This report discusses some issues concerning serious games, that is, (digital) games used for purposes other than mere entertainment. The starting point is the serious games concept itself, and what the actually means. Further, serious games allow learners to experience situations that are impossible in the real world for reasons of safety, cost, time, etc., but they are also claimed to have positive impacts on the players’ development of a number of different skills. Subsequently, some possible positive (and negative) impacts of serious games are discussed. Further, some of the markets such games are used in are considered here, including, military games, government games, educational games, corporate games, and healthcare games. This report also identifies some (mainly academic) actors in the North American and the European serious games market. This report is part of the DISTRICT (Developing Industrial Strategies Through Innovative Cluster and Technologies) project: Serious Games Cluster and Business Network (SER3VG), which is part of the Interreg IIIC Programme.

Numerous short articles on Games and SImulations in education:

The games people play 3
Showcasing – games and simulation
They’re manikins – not mannequins 4
The virtual stock market game 5
First steps in using high fidelilty Human Patient Simulators 6
Return on investment? 7
Steelmaking simulations @steeluniversity.org 8
Self-organizing communities for knowledge production 10
Online games and simulations as aids to learning ethos, challenges and evaluation 12
THEATRON 14
Low cost, low tech web-based simulations 15

Research – games and simulation
How can e-learning games and simulations compete in the market place? 16
SimAcademy 17
Computer games: the most powerful learning technology of our age? 18
A quick look at Quandary 19
Commercial games in the classroom 20
Research into computer games and learning: a brief overview 22

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