Lisa Ebner-Kollmann works in the Digital Communication team at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, where she develops digital editorial formats and online content. With academic backgrounds in Art History and Information Design, as well as professional experience in museum education, her work focuses on the intersection of museums, digital storytelling and game-based mediation. In 2026, she completed the Certificate Program Game Based Education at the University for Continuing Education Krems. Her current practice and research focus on the strategic integration of digital and game-based mediation in art museums, combining practical museum work with conceptual approaches to museum learning and participation.
Beyond Game Design: Structural Tensions of Sustainable Game-Based Mediation in Art Museums
FROG 2026 – Talk
Game-based mediation is increasingly recognized as a promising approach for art museums, offering new ways to activate visitors, lower barriers to participation, engage new audiences and foster meaningful museum experiences. Together, these qualities create new opportunities for participation, engagement and experience-based learning. Yet these same qualities introduce structural tensions that challenge their sustainable implementation within art museum practice.
Existing examples of game-based mediation are often implemented as individual projects rather than embedded within broader mediation strategies, while questions of their sustainable institutional integration remain less explicitly addressed.
Game-based mediation is not just a design challenge – it is an institutional challenge for art museums.
Against this background, the paper asks: What does sustainable game-based mediation require from art museums beyond game design?
Drawing on contemporary theories of museum learning and museum experience, the paper undertakes a theoretically informed comparative analysis of existing game-based mediation formats to identify recurring structural tensions in game-based mediation. It further examines how these become institutional challenges under the organizational conditions of museum practice. Building on this analysis, six conceptual guidelines for sustainable implementation are proposed.
By reframing sustainable game-based mediation as an institutional rather than purely design-oriented challenge, the paper demonstrates that its sustainable implementation cannot be reduced to questions of game design alone but instead requires an institutional perspective on sustainable implementation.