• Project
  • Underway

The emergence of “modern” board games in France (1950-2000): An analysis of the editorial offering

Vincent Berry - Professor of sociology

Vincent Berry Professor of sociology

Vincent Berry is a Professor of Sociology at University Sorbonne Paris Nord and a member of the “Childhood leisure, games, and cultural objects” research team at the EXPERICE laboratory. His research examines the sociology of play and leisure, focusing on the evolution of gaming practices and the contemporary game culture (toys, board games, video games, role-playing games, etc.). Paying particular attention to the concept of experience, he studies the relationships between games, leisure and learning. 

  • Project start date :
    2024/05/01
  • Status :
    Underway
  • Research organization :
    University Sorbonne Paris Nord, EXPERICE Laboratory
  • Team :
    Louis Delespierre (University Sorbonne Paris Nord, Bibliothèque Edgar Morin)

In 2023, Game in Lab selected Prof. Vincent Berry’s research project to document the editorial offering of board games in France from 1950 to 2000. The aim is to study the evolution of the production and publication logic of so-called “modern” board games by analyzing thousands of games on the French market over five decades, in order to help promote board games as a cultural object.

Project overview

Since the early 1980s, board games have seen a constant increase in offerings, sales and play, as well as cultural legitimization. Professionals, researchers and amateurs use the term “modern” board games to describe the games seeing this recent rise in popularity. However, no exact meaning of this expression has yet been defined. Therefore, this research project aims to document the emergence of so-called “modern” board games in France by analyzing the editorial offering between 1950 and 2000, using primarily University Sorbonne Paris Nord’s Fonds Patrimonial du Jeu de Société, one of France’s largest collections of board games. 

The emergence of “modern” board games in France (1950-2000): An analysis of the editorial offering

Methodology

Using the corpus analysis method, the team will analyze items in the Fonds Patrimonial du Jeu de Société (containing over 15,000 games from the late 19th century to the present day) using a coding grid (title, publisher, year of publication, reference world, recommended age, material and content, reward, etc.). The project uses statistical processing to study the development of the French production sector (e.g. number of publishers and titles) and the publication logic (e.g. author’s culture, “modern” nature). 

Outcomes

The research project is ongoing. The results will provide new scientific and social knowledge about board games in France and will contribute to the cultural value of this object. The results will also help develop indexing for game collections, including the Fonds Patrimonial du Jeu de Société. The resulting database will eventually be made accessible for future studies. 

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