Prototyping to turn policy into design. (Co)modification of a serious game in the French education system

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the marketing of a French serious game, Factory Game, whose development pathway highlights the technical, political, economic and professional implications of modernising the education system. The article conducts a sociological analysis of prototyping throughout the game’s commodification process. Focusing on the French educational technology market, it describes the social, political, economic and professional motives for using prototypes. The article makes two contributions. On market studies, it shows that prototyping is not only a way to develop, but also to commodify a product. On public policies and markets, it considers prototyping as a notion to better understand the interaction between market and public action.

KEYWORDS:

• Prototyping
• experimentation
• commodification
• policymaking
• serious game

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The author would like to thank the reviewers and members of the JCE editorial board for their very stimulating exchanges during the writing process of this article, as well as Diane Bertrand for her assistance in the editing of this article.

2 Using game elements for work and product promotion.

3 Parliamentary reports submitted to prepare the plan (Fourgous 2010, 2011) and its public presentations by the Ministry of Education.

4 Serious games benefit from an academic landscape marked by renewed scientific interest in educational video games. Many serious games are thus produced by academics under research projects (Author, 2020).

5 http://www.ludoscience.com/files/ressources/note_serious_game_oten2011.pdf.

6 Conversations recorded at a training day in September 2015.

7 This is actually a departure from its original purpose, since the game is theoretically for individual use where mistakes do not penalise the student.