Korean and Japanese language learning app where you talk to like a video of someone that's like pre-recorded speaking the language. So if you're trying to learn how to like order a coffee or something, then you have to actually speak to someone who's on video having the interaction with you.

This is gamification in its truest sense—taking a challenging real-world skill and breaking it down into achievable, structured challenges. Each scenario is essentially a level: order coffee, ask for directions, introduce yourself at a business meeting. The game-like structure makes the challenge feel approachable while maintaining the authentic difficulty that creates real skill development.

Active Participation as Game Mechanic

The genius of Teuida's design is that active participation isn't optional—it's the core mechanic. You can't advance without actually speaking, which means the game loop is built entirely around the behavior they want to reinforce.

Jason emphasized this forcing function:

And the idea is that you learn language better when you're actually forced to speak it.

In game design terms, this creates what's called "meaningful play"—actions that have real consequences within the game system. Unlike passive learning apps where you can mindlessly tap through exercises, every interaction in Teuida requires genuine cognitive effort and verbal production. That effort is what creates the learning, but it's also what makes completion satisfying.

This connects to a fundamental principle of effective gamification: the mechanics should reinforce the core value proposition, not distract from it. Points and badges can drive engagement, but if they're divorced from actual skill progression, they create hollow engagement. Teuida's approach ensures that game progression and learning progression are the same thing.

The Engagement Loop of Discomfort

There's something counterintuitive about gamifying uncomfortable experiences. Games are supposed to be fun, right? But the most engaging games aren't easy—they're challenging in ways that feel surmountable. They put you in situations where you might fail, but give you the structure and feedback to improve.

Speaking a foreign language, especially as a beginner, is inherently uncomfortable. You sound foolish. You make mistakes. You struggle to find words. Traditional classroom settings often amplify this discomfort through social pressure and judgment.

Teuida's video-based approach creates a safe space to experience that discomfort. You're still speaking out loud, still stumbling through the interaction, but you're doing it with a pre-recorded video rather than a live person. This reduces the social anxiety while preserving the challenge. It's like a practice mode in a video game—real stakes, but with room to fail and retry without consequence.

Scenario-Based Progression

The decision to structure learning around real-world scenarios—ordering coffee, navigating conversations, handling business interactions—is another powerful gamification choice. Each scenario becomes a quest or mission with clear objectives and real-world applicability.

This creates intrinsic motivation beyond just completing lessons. Users aren't just trying to finish level 47—they're preparing for an actual trip to Korea or building skills for a new job. The scenarios provide context and purpose that make the challenge meaningful.

It's worth noting how this differs from AI-powered conversation apps. As Charlie observed about Teuida's approach:

A lot of platforms, you know, kind of use AI or use those kinds of ways, but Ji Woong was really focused on actually having the real people behind it, which I thought was interesting.

Pre-recorded scenarios allow for carefully designed difficulty curves. Each conversation can be precisely calibrated for vocabulary level, speaking speed, and complexity. This structured progression is fundamental to good game design—challenges should increase in difficulty as skills develop, creating a state of "flow" where users are stretched but not overwhelmed.

Retention Through Real Progress

The connection between Teuida's engagement design and their business metrics is worth examining. When Charlie mentioned that they tripled their LTV within a year, he linked it directly to user growth—better monetization led to more users, suggesting strong retention and word-of-mouth.

That retention likely stems from users experiencing genuine progress. When gamification is done right, users don't stick around for points—they stick around because they're getting better at something they care about. The game mechanics are just the scaffolding that makes consistent practice feel achievable and rewarding.

This is particularly important for habit formation. Language learning requires regular practice over extended periods. By making each session feel like completing a challenge rather than grinding through homework, Teuida creates the psychological conditions for habit formation. The dopamine hit comes not from artificial rewards but from successfully navigating a conversation, even a pre-scripted one.

Beyond Language Learning

While Teuida's specific implementation is tailored to language learning, the principles apply broadly to any product trying to drive behavior change. The framework is: identify the highest-value but most-avoided behavior, create structured challenges around that behavior, provide safe spaces to practice, and ensure game progression maps to real skill development.

For fitness apps, this might mean gamifying the specific exercises users skip. For productivity tools, it might mean creating challenges around the deep work sessions users know they need but constantly defer. For creative platforms, it might mean structuring projects as achievable missions rather than blank canvases.

The key is understanding what users need to do to get value from your product, and then designing game mechanics that make doing those hard things feel like progress rather than punishment.

The Authentic Challenge Advantage

Perhaps the most important lesson from Teuida's approach is that authentic challenge creates stronger engagement than artificial difficulty. Speaking a foreign language is genuinely hard. There's no need to add arbitrary obstacles or fake scarcity. The real challenge is enough—it just needs to be presented in a way that feels structured, safe, and achievable.

This stands in contrast to many gamified products that use points, streaks, and badges to create engagement around inherently easy activities. Those mechanics can work for a while, but they often feel manipulative once users recognize the game layer as separate from the value layer.

When the game is the value—when playing better means getting better at something real—the engagement is sustainable. Users develop genuine attachment to their progress, which creates resilience against churn and strong word-of-mouth as users share their achievements.

Key Points

• Teuida gamifies the hardest, most valuable part of language learning—actual speaking—rather than wrapping game mechanics around easy exercises
• Active participation is the core game mechanic, ensuring that game progression and learning progression are aligned
• Real-world scenarios function as quests or missions, providing context and intrinsic motivation beyond arbitrary completion metrics
• The product creates safe spaces to practice uncomfortable skills, similar to practice modes in video games
• Authentic challenge creates stronger, more sustainable engagement than artificial difficulty layered onto easy activities
• Retention comes from users experiencing genuine progress, with game mechanics serving as scaffolding for habit formation

Listen to the full conversation with Ji Woong on the Levels Podcast to hear more about how Teuida designed for active engagement and built their growth strategy.