Japan is a world reference when it comes to video games. Nintendo, Sony, Sega... so many companies that have left their mark on contemporary popular culture. Fanny Barnabé knows this industry well. A lecturer at the Faculté Économie Management Communication sciencesPo (EMCP) and researcher at the CRIDS/NaDI research institute, she specializes in game studies, a field of research devoted to the study of games. After defending her doctoral thesis on videogame détournement in the fictional universe of Pokémon in 2017, she spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ritsumeikan Center For Game Studies (Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto), the archipelago's largest video game research center. Internationally recognized, the Center is fortunate to host an exceptional and unpublished archive, thanks to a donation from the giant Nintendo.

Many years and research work later, Fanny Barnabé visited Japan once again at the end of May, on an academic mission. The aim: to present the latest work being carried out at UNamur, particularly in edutainment or "serious game"and, she hopes, lay the foundations for new partnerships and student exchanges.

The Faculty of Informatics has long-standing links with the National Institute of Informatics (NII), an internationally recognized research institute located in the heart of Tokyo. Each year, Master's and PhD students from the faculty are hosted there for a period of four to six months to carry out internships and research projects, via a specific collaboration agreement (Memorandum Of Understanding agreement, or MOU). It's an experience much appreciated by students and PhD students alike, on both scientific and human levels.

Gilles Perrouin, researcher and chairman of the Faculty of Computer Science's Research Commission, guides these students through the presentation of their research topic, often focused in the fields of software engineering, artificial intelligence (AI) or, more recently, green AI. "These are research fields that are evolving very quickly", Gilles Perrouin points out. "There's a lot of debate right now around AI's energy consumption. It's a bit of an oxymoron to say that we can do green AI.But we're working on it via the exploration of smarter techniques when looking for promising solutions to avoid resorting to systematic training of the neural network, which is very costly in terms of energy"explains the researcher. The collaboration has led to the exploration of other areas of AI, such as sign language recognition (Professor Benoît Frénay), in addition to topics in formal methods and software engineering (Professors Pierre-Yves Schobbens and Xavier Devroey).

At the heart of the Mathematics Department, Alexandre Mauroy, professor and researcher at the Namur Institute for Complex Systems (naXys), is working with his long-time collaborator and friend Yoshihiko Susuki from the prestigious University of Kyoto on a project co-funded by F.N.R.S and JSPS (Japan) to study dynamical systems. "These are so-called 'non-linear' phenomena that do not respect the rules of proportionality. The equations are therefore very difficult, if not impossible, to solve in practice, explains Alexandre Mauroy. "To get around this problem, we mobilize techniques like operator theory, which we're studying as part of this project." This has the advantage of combining theoretical aspects with practical applications, particularly in the field of electrical distribution networks. "These are complex systems, with slow and fast dynamics. An interesting case for which mathematical tools need to be adapted", continues Alexandre Mauroy. This first positive partnership has already led to research visits between the two countries, and promises new collaborations in the future.

In a related field, Riccardo Muolo has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Science Tokyo since 2023, after completing a PhD thesis at UNamur under the supervision of Professor Timoteo Carletti. Building on the knowledge acquired during his PhD on network dynamics, Riccardo Muolo is now interested in network synchronization theory, a mathematical model that enables us to understand a wide variety of systems: from fireflies to electrical networks to the functioning of the human brain: "For example, in the brain, abnormal synchronization of neuronal networks is associated with pathologies such as epilepsy or Parkinson's. The recent power grid failure in Spain can also be analyzed through this theory", details the researcher.

Students wishing to spend part of their degree course in Japan have the opportunity to do so, thanks to the various agreements UNamur has signed with Japanese institutions. This is the case with the National Institute of Informatics (NII), but also with Soka University and Sophia University (Chiyoda), with which UNamur has signed framework agreements.

After winning the prestigious "Best Research Paper Award" at the SERVSIG conference by the American Marketing Association in 2024 for her thesis paper, Floriane Goosse, a researcher at the NaDI-CeRCLe research center, is among the two winners of the ServCollab Scholarship 2025, an international doctoral scholarship awarded by an American organization dedicated to promoting scientific research with high societal impact.

No fewer than 37 doctoral students from universities around the world were in the running to receive this scholarship. Two researchers were chosen after an in-depth selection process: Griffin Colaizzi, a PhD student in psychology at Northeastern University (USA), and Floriane Goosse, a PhD student at UNamur within NaDI-CeRCLE.

New technologies to empower people with disabilities

Supervised by Professors Wafa Hammedi (UNamur) and Dominik Mahr (Maastricht University), Floriane Goosse's thesis explores how new technologies, such as intelligent voice assistants, can empower people with disabilities, particularly the visually impaired, and thus significantly improve their well-being.

A high-potential project that convinced the members of the ServCollab jury, made up of eminent researchers in the field. The jury was particularly impressed by the young researcher's methodological rigor and praised her alignment with the principles of Transformative Service Research as well as her deep determination to create a tangible impact on the lives of so-called vulnerable people.

Triple recognition for Floriane Goosse

Floriane Goosse also took part in the 19th International Research Symposium on Service Excellence in Management (QUIS19), the bi-annual benchmark conference in service management, held in Rome in early June. On this occasion, his research once again distinguished itself by winning the prize for best research with societal impact, awarded by the conference's scientific committee. This prestigious international recognition crowns a rigorous and deeply committed body of work. Three major recognitions in less than a year, saluting both the scientific excellence and the strong societal impact of a particularly promising piece of research.

Video games are no longer just a pastime: they've become an object of study in their own right. And Fanny Barnabé is one of its leading figures at UNamur. Trained as a literary scholar, she turned to Game Studies to better understand the complex fictional universes that have always fascinated her. "It was because of video games that I studied literature," she confides with a smile. Today, she's interested in a fast-growing phenomenon: the broadcasting of live video game games on platforms like Twitch.

Fanny Barnabé's work doesn't stop at Twitch. She has also studied in-game storytelling, tutorials, or even players' creative practices, such as fan fiction or "machinimas" (films made within games themselves).

And this terrain is changing fast. Very fast. "Video games have gone from a niche hobby to a mass phenomenon. Today, over 90% of young people play," she points out. This popularity is accompanied by an economic transformation: in the context of platform capitalism, the practice of gaming tends to become profitable, monetized, professionalized. "We've gone from the game you buy once, to the "game as a service" model, and to streaming, where professional streamers somehow convert their gaming experience into advertising revenue."

For Fanny Barnabé, it's hard to predict how the world of video games will evolve in the future. "It's becoming very difficult to talk about video games as a single object, so diverse are the practices," she explains. Between mobile games like Candy Crush, e-sport competitions or collaborative online adventures, the uses are multiple and reflect the complexity of our digital society.

This diversity is part of a broader context: that of platform capitalism. "Gaming, which was originally a leisure practice, is now integrated into profit-making logics," observes the researcher. Streaming, in particular, illustrates this transformation: gaming is becoming a productive, income-generating activity, sometimes even a profession in its own right.

This article is taken from the "Expert" section of Omalius magazine #36 (March 2025).

In early February 2025, the AI Act, the world's first general legislation on AI that frames its use and development came into force in Europe. As a specialist in human-machine interaction, does this new framework reassure you?

At UNamur, within my research group, we focus our work on the user side and his interaction with technology. When it comes to AI, we are particularly focused on this notion of transparency, which is reflected in the principle of the AI Act. How does AI make decisions? What data is it based on? What are its operating processes? Can it explain them? This need for AI transparency is of paramount importance to the user. For the time being, however, this is blocked from a purely technical point of view, essentially because of the gargantuan amount of data that AI uses to function, to train itself. At present, only experts are really capable of understanding how AI works. However, since AI is often a tool for the citizen, the need for transparency must also, and above all, be accessible to the citizen. At UNamur, a great deal of research is being carried out along these lines.

For example, you're working with doctors on the degree of trust they have in AI as part of their profession: what's it all about?

It's about an AI system that should, in particular, enable doctors to help them identify tumors on medical images. The challenge? For the doctor to know whether the answer provided by the AI is reliable, and how reliable it is. We are developing and testing this process with doctors. A process that will enable the AI to give them its degree of certainty. Early feedback shows that this transparency will be fundamental.

Today, are you confident in the way citizens are appropriating AI?

I'm fascinated by these emerging and multiple uses. Now, whether we're writing a greetings card, summarizing a text, organizing a meeting, making a cake recipe or writing an e-mail, we're turning to AI. I don't think we have any bad habits, but I'm more worried about the lack of awareness of the need for transparency in the way AI works. There's a need for information, awareness and education. We're working on this, including at UNamur. With this in mind, 24 colleagues and I have launched a course on the challenges and opportunities of AI, accessible to all university students, whatever their discipline. But this is very clearly an area that needs to be strengthened and accelerated so that it progresses at the same pace as the development of technology.

Another technology that's making inroads into the everyday life of the citizen, and which you're studying closely, is augmented reality: where do we stand?

Are we going to trade in our smartphones for smart glasses? The answer is most likely yes, and in the relatively near future! So I'm studying what's going to happen to the user when there's an extra digital layer grafted onto their environment, onto what they see. We mustn't leave this control exclusively to the tech giants, who all have such prototypes in the pipeline. My job is to find out how, from a technological point of view, we can give more control to the user. How can he filter what he sees? How can he define what information he wants to see, how much, etc.? Our aim is to give him the tools to keep control over these future augmented reality systems.

What kind of tools?

For example, we're developing techniques that allow the user to filter the elements they want to see in real time. At present, existing augmented reality tools give very little power to the user. We're working to reverse this trend. We're also making sure that this presence of augmented reality is for the benefit of the user, to enable them to better understand their environment.

More generally, does the technology adapt sufficiently to the user's needs?

No, too often the user just has to endure these technological developments. My approach as a researcher is the opposite: it's up to the system to adapt to user needs. Every development must be carried out in dialogue with the user. This is why our work lies at the crossroads of computer science research and principles inherited from applied psychology. Because we must, above all, understand how the user functions before we can develop technologies that are more relevant, more effective, more legitimate and better adapted.