UK · interviewed May 2026. A full-body interactive installation built around a modified PS2 dance mat and motion capture, working with the player’s own image on screen.
The line the whole thesis may hang on
It actually kind of feels like dancing. That wasn’t something I intended at the outset.
Why it matters
The causal chain runs: game rule (score by hitting) → bodily strategy → an embodied quality (dancing, sweating, exhaustion). The designer used gameful principles, but did not aim at embodied perception. It happened, and it had no name inside his own framework.
This is the first piece of empirical evidence that the gap I am describing actually exists, and it gives a provisional answer to one of my sub-questions:
Do designers intentionally shape embodied sensory experience? Provisionally, no — it is a by-product.
One interview is not enough to carry that claim. It needs at least one or two more.
What I would ask differently next time
He was working with the player’s image of themselves on screen. I never asked what changed when other people were watching — which, given the open fork, is now the thing I most want to know.