# Edumarket game: Technocity

Julian Alvarez, Olivier Rampnoux, Jean Pierre Jessel, Gilles Méthel

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Julian Alvarez, Olivier Rampnoux, Jean Pierre Jessel, Gilles Méthel. Edumarket game: Technocity. 32nd Annual Convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB 2006), Apr 2006, Bristol, United Kingdom. hal-04676903

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# Edumarket game : Technocity

Julian Alvarez

IRIT/LARA
Toulouse II & III, FRANCE
alvarez@irit.fr

Olivier Rampnoux

CEREGE
Poitiers, FRANCE
olivier.rampnoux@univ-poitiers.fr

Jean-Pierre Jessel

IRIT
Toulouse III, FRANCE
jessel@irit.fr

Gilles Methel

LARA
Toulouse II, FRANCE
methel@univ-tlse2.fr

## Abstract

The objective of this paper is to restore the process of development and installation of a project called "Technocity" which aims to develop technology courses of French State Education among the young people from 15 to 18 years old. We develop a gameplay to build a new school guidance tools. We choose to create a dynamic approach with video game and shortly report on different technical job. After, we explore the impact and the reception of this tool in different classrooms by childrens.

Keywords: Advertising tools, Advertisement, Education, Innovation, Marketing, Reception, School guidance

## 1 Introduction

Technical courses of study offered by the state education system, "Electro technical – Energy", "Electronics – IT", "System maintenance", "Mechanical engineering" and "Construction – civil engineering" find themselves in a dramatic situation in terms of attractiveness and recruitment as a result of their very poor image and reputation among young people. Even though there are real opportunities in terms of finding a job, attractive salaries and professions which are far from being routine, each year classes in the technological sector are being closed because there are insufficient numbers of candidates. Starting from this observation, the Sumotori communication agency has suggested to the state education authorities and the local education board in the Midi-Pyrenees Region (France) that they add to their communication plan and traditional tools through the development of a tool in order to boost the number of candidates and to improve the image of these courses.

"Technocity" is intended to participate in improving the image of five technological courses of study as seen by young people aged 15 to 18. The idea is to innovate in the communication strategy through the use of new technologies. Sumotori has suggested to the local education board to try to attract young people and to reinforce the impact of the message by using the principle of the video game as a communication

mediator. The strategy is based on the idea of arousing interest and attracting the target with a recreational format and a medium which recalls their digital leisure activities and then encourages them to discover a message of a persuasive nature : discover and learn about the technological courses.

This experiment is a first for the local education board which has decided to give it a go and evaluate its impact. This choice has been driven by the urgency of the situation. The economic pressure on the school system is more and more significant in terms of performance and efficiency. "Technocity" combines in the same movement the recreational dimension and the informative dimension. In order to keep the attention for long periods, the video game is attractive and will offer mini reports at a later stage. During the game, the student will complete a quiz relating to the professions shown in the videos. This is this a radically new approach which seeks to combine the digital leisure activities of the child, videos and games. Given that our ultimate aim is to modify the child's attitude towards technological courses, we can talk of an advertising product. But, as the concept contains video games which require dexterity and experience of games, we can also position this product as entertainment. We see emerging an illustration of what is usually called advertisement. However, we must go beyond this term because, as a result of introducing into "Technocity" the quizzes which refer to the recreational education
tional space, we find ourselves in a more complex
combination which brings together the stakes of
entertainment, education and marketing. This innov-
ative combination brings forth a new category of
product which we could call Edumarket game.

Today, communication strategies already use video
games to place products, the mobile phone to broad-
cast messages or ring tones which reproduce the
sound associated with a brand. "Technocity" goes
even further, because through this product, we are
seeking to make video games compatible with a
persuasive message which evokes studies and work.
This antinomy is our major concern and is central to
our thinking. Firstly, we will look at what is at stake
in the development of "Technocity" and we will
present the original facets of the product, and then
we will present the results achieved in studies and
inquiries carried out with children and teachers and
representatives from the state education authorities.

## 2 Scenario development of Technocity

2.1. Games design

In order to develop the game scenarios, the first step
was to list the "federating aptitudes" which are
looked for in the child for each of the five prede-
fined sectors. These "federating elements" are then
associated with major existing families of video
games (arcade, simulation, strategy) to determine
the choice of gameplay for the five "Technocity"
games. For example, in the case of "Mechanical
engineering", whose "federating elements" are "spa-
tial perception", "reflection" and adaptability", the
principle of the game is an assembly game along the
lines of "Tetris". We were guided in our choice by
the idea that, beyond recognising skills, these games
have to stand out in order to offer a choice to cover a
widely as possible the different groups of players
which make up the target.

