Thorsten Becker
Systems Thinker & Perceptual Facilitator

Welcome

I am Thorsten Becker, an analyst and facilitator with decades of experience in systems, data, and business intelligence. Over time, my work expanded to examine how people inhabit natural, built, and virtual environments, and how these – together with their social dynamics – shape perception, meaning, orientation, and the value assigned to what is encountered.

Environments are not passive settings. They structure movement, guide attention, and frame interpretation long before we consciously analyze what is happening. Forests, cities, interiors, game worlds, and the people within them all participate in experience. I focus on making these influences visible and usable in context, so that value can be recognized more clearly.

I offer perceptual value facilitation sessions to help navigate situations where environment, information, or social dynamics create overload or a loss of orientation. In these sessions, I guide observation, structure dialogue, and help surface what is actually at play and how it shapes perception, interpretation, and what is recognized as valuable in the moment.

They are reflective and directional sessions that examine how spatial structure, atmosphere, social interaction, and systemic rules shape perception in context.

Through shared observation, relationships between space, attention, interaction, and meaning and value become clear, actionable, and easier to orient within.

Where I Come From

For decades, I worked in translating complexity into clarity within structured systems. My various roles focused on providing orientation and decision support within information-rich environments.

My attention eventually shifted from mainly metrics to the meaning they pointed to.

However, another form of observation had been present much earlier. I was always quite attuned to atmosphere and instinctively sought out natural environments, evocative urban spaces, thoughtfully designed interiors, and fascinating digital worlds. Eventually, I became aware of a pattern: certain environments positively influenced my mood, while others weighed on me – sometimes so strongly that I could not remain in them for long.

From this, a fundamental realization emerged: environments influence perception long before we consciously analyze what is happening. What once felt like a vulnerability became a perceptual instrument I now use in my work. Systems thinking helped me articulate what that instrument detected, including how environments and social context interact.

I also developed a particular interest in video games as environments for study and inquiry. My engagement with games spans several decades – beginning with titles such as Pong, continuing through various home computer systems, and later my work as a video game journalist in the late 1990s. In subsequent years, I contributed to localization and editorial work (e.g., Rise of Nations, Project Zero, IL-2 Sturmovik), as well as to my ongoing involvement in communities focused on narrative design and game studies.

Today, I approach game worlds as structured environments where perception, atmosphere, and systemic interaction can be examined with unusual clarity. I refer to games in my work as perception laboratories because here they can be examined in action across a wide variety of scales, periods, narratives, and sensory conditions. 

Where Structure Enters

As my observations on perception and orientation accumulated, clear relationships began to emerge between place, attention, emotion, and narrative.

Across many environments, similar dynamics appeared. Spatial structure, atmosphere, sensory signals, and social interaction consistently shaped how attention gathered or dispersed – and ultimately how clearly situations could be perceived.

These recurring patterns gradually revealed an underlying structure, which eventually evolved into the
Attuned Perception Framework (APF). 

APF does not prescribe how an experience should be interpreted, nor does it reduce perception to scores or rigid categories. It provides a simple structure for reflection – a way to notice patterns and describe how environments influence attention, mood, and clarity. It brings together environmental awareness, systems thinking, and perceptual sensitivity into a coherent practice of observation. 

You can explore the full framework here.