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How do digital environments guide attention, influence behavior, and shape emotional experience?
This series examines video game worlds as structured spaces rather than entertainment systems.
Video games are designed environments.
They guide attention, shape emotional tone, and structure the decisions players make within them.
This small-group series explores how digital environments shape emotional experience, attention, and decision-making. Rather than focusing on mechanics or industry practice, we examine selected game worlds as structured environments – spaces that regulate mood, guide movement, and frame moral agency.
The discussion draws on perspectives from environmental psychology, architectural atmosphere theory, and narrative design.
What We Will Do
Together, we examine three very different game worlds as environments rather than entertainment systems.
Participants observe selected scenes, discuss perceptual signals, and articulate how spatial design influences attention, movement, and decision-making. No prior gameplay is required – the relevant material will be presented during the sessions.
The aim is not to critique games, but to practice reading environments.
Part I – Inhabiting Space
Case study: Lake
We begin with a calm, relational environment.
A quiet lakeside town structured by routine and repetition invites a different mode of attention. Scale, pacing, and character presence create emotional steadiness.
How does routine become spatial orientation?
How does atmosphere emerge from everyday movement?
This session introduces the practice of reading environmental atmosphere.
Part II – Acting Within Space
Case study: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Here we examine agency within constraint.
Light, visibility, vertical layers, and guarded spaces create an environment where every movement carries consequence.
How does architecture guide behavior?
How does space frame ethical decisions?
We explore how spatial structure shapes agency.
Part III – Designing Space
Case study: Anno 1800
In the final session, perspective shifts.
Instead of inhabiting a world, we begin shaping one.
Urban layout, density, infrastructure, and production systems reveal how design decisions influence collective experience.
How does spatial planning create harmony—or tension—within a living system?
This session explores responsibility in shaping environments.
After the series, many participants notice that they begin reading environments differently – not only in games, but also in the cities, buildings, and spaces they move through every day.
Who This Is For
This series is intended for:
Designers and creative thinkers
Writers and narrative practitioners
Urban planners and spatial thinkers
UX and interaction designers interested in spatial experience
Thoughtful gamers
Anyone interested in how environments shape perception
No academic background is required.
Curiosity and attentiveness are enough.
How the Series Works
The series unfolds across three sessions:
Day 1
Session 1 – Encountering the environment (45 min)
Short break
Session 2 – Articulating spatial experience (45 min)
Day 2
Session 3 – Integrating insights across environments (45 min)
Sessions are discussion-based and include short written reflections to articulate spatial experience.
No prior gameplay is required. Selected material will be provided.
Maximum participants: 8
Participation Fee
Full Series (recommended)
€219 + VAT
Includes all three sessions
Single Session
€79 + VAT per session
Subject to availability
VAT will be added where applicable. All prices in EUR.
Optional continuation
Participants interested in deeper exploration may continue in a Perceptual Lab, where additional environments and games are examined through the same method.
Registration
Dates are currently being finalized.
If you would like to receive first notice when registration opens, feel free to reach out directly.
A dedicated registration form will follow shortly.
Background Example – Spatial Analysis in Practice
In 2013, I completed Vanderbilt University’s online course Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative (with distinction). As part of the module Space and Time in Three Media, I created a comparative spatial analysis of the Weathertop sequence across novel, film, and digital adaptation.
The focus was not on narrative fidelity but on how staging, scale, light, and pacing shape embodied tension within a digital environment.
This early work reflects the foundations of the approach developed further in this seminar series.
Professional Background
Before focusing on games as lived environments, I worked as a video game journalist in the 1990s, writing for publications including ASM Spezial and PC Spiel (see Kultboy.com), Neue Presse, and Microsoft Home Journal. I also contributed to SAT.1 Text (Seite 514) and ran one of Germany’s early independent game sites, PCInformer.de.
I later provided German linguistic editing for games such as Rise of Nations and Project Zero (Fatal Frame).
More recently, I co-founded the Narrative House Discord community with narrative designer Edwin McRae and curate a public research reading list on video game studies via R Discovery (10k+ views).
This long-term engagement with digital worlds informs how I approach games as lived, resonant spaces.
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