In this editorial, the authors (and guest editors) introduce the Special Issue titled Understanding Game-based Approaches for Improving Sustainable Water Governance: The Potential of Serious Games to Solve Water Problems. The authors take another loo...
Educational serious games are primarily intended to teach about or train on a subject. However, a serious game must also be catchy for the player to want to play it multiple times and thus learn while playing. The design of educational serious games...
Serious games in nursing education provide students with unique opportunities to increase knowledge and enhance decision-making and problem-solving skills. Hence, serious games from simple quizzes that test students’ knowledge to Virtual Realit...
The transformation of educational processes, derived from the technological disruption that has taken place in the educational field, has allowed for the development of certain methodologies and techniques that place emphasis on the students as an ac...
Significant research work has been undertaken related to the game-based learning approach over the last years. However, a closer look at this work reveals that further research is needed to examine some types of game-based learning approaches such as...
The design and development of Serious Games is a complex task, including a considerable risk of failure. Many attempts end up in non-fun, non-engaging games that fail to meet the purpose of improving education. Many different proