Video games allow complex systems modelling, revealing retroaction loops, replicating self-organization and the emergence of hierarchical organization, functional differentiation and social segregation through multi-level interactions. Recent trends focus on improving modelling tools’ graphic quality and interface attractiveness and on using video games to facilitate urban studies teaching and research. This apparent convergence between simulation and video games is addressed through a selection of strategy and city builder video games. Comparisons reveal that simulations and video games point to similar results:, they both allow the simulation of complex urban processes, like hierarchical urban networks or urban segregation. Games even seem to allow going one step further, being often more comprehensive simulations. However, the main limitation of video games emerges from their didactic power: video games and simulation software implement rules and models in almost opposite means. Games induce players to learn the model but not to challenge or to produce new knowledge.

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https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00851470/document

Les jeux et les hommes

Video games and urban simulation: new tools or new tricks?

This research focused the use of images of risk-adventure in magazines in a diachronic perspective in order to investigate their legitimation and the emergence of strategies of governing risk in contemporanity. A sample of 212 issues of Veja published in the period between 1968 and 2003 was used. The analysis suggests that the presence of risk-adventure activities in the media, in a temporal perspective, had two stages: the first concerns the profissionalization of activities that until recently were considered exotic. In the second stage adventure sports became more accessible and the public is seduced through the offer of tourist packages and specialized courses. Images of risk-adventure in contemporary media are intrinsic information resources and support for the text. But they have other effects, such as promoting the experience of events to which one would not have direct access because of the costs involved or the lack of the necessary technical competence.

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Posicionando pessoas como aventureiros potenciais: imagens de risco-aventura em matérias de revista

In the emerging academic field of game studies, Roger Caillois’ Les Jeux et les hommes has already received the status of an obligatory reference. It is honoured as one of the few classic texts in game theory, but some also argue that it is not useful for analysing digital games. Caillois’ book is of particular interest for cultural theorists, though, because it presents a theory of games and play while also addressing the meaning of play. After analysing more closely why Caillois’ theory falls short when it is applied to digital games, we suggest a slight modification of its categories. Starting from the four game dimensions outlined by Caillois - competition, chance, simulation and vertigo - and his two modes of playing, paidia and ludus, we build on his theory by distinguishing two additional game characteristics, called repens and repositio. Both deal with the internal, temporal organization of a game. Repens is a specific characteristic of games that appeals to the player’s desire to discover, explor...

Frustrating Desire: On Repens and Repositio, or the Attractions and Distractions of Digital games

Cet article propose une revue de litterature relative au Game Design. Apres la proposition d’un cadre theorique visant a preciser la definition de « l’interactivite ludique », nous analyserons un corpus de 36 textes traitant de la conception de jeux. Cette analyse nous permettra tout d’abord d’esquisser une categorisation des differents types d’approches methodologique du Game Design. Elle nous permettra ensuite d’amorcer une reflexion sur la nature meme du « Game Design », et plus particulierement sur les differentes etapes qui composent ce processus.

/pdf/concevoir-l-interactivite-ludique-une-vue-d-ensemble-des-25xniqp43w.pdf

Concevoir l'interactivité ludique : une vue d'ensemble des méthodologies de « Game Design »

An experiment using educational games has been conducted in France with first year engineering students to develop their understanding of what sustainable farming is. We have devised a game that models the impact of grazing practices on landscape dynamics and compared a board version and a virtual one. The game appears to be more efficient in developing the desire to learn more and stimulating players' imagination than in teaching precise scientific knowledge. The game does not take the place of the classical courses. It introduces them. Finally, there is not any competition between the board game and the computerized one; the board game is more relevant to start the educational process, the second allows more possibilities to experiment different ways of management. (Resume d'auteur)

/pdf/can-a-game-put-engineering-students-in-an-active-learning-2f2oj67nkc.pdf

Les jeux et les hommes

Citations

Video games and urban simulation: new tools or new tricks?

Posicionando pessoas como aventureiros potenciais: imagens de risco-aventura em matérias de revista

Frustrating Desire: On Repens and Repositio, or the Attractions and Distractions of Digital games

Concevoir l'interactivité ludique : une vue d'ensemble des méthodologies de « Game Design »

Can a Game put Engineering Students in an Active Learning Mode? A First Experiment in Sustainable Agriculture Teaching

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