Some fragmented thoughts:
Animation of multiple elements in a scene: I have found the BSO bajaoscillator key here - multiple offset outputs means multiple things can move in different, but related ways and give the impression of a whole. Even when the scene is abstract it makes some visual sense that connects things as a scene, often suggesting ‘false’ depth (ie-it often looks a bit like layers of parallax scrolling, even when its only hue or brightness changes).
Multiple scenes: I think there’s a big conceptual jump here too. At what historical point does video art jump to using scenes (it’s the 90s, with the digital technology), and that means the viewer adjusting their expectations - its not a narrative, scene by scene, form. A bit like expecting a painting to move, or a sculpture to make sound. Maybe its not necessarily desirable. I do edit my patches into a series of scenes in premiere pro, but I treat that as a separate process and separate creative choice.
Games: The closest predecessor here is the Jeff Minter visualisers - colourspace or the console visualisers and ‘video-art games’ he made. These were inspired by video art, but intended to be playable like a game. An intermediary step might be porting the basic ‘playable’ algorithms in some of these old 8-bit visualisers to Diver or MP as animated ramps? I guess it starts to be a bit like a very primitive GLSL shader with a joystick input at that point, too.