Paris Games Week is obviously Nintendo, Ubisoft, Playstation, Xbox ... But not only. In the alleys of the biggest French show dedicated to video games, some unexpected stands are trying to attract gamers. Among them, the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and the Center Pompidou present similar and astonishing initiatives: video games to promote their work, be it scientific research or the exhibition of contemporary works of art.
Reconciling science and fun, the challenge of CEA
CEA unveiled on October 5th its very first video game, titled The Quantum Prisoner . An adventure game of the kind "point and click": in a fixed set, you have to click at a place to move the character and interact with the decor or objects. For the story, Zoe, a young woman, launches into the footsteps of a scientist who has disappeared almost 60 years ago after having, according to her, made an incredible discovery.
"In addition to research, the mission of the CEA is to disseminate the scientific culture, including producing videos, but we have decided: 'why not play a game to reach new audiences?'", Explains Europe 1 Julien Arlot, multimedia manager of CEA. "The goal is to show that science can be really fun." The Quantum Prisoner is about thirty levels, with riddles and puzzles to solve to advance in the story. Small peculiarity: "these puzzles embark on notions of science and technology: physics, chemistry, computer science, mechanics, climate ... All the fields on which the CEA works".
In the level we tested, it was to access a mechanism caught in the ice. Without revealing too much, you had to be clever and remember some chemistry to melt the ice. However, no need to be stalled in science. "The game is made for children from the age of 14, at the end of high school, beginning of high school.It has set up a system of clues to each puzzle to get help if you block.It simplifies the game and it allows to focus on the adventure part, "says Julien Arlot.
One really learns things by playing the Quantum Prisoner since it is the CEA scientists who helped to build the riddles. "I participated in the design of the puzzle on the accelerator, we have to find how to make an element, the promethium, which allows us to progress in the game." The idea was to explain, from this puzzle, how it works. a particle accelerator: you need a source of particles, accelerate them to give them energy, possibly bend them to get to the right place and finally make the reactions in the end get the desired particles ", says Antoine Drouart, researcher in nuclear physics.
The result is more than honorable, especially since the game was developed internally by the CEA, without the help of a video game studio. About a dozen hours, we learn while having fun. To see the emulation around the CEA stand at Paris Games Week, we bet that the Quantum Prisoner could reconcile a lot of French with science.
The Quantum Prisoner is available free on PC and Android smartphone.
Visit the Center Pompidou otherwise
Like the museum, the Center Pompidou video game is quite conceptual. Already in his name: Prism 7 . "At the Pompidou Center, there are only six levels, we wanted to add a seventh, that of the world of video games," says Europe 1 Emilie Bonnet, project manager of the Paris museum. Designed with the help of two French studios, the game is a response to a call for projects from the National Education. "The aim was to develop an innovative tool, both fun and educational, and wanted to create a video game to discover the Center Pompidou's collections, both contemporary and modern art."
To progress, the player must move a cloud of points through the meanders of the museum. "It is necessary to carry out actions, solve puzzles in order to access a work of the museum and its history," explains Émilie Bonnet. "There has been a lot of work to select these works, about 60 in total, these are the major works of the Pompidou Center, those that give an overall overview of our collections."
The first level focuses on the architecture of the Pompidou Center, "a work of art in its own right," says Émilie Bonnet. "This level makes visible what is usually invisible, namely the famous pipes.They have a very specific color code: blue for the air, green for the water, red for the circulation spaces, yellow for the In this level, the player discovers the relationship between colors and these features, "she says. We were able to test it: the approach is quite complex and we were quickly stuck with no solution. See what will give the final version.
The first level of Prisme 7 is playable on the Center Pompidou stand at Paris Games Week (until November 3rd). The game will be released free on PC, Mac and smartphone in February 2020.