A Platform of Serious Video Games Co-built for the General Interest

Authors

  • Bertrand Laforge Laboratoire de physique nucléaire et des hautes énergies, Sorbonne Université, IN2P3, Paris, France & Ikigai – Games for citizens non-profit organization, Paris, France
  • Thomas Planques Ikigai – Games for citizens non-profit organization, Paris, France
  • Florian Delcourt Ikigai – Games for citizens non-profit organization, Paris, France
  • Fanny Barnabé CRIDS/NADI, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34190/ecgbl.18.1.2638

Keywords:

video games, serious games, training, artificial intelligence, learning analytics

Abstract

In a context where training takes place both in initial courses and in lifelong continuing education, the use of games offers a way of promoting effective and sustainable learning: by its very nature, this medium is an open work in which players can become involved and give meaning to their learning. Ikigai - Games for Citizens offers a unique ecosystem for creating serious, expert video games and offering them free of charge to people who want to learn while having fun, as well as producing a set of learning-related data that can be used for research and customizing training courses. By bringing together universities, Grandes Ecoles, research laboratories, associations, and institutions, Ikigai is a collaborative consortium of general interest, implementing the co-construction of videogame services between scientific experts, video game professionals and educational engineers. Together, they are producing a centralized platform of serious games and associated services that can be used by teachers at a moderate cost by pooling resources: the building blocks of each game can be reused in other games developed. The consortium is committed to general interest and popular education by making the games available free of charge to members and the general public. The decentralized infrastructure set up by Ikigai, which respects privacy by design, means that game usage data can now be collected on a national scale, but conceptually it could extend much further. The data collected in compliance with the RGPD will eventually be used to draw up enriched user profiles to offer personalized courses, teaching recommendations and progress monitoring as close as possible to the learner, using AI in particular. Ikigai is also heavily involved in the construction of new digital standards in education, which are needed to ensure the interoperability of data for lifelong monitoring of learners. But also, for the digital education ecosystem, to guarantee a sovereign, efficient, coherent, and sustainable cloud on a European scale.

Author Biographies

Bertrand Laforge, Laboratoire de physique nucléaire et des hautes énergies, Sorbonne Université, IN2P3, Paris, France & Ikigai – Games for citizens non-profit organization, Paris, France

Bertrand Laforge, professor at Sorbonne University, works in the ATLAS collaboration at CERN. He is an expert of Higgs boson and dark matter searches. He founded Ikigai.games to improve learning using video games and simulations and is the President of the non-profit organization supporting the project.

Thomas Planques, Ikigai – Games for citizens non-profit organization, Paris, France

Thomas Planques is the creative and operational director of Ikigai - Games for Citizens. He worked in various positions in the field of videogames game creation. He also teaches game creation (design, management, programming) in several educational establishments.

Florian Delcourt, Ikigai – Games for citizens non-profit organization, Paris, France

Florian Delcourt is training coordinator, network manager and activity developper at Ikigai – Games for Citizens. He has worked for many years in the field of science communication, creating exhibitions, events, games and training courses for a wide variety of audiences.

Fanny Barnabé, CRIDS/NADI, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

Fanny Barnabé is an associate professor at the CRIDS/NaDI of the University of Namur (Belgium) and a founding member of the Liège Game Lab. Her research focuses on game narration, on video game remix practices by players, on game tutorials and on humor and toxicity in the context of live-streaming.

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Published

2024-10-07

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2024): Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Games Based Learning

Section

Academic Papers