Résumé
This collective dossier, coordinated by Nicolas Perrin for the Swiss journal Educateur, offers a critical and multidisciplinary analysis of serious games in educational contexts, questioning the apparent tension between the notions of play and seriousness. Through eight contributions by researchers and practitioners (Julian Alvarez, Anne Clerc-Georgy, Thierry Dias, Damien Djaouti, Sonya Florey, David L. J. Gerber, Yvan Hochet, Florence Quinche, Denise Sutter Widmer, and Nicolas Szilas), it examines the pedagogical contributions, limitations, and conditions for the effective use of serious games across various disciplinary fields (geography, mathematics, language education, and algorithmic thinking). The dossier highlights the central role of teacher mediation, the integration of learning content into game mechanics, and the production of reflective learning traces that support the assessment of learning outcomes. It also emphasizes the risks associated with a techno-solutionist view of educational video games, recalling that ludic motivation is neither universal nor automatically transferable to formal educational settings. Finally, the dossier broadens the discussion to include non-digital symbolic play, underlining its fundamental importance in learners’ cognitive and social development. Overall, this work constitutes a major contribution to didactic reflection on the pedagogical uses of play.