Beyondthepillars' Stance on Research

     Designing an original virtual world that focuses on what is usually considered non-essential in massively multiplayer games - such as extremely precise political simulation, or the defining of a poetic world that is coherent with the socio-economic model - led us to see our work from the start as not only the design of a new product, but also an exploration of new paths in game design.

     As the project moved forward, we found that some of the issues we met were common to other areas of research - either applied or fundamental - in such eclectic fields as sociology, computing and aesthetics or even history. After realizing that potential cooperation with university researchers would be beneficial, Beyondthepillars expanded its realm to integrate existing or unfolding issues in research and technological advances.

     Research at Beyondthepillars is a partly independent activity that is totally integrated to game design. One aim is to produce articles for national or international specialist magazines and university-level research in diverse areas (mainly through CIFRE theses). This is done using tools that Beyondthepillars makes available to researchers such as databases, in-vivo study of players, and teamwork with developers and designers. Another aim, inextricably linked to the first, is to try to solve conceptual issues or technological lock-ins that are current challenges in research.

Research Topics

Below is a non-comprehensive list of our research topics.

Research Team

     Kévin LEHENAFF is Beyondthepillars' Creative Director. He's a game design engineer specialized in social and political complex system modeling. He supervises the research team in different areas. Kevin's also a writer and a poet, and in some of his work, he rewrites and updates old tales and mythologies. In the last ten years, he has published numerous articles and studies on specific aspects of design and worked on various online games, some massively multiplayer, some political, others both massively multiplayer and political. He's expert at game balancing and secure design.

     Nicolas BOURGEOIS is a multilevel researcher. (Formerly a student of Ecole Normale Supérieure, he earned a Master's degree in History, passed a competitive exam to become a Math professor, and is currently pursuing a PhD in IT at Paris IX Dauphine University.) His research spans from graph theory to the evangelizing of Nordic countries or the sociology of current leading groups. He is currently a multifaceted consultant at Beyondthepillars for issues such as balance (artificial intelligence and game design) or virtual-world enrichment (economic and social modeling and historical immersion).

     Olivier ROBERT is a PhD student in aesthetics and art science at Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He's interested in the nature of virtual video game experience from the standpoint of aesthetics and ethics. He has a pluridisciplinary education in applied mathematics, history, and philosophy. In 2008 he wrote a dissertation on the sociocultural effects of video gaming in France from 1980 to today for his Master's degree in History and Audiovisuals. Olivier is a writer and a journalist for several video game specialist magazines and has been a member of OMNSH since March 2009.