Budgetary constraints and production deadlines
played a large part in the development of the games.
Developing a 3D video game for general release
such as "Warcraft III", "The Sims" or "GTA", which
could involve several hundred people over many
months or years, requires a budget well in excess of
1 million euros. Moreover, video games for general
release must make a profit which requires sales of
thousands, or even millions of copies. In the present
case, the means at the disposal of the education
authorities are quite relative and make it necessary
to consider cheaper development alternatives. We

decided to develop a multimedia video game using
programmes such as "Flash" (Adobe/Macromedia)
which are simpler and quicker to use.

2.2. Style of graphics and sound in the games

The conscious choice of 2D, unlike the most recent
video games on sale, aims at producing a break in
perception. This type of contract can also be found
in most small cartoon animations on Internet,
"webtoons" such as "Happy Tree Friends", which
push the concept to an extreme degree by depicting
animals with personalities. Thus, a 2D graphic uni-
verse exists which is recognised and codified by
children and we found it logical to use it as a source
of inspiration. Moreover, as music and fashion are
federating elements of identification for young peo-
ple, the option of introducing variations with ado-
lescent fashion models, associated with different
styles of music also fits into the scheme of commu-
nal on-line practices. Each variation has its own
music dedicated to its style of clothing and it ac-
companies the player through the different phases of
the game

## 2.3. The video sequences in the mini reports

In order to present the various technical sectors, the
local education board had several different video
films. They present interviews with young techni-
cians who describe their jobs for 2 to 3 minutes and
explain exactly what they do. Presenting the mes-
sage through explanatory videos constituted a diffi-
culty both in terms of scenario and narrative in that
the user has to move from an active state (interact-
ing in the video game) to a passive state (watching
video extracts) which creates a genuine break.
Moreover, when the first video sequence is shown,
we are at a crucial moment in the narrative structure,
because the real intention of "Technocity" is re-
vealed. In order to stimulate the attention and
strengthen the recreational dynamic, a quiz with
questions linked to the contents of the videos is pro-
posed during the video sequences. A significant gain
is made available in order to stimulate the memori-
zation work of the student: access to new Flash
games by a connection to 6 advertainments from the
Dupuis's website www.spirou.com. The local edu-
cation board is relying on word of mouth which
might encourage young people to access games with
well known enduring characters. This idea sends us
back to the question of how "Technocity" will be
received, to the formation of preferences which are
going to have an influence on the attitude towards
the professions presented and thus how it will affect
the capacity to develop a behavioral intention for
career guidance, which is the subject of the second
part of our report.

3 Evaluation of Technocity

**3.1. Research design**

Distribution of the product takes place in two
phases. First of all, through the intermediary of
1,000 CD-ROMs distributed in 600 colleges, secon-
dary schools and career guidance centres in the
Midi-Pyrenees region (France). Then an Internet site
is set up with content identical to that of the CD-
ROM (www.technocity.fr). The idea is that the site
enables young people to continue exploring “Tech-
nocity”’s contents at home and can show it to their
group of peers and to their parents.

In order to comprehend the reception of "Tech-
nocity", we have put in place a study design (Evrard
et al, 2003) which aims at covering the entire target,
but more particularly students in 3ème (grade 9),
because it is a key part in career orientation. At the
end of the college cycle many students can decide to
opt for the technical sectors. First of all, we made
participative observations with the students and in-
terviews with education authority representatives
and teachers in order to define a number of items
and to be able to construct a questionnaire which
will be put to a representative sample of the target
population. The key idea is to assess the persuasive
value of the concept thus developed on students
after the orientation process through a comparison
with pre-orientation statements, the perception of
"Technocity" and the real orientation via the dossi-
ers constituted by the students. Using the informa-
tion thus collected, which will terminate at the end
of the 2006 school year, we will be able to consider
constructing a segmentation like that of Schaaper
(1999) for the video game market. The identification
of user profiles and the definition of a taxonomy of
the students is necessary to enable the evolution of
the communication tools during the next informa-
tion and orientation campaigns put in place by the
local education board. In this context, we considered
it essential, in order to assess the reception of
"Technocity", to meet all the different classes, while
also taking into account the socio-geographical pa-
rameters such as the urban, peripheral and rural
zones.

**3.2. Results, attitude and reception**

In the end, our results cover six reports of partici-
patory observation in 8 classes, and 12 individual
interviews with secondary school teachers and rep-
resentatives of the local education board. Given that
the entire study took place within a college or sec-
ondary school during sessions supervised by teach-
ers, (we can consider that it is a kind of immersion)
it is quite clear that this interacted with the reception
of the product. Indeed, in the school setting, the
child places himself in an apprentice situation and
not in a play position. The institutional setting nor-
malises the reception of "Technocity" and therefore
requires distancing the speeches and the remarks
made by the students. As a result, as the first se-
quence, after choosing a character, begins with a
video game, the contrast with the school context
produced a very positive and enthusiastic initial
reaction from all the students. As Molinier points
out, as a result of the labelling of the school around
knowledge, skills and apprenticeships, and also a
virtual refusal of the game in the school setting
(Brougère, 1995), the recreational sphere appears as
a contradiction, indeed a break with what the stu-
dents expected, we are able to interpret this attitude
in the light of the product.

As part of this research, we wanted to take a tripar-
tite approach to the attitude and not a uni-
dimensional approach. Indeed, by picking up on the
work by Derbaix (1982) concerning the hierarchy of
effects, which deal with advertising in particular, it
appeared logical to us to seek to break down the
attitude of the child into these three components,
that is to say, the cognitive component, the affective
component and the conative component. Knowing
that the model which has been well-tested with chil-
dren is an inverted sequence compared to the adult,
we are in the presence of the following chain of
events : affective – conative – cognitive. Thus, the
initial enthusiastic reaction of the children relates to
the affective dimension of the product. Moreover, as
in the case of advertising in its traditional form, we
know that the peripheral elements (music, charac-
ters, colours and graphics) play a key role in the
construction of this affective dimension (Kapferer,
1985, Guichard, 2000). All the consideration, con-
ception and development work carried out before-
hand is justified by this initial reaction by the chil-
dren.

In a second phase, during our observations, we no-
ticed that playing video games followed by watch-
ing videos does not produce any weariness in the short term. Given the constraints linked to the school setting, our experimentation and observation protocols could not exceed one hour. In numerous cases, we had to interrupt the game or video because the students did not wish to stop it themselves. From this assessment, becoming familiar with the product has been achieved and raises interest. From the point of view of attitude, once again the product encourages support, and in particular in the behavioural component. Lastly, with regard to the cognitive dimension which sends us back to a better understanding of the professions and sectors, the fact that a large number of students were able to finish complete sequences (video games and quizzes on professions) leaves us to think that the adolescents have memorised the information, at least in the short term. The question of transferring the memory of work to the long term memory of knowledge was not part of the declared aims of the product.

The exploration of behavioral intention remains to be explored and understood. Currently, our results do not enable us to reach any conclusion regarding the impact and thus, efficiency of "Technocity" in relation to student orientation. This is the subject of the second phase of our research design which is currently being developed. If a real impact exists, we will have to test the hypothesis of knowledge memorization, of the modification of their vision of industrial professions, and the fact that students have made appointments with career guidance counselors or are seeking information about these professions. Lastly, an increase in the number of students in the classes previously out of favor may also be an indication of efficiency, but this would then require having control over all the variables interacting in this chain of events which leads to an actual enrollment in the training branch.

## 4 Conclusion

Our reflection will only be complete when we have tackled the question of student orientation in all its complexity. The mobilisation and development of new communication tools are not sufficient to guarantee the efficiency of the tool. Indeed, school orientation is also an eminently social process, in which parents seek to enrol their children on a trajectory which is in line with their social status and their representations of professions and sectors. Parents are strongly aware of the importance of school

and training in order to ensure more rapid integration into the world of work in an extremely competitive context. As a result, the question arises concerning the choice of the target for state education communication campaigns, parents or children and hence the genuine efficiency of a tool such as "Technocity". School orientation is a syncretic decision for parents in which the children are closely associated. As a result by targeting secondary school students, we hope to exploit this double socialisation (parents – children and children – parents) or social interactions (Gollety, 1999). The question of the impact of "Technocity" and its reception by parents remains complete and does not come within our research. The other point to be analysed arises directly from the comparison between an 3D edumarket game, like Food-Force (www.food-force.com) and Technocity. Even though they use the same narrative plan, these two products do not make use of the same technologies (3D vs. 2D), and the influencing agent does not have the same legitimacy (United Nations vs. State Education) and they do not deal with the same themes. Having these two approaches available today makes us open to other study objects, to know if the different computer graphics approaches play a significant role in the reception of messages by young people, if edumarket game will open as many new paths to be exploited in commercial strategies for industrialists and marketing professionals.

## References

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Christian Derbaix, L'enfant, *la communication publicitaire et la hiérarchie des effets*, Recherches française de marketing, (89) p.31 – 47, 1982.

Mathilde Gollety, Lorsque parents et enfants s'apprennent mutuellement à consommer, *Décisions Marketing*, (18) p.69 - 80, 1999.

Stephen Kline., Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter *Digital Play. The Interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing*, Montréal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.

Tony Manninen, *Interaction Forms and Communicative Actions in Multiplayer Games*, Cophenhague, Game Studies web site, 2004.

Pierre Molinier, *Enjeux d'une culture de l'image à l'école*, Paris, An@é, (2), 2000.