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Is video gaming an art in its own right? Can it seriously tell the world? How does it reflect its time? Who are those who design and develop the games everyone is talking about? How do their own, intimate identities influence creation? These are the questions Jour de Play’s team answers every other Wednesday.

Facing their webcam, from their own home, our chroniclers and guests explore different facets of a common theme, per episode. A video essay introduces the theme and opens the show. A “let’s play” follows along with two other segments, each by a different journalist or specialist, analyzing gameplays of various games and art works from artists of the video game industry. The show ends with its most lively segment : a textual game, with the show’s host or hostess as a dungeon master, offers a live adventure, with puzzles and choices for the team and Twitch viewers to make together. Those five parts create a full program fully dedicated to the exploration of the video game industry and video game culture of our time.

The show’s editorial and social team entertains a close relationship with its audience. A Discord channel has been created for Jour de Play, where the show’s hosts Quineapple and Cosmografik share information and content with the audience before and after each live show. During the live show, Sweetberry, the moderator, shares definitions, links and explanations in the live chat and answers questions from the community. So not only can the viewers ask questions and interact with the host, hostess, journalists and guests, they can also interact with them by voting for answers to questions asked to them in ad-hoc polls, live. All those tools offer possibilities for audiences to engage with the show in deeper ways than TV ever permitted.

ARTE, the European culture channel, is co-producer and broadcaster of the show. They host the two hours long live show on ARTE’s Twitch page and they publish, three weeks later, a re-edited version, approximately 30 minutes long, on their own website and Youtube channel for an older viewership, less acquainted with live streaming shows online or the Twitch platform.

While video games have never counted so much in the global cultural landscape, Jour de Play aims to talk about it as a much more complex and exciting medium than the image of a vulgar entertainment that still sticks to it.