The emphasis in this paper will be on the illustration and explanation of the concepts and terminology defining the research framework within which the research programme was developed. Having crossed a somehow wide field, which ranges from two extremes which could be identified as "experience" and "experiment", has prompted us to a reflection on the similarities and distinctions between these two terms and also on the dimensions among which this diversity is expressed. Research trajectory that started with the construction of a Role-Playing Game (RPG) to support local participatory decision-making about water management, continued with the development of an experimental protocol to test economic hypotheses exhibited by the RPG and developed into the analysis of the influence of context on players' behaviour. RPG decomposition started from the definition of the concept of "context" that groups several informational dimensions: the game instructions; communication among players; and their involvement. In this presentation, only the two first dimensions are treated. They open perspectives to study the third one and the relations between these three attributes of the game context.