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En continuité avec les travaux sur les mécaniques signifiantes de jeu, nous proposons, dans le cadre de cet article, de rendre compte de la dimension expérientielle de la mécanique en développant une méthode de recherche à partir des effets affectifs et sémiotiques produits par l’interaction entre le jeu et les joueur.se.s. L’expérience ludique est alors considérée comme un acte de langage dialogique et immanent à un contexte d’émission et de réception entre les concepteur.rice.s et les joueur.se.s. Avec ce type d’approche communicationnelle et pragmatiste, le jeu est conçu comme un processus sémiotique interprétatif où les mécaniques agissent comme grammaire (plan syntaxique) afin de produire du sens (plan sémantique) propre à une situation (plan pragmatique). En divisant l’étude de l’expérience ludique en trois plans du langage, il devient possible de faire état non seulement des actions et rétroactions du système ludique, mais également des effets affectifs et sémiotiques du jeu actualisé dans un contexte à chaque fois renouvelé par les joueur.se.s. Following the work on meaningful mechanics, we propose, in this article, to account for the experiential dimension of game mechanics. We develop a research method from the affective and semiotic effects produced by the interaction between the game and the players. The playful experience is considered an act of dialogical language and immanent to a context of transmission and reception between the designers and the players. With this communicational and pragmatist approach, we conceived the game as a semiotic process where the mechanics act as grammar (syntactic level) to produce meaning (semantic level) specific to a situation (pragmatic level). By dividing the study of the playful experience into three levels of language, it becomes possible to report the actions and feedback of the game system and the emotional and semiotic effects in a context each time renewed by the players.

Based on the observation that players happen to feel love attachment to video game characters, the article attempts to pinpoint what in the game-design can cause this feeling. It examines successively : 1/ the different ways of modeling romance in a game, involving equally different levels of emotion solicitation and immersion, 2/ the characteristics of the videogame apparatus, in that it induces a specific motion device in the representations of the self and of the other, and a permeability of the boundary between reality and fiction, 3/ the scripts triggering the romance, such as can be found in games, but also in the already known tropes of the romantic literature., À partir du constat que des joueurs éprouvent un attachement amoureux pour des personnages de jeux vidéo, l’article tente de repérer ce qui, dans le game-design de ces derniers, peut provoquer ce sentiment. Il examine successivement 1/ les différents moyens de modéliser la romance dans un jeu, impliquant des niveaux également différents de sollicitation des affects et d’immersion, 2/ les caractéristiques du dispositif vidéoludique, en ce qu’ils induisent un jeu spécifique dans les représentations de soi et de l’autre, et une perméabilité de la frontière entre réalité et fiction, 3/ les scripts déclencheurs de la romance, tels qu’on peut les repérer dans les jeux, mais également dans les tropes déjà connus de la littérature romanesque.

“When I use a word”, Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things”. “The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that's all”. [Carroll 2007 1865] In pervasive games, a virtual layer with its own logic is added to the everyday, common meaning of objects, places, and people. The departure of the signifier “things” from the signified what they mean on the virtual level is the semiotic process that allows for a double reading of the environment. Such a divorce has been explored in other cultural products books, movies. It has been qualified as the “uncanny mode”. This article analyzes how pervasive games use their own brand of uncanny. In particular, it shows how mobility becomes the way to uncover the hidden layers of the environment and serves as a tool to experience and eventually reduce or augment the uncanny. Finally, we can point to a typology of four main types of storytelling related to different types of mobility: games that use mimetic narrative strategies veering towards “realism”; games based on the “absurd”; “aloof” games that remain independent from places; games that present a specific play on this double reading of the world and develop the “Uncanny” as a genre.

Summary: This paper outlines the history of video games, from the Atari generation through Nintendo and Sega to interactive multimedia and hyper-reality. After considering a number of methodological questions, it suggests three different approaches for analysing the habits and behaviour of young players. It then discusses the new generation of adult games and the networks of virtual communities they have spawned on the Internet. The conclusion considers the influence of media games on other sectors of the culture industry., Lafrance Jean-Paul, Libbrecht Liz. Games and players in the electronic age. Tools for analysing the use of video games by adults and children. In: Réseaux. The French journal of communication, volume 4, n°2, 1996. pp. 299-331.