LudoScience

Créer des jeux vidéo en classe : des outils simples d'accès (Broacasting our studies)

An article introducing a selection of game creation tools for the classroom. To read an abstract

Keywords : game design, game creation tools, school, pedagogy

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Les jeux vidéos comme objet de recherche (Book reference)

This scientific book gathers contributions from 12 researchers, coming from different fields, who are studying different sides of videogames: identification of the Game Designer knowledge, using videogames in schools, space in videogames, how to dissect a videogame to analyze it, analysis of MMORPG as social spaces...N.B.: The members of Ludoscience wrote a chapter of this book, about "Serious Games".

Keywords : scientific research, education, sociology, computer science, geography

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Global Game Jam 2011 - Toulouse edition (Our projects)

In association with the multimedia workshop and the game library of the Odyssud cultural centre, located in Blagnac (near Toulouse, in France), we ran a local edition of the international game creation contest called "Global Game Jam". The contestants had 48h to design an experimental videogame on the theme "Extinction".     The 17 contestants who participed in our local antena of this huge jam created two videogames:   Celestial Equilibrium  [...]

Keywords : game design, contest

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Wardopi (Student project)

A game designed to talk about the french "Hadopi" law, which aims to prevent illegal downloads over the Internet. As a computer fan, do you think this law will prevent YOUR data to go freely over the worldwide network? 

Keywords : serious game, newsgame, hadopi, law

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Le rôle des interfaces dans l?expérience de jeu vidéo : le jeu du ping-pong et son adaptation sur des plateformes numériques (Broacasting our studies)

Abstract: The market success of Video games shows us that they have become a significant alternative for leisure and entertainment. While observing the trends one can realize that game designers tend to transpose or adapt leisure activities such as dance, playing music or sports to the context of video games which has become even more obvious with the appearance of input devices incorporating physical movement as a mode of interaction. Inspired by these different forms of leisure, vide [...]

Keywords : Design, videogames, interfaces, experiences, fun, interaction

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Michel Ancel : Biographie d'un créateur de jeux vidéo français (Book reference)

The biography of Michel Ancel, a french game designer, who is famous for creating the "Rayman" and "Raving Rabbids" series. This book details the creations of this famous game designer, by presenting the main steps of his career: the childhood of Michel Ancel, his first professionnal videogames, Rayman, Beyond Good & Evil, King Kong, Raving Rabbids, and Rayman Origins. Each chapter features an interview of someone who worked with Michel Ancel or who is part of his private [...]

Keywords : biography, michel ancel, rayman, king kong, raving rabbids, beyond good & evil

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Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design (Book reference)

Through a book of over 500 pages, game designer Scott Rogers shares his professional experience of creating videogames. This industry veteran has worked on games such as God of War, Darksiders and the Maximo series, among others. This book deals with the various steps and key-points of the game design process: ideas, scenario, writing a Game Design Document, characters, camera, controls, user interface, level design, game mechanics, enemies... The main strength of this book lies in the way the a [...]

Keywords : game design, example, game design document, maximo, drawing

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Designing playful interactivity: an overview of "game design" methodologies (Broacasting our studies)

This paper presents a review of the literature on game design. After proposing a theoretical framework to clarify the definition of "ludic interactivity", we analyze a corpus of 36 texts dealing with game design. This analysis will first enable us to sketch out a categorization of the different types of methodological approaches to game design. It will then allow us to reflect on the very nature of game design, and more specifically on the different stages that make up this process.

Keywords : Game Design, Formal model, Interactivity

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Can "Gaming 2.0" Help Design "Serious Games"? A Comparative Study (Broacasting our studies)

The "Serious Games" field raises a specific need. People without professional game design skills, such as teachers, corporate trainers, therapists and advertising professionals, request tools that could allow them to create or modify such games. This article will analyze "Gaming 2.0" examples in order to identify tools that could help fulfill this need. Indeed, "Gaming 2.0" is a way for players to create videogame content without skills from the entertainment videog [...]

Keywords : gaming 2.0, serious games, game design, level design, player-generated content

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From "Mods" to "Gaming 2.0": an overview of tools to ease the game design process (Broacasting our studies)

This article focuses on tools that allow amateurs to create or modify videogames. In order to contribute to study the nature of game design, we will analyze games as crafted "artifacts". We will first review five categories of tools that allow creating games, in order to highlight the different "parts" games are made of. We will then use this empirical review to introduce a simple model of the inner structure of games: the ISICO model.

Keywords : game design, tools, game creation toolkit, mods, gaming 2.0

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