LexgaMe:MagicWord

http://magicword.lezinter.net

Links

• The game : http://magicword.lezinter.net
• The code : https://gricad-gitlab.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/lzbk/MagicWord/ (now dockerized)

Presentation

• https://youtu.be/PC-ODehZbcw ;
• https://vimeo.com/216809745 ;

• http://25images.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/innovatives-shs_2017/video/gamer/fr

Initiated from within the Innovalangues project, MagicWord is an adaptation of Boggle (Turoff, 1972), a letter game. Building on the success of applications such as Ruzzle (35 millions de joueurs), we have tried to propose new rules to harness the linguistic attributes of such games for language learning.

MagicWord currently exists in two languages: French and English.

Intentions

This game targets both lexical et morphologic linguistic competences. As in many letter games, the wider the lexical knowledge of the player, the better chance of finding words (in the grid). But, knowledge of the stemming mecanisms will be especially important as each lemma will allow to create various forms.

The Wordbox, a kind of personnal lexicon, is provided to the player so that they can record words of interest or create word lists.

For more information see:

• the origins of the project (fr);
• 10.4000/alsic.2828 : 1st article, original idea (fr);
• 10.1109/ICCNC.2016.7440546 : “the bologna algorithm” ;
• 10.14705/rpnet.2016.eurocall2016.575 : towards the current version ;
• CALICO 2018 slides : the current version ;
• this game is integrated in our game design strategy :
  • 10.4000/apliut.5742 ;
  • alsic.revues.org/3037 ;
  • UNAM presentation slides (es);
  • CALICO 2018 slides.

Basic principles

The aim of the game is to find words in a 16 letters (4×4) grid. To create a word, letters need to be adjacent, the direction is not relevant, a letter can only be used once per word.

There are two game modes:

• Rush : find as many words (you should try to group forms stemming from the same lemma into combos) ;
• Conquer : with specific objectives, only time matters, fulfill the game challenges in as little time as possible.

Credits

The up-to-date list of contributors is available in the code…

Funding

2014–2017		The first versions of MagicWord were implemented in the GAMER work package of the Innovalangues project -IDFI-0024

2016–2019		Mathieu Loiseau is an paid by Université Grenoble Alpes to (among other things) test, design, communicate on the game and administrate the server that hosts it ; Timothée Liotard made an unpaid internship (M1 thesis supervised by Virginie Zampa) ; Arnaud Bey donated his free time, developping new functionnalities, resolving bugs, and dockerizing the system ;

2019		Démarre SHS !, WP3 of Data@UGA funds the integration of new languages to MagicWord.

2020		The Lidilem lab funded the code written by Sylvain Hatier and Arnaud Bey.

2021–2024		MagicWord is part of the Lex:gaMe project funded by the ASLAN LabEx.