Video game designers in universities

The worlds of video game production are not particularly aware of the academic world. Yet researchers from all disciplines have been working for years on creating a new kind of video game. “Serious games”, which are intended for learning, are presented by their creators as a new category of pedagogical innovation. This paper examines the main technical, political and scientific choices in the design, production and institutional development of five serious games in France and Switzerland. Their design encompasses the development of infrastructures, categories, and shared tools between actors from different professional worlds, who invent ways of working together based on the idea of learning by playing. The analysis of several serious game projects sheds light on the important work of defining and categorizing “serious games”, which reflects university entrepreneurship pointing to broader transformations in academic activity.