Barbara Lüneburg, The Computer Games Journal 2018, 7:243–260 · Methodology, artistic-research reflection · Read 2026-08-15
1. What they did
Lüneburg writes from inside GAPPP (Gamified Audiovisual Performance and Performance Practice, FWF-funded 2016–2020) as both artistic director and performer, reflecting on two gamified audiovisual works: Attractive Correlations (Giannoutakis) and Conditional Love (Katan).
The questions: to what extent does the audience experience game associations? How is that sense established, in audiences and performers alike? What are the conditions of their inner involvement? And how does the space of possibilities offered by the game system, software and interface shape a performer’s ludic and performative involvement?
She is not reporting what she made. She treats the works as case studies answering a transferable question — and that jump is the thing worth learning.
2. Method
- Methodology paper, written from the inside; she is herself the performer.
- Structure: Introduction → Research Question → Methodology & Definition of Keywords → two case studies → Conclusion (Art or Game? / Conditions for Involvement).
- Keywords first: ludus/paidia, meaningful play, local/global agency, aesthetic liveness are defined before any work is analysed.
- Analytical tool: a polar diagram on five axes — interface, determinism, agency, input-mapping + liveness, ludus–paidia. The upper half is game mechanics, the lower half how the performer perceives them.
- Data: audience questionnaire plus open interviews, with a sociologist collaborator (Susanne Sackl-Sharif).
- Case contrast: Attractive Correlations (open world, ecosystem metaphor, no final state) against Conditional Love (Tamagotchi-like amoeba, structured rules).
3. Findings and contribution
- Meaningful play plus local/global agency. Whether an audience experiences a game association depends on whether the link between action and result is discernible and integrated.
- The Art-or-Game test: can the audience see the action–reaction link? Seeing it tilts toward game; not seeing it tilts toward art.
- Conditions for involvement: tacit knowledge, personal background, active participation, interface.
- The lesson from the contrast: Attractive Correlations’ open world was rated chaotic and negative because global agency was imperceptible. It was rescued by being rebuilt as an open installation, fusing stage and seating into one large social space. Conditional Love held involvement through shared involvement (Calleja) even when the audience did not follow the rules.
- System of enunciation (Ciciliani): the whole setup speaks, not the composer. Performers, audience, hardware and the relations between them are all authors.
- The polar diagram itself, as a reusable tool for analysing gamified AV work.
4. What it gives me
- It located the line I thought was a collision. Lüneburg is a musician making games — professional performers, instruments, a concert. I am a game designer making music — ordinary visitors, a controller, an installation. She left the audience side and the controller entry point blank. That is my frontier.
- Meaningful play and local/global agency are the leading theoretical candidates. They answer directly whether an audience can see its own action→reaction, which is the underlying question of the whole thesis.
- The open-world lesson constrains my design. If my installation leans open-world, every layer of action needs an immediately visible reaction, or the audience drops out the way the first Attractive Correlations audience did.
- Tacit knowledge underwrites the controller as cultural symbol. Assuming the audience already knows a controller is a feature, not a bug — this is the theoretical footing for that whole position.
- Shared involvement (Calleja) and the shift from stage to social space give the multi-person direction two theoretical backers.
- Methodologically: questionnaire + interviews with a sociologist, and defining keywords before analysing cases, is a structure my own methodology chapter can borrow.
5. Questions it left me
- Can a master’s student define their own diagram? Better to borrow the polar diagram first and plot my own work on it than to invent one. A diagram should grow, not be manufactured.
- How do you find your own core theory? Claim one of these eight concepts — meaningful play, or local/global agency — and use it to describe one of my own installations.
- The thesis may need to shift toward the ICLC prototype as its centre. That is a correct research-through-design signal, but the danger is the thesis becoming a project report. Learn the jump Lüneburg makes from work to research question.
- Single vs. multi-person is still undecided — but multi-person now has shared involvement and social space behind it.