Abstract
International audience This article refers to the historical and socio-cultural development that has accompanied the modernity of documentary cinema in order to highlight the multiple ways for the serious games to convey the real in a learning experience. After specifying the semio-pragmatic approach that makes it possible to connect the two fields, a conceptual model is proposed that describes the interactions of serious games actants in relation to the chain of actants in the documentary. These transpositions will clarify a current trend where serious games are wanting to give learners a direct and transparent access to the real. Thus, the interest of this research comes from underlining the resurgence of well-known communicational issues, in order to adapt and open up them to new perspectives. In doing so, values and models from the documentary approach would promote a reflexive way to interact rather than a referential one, and a focus on human rather than technology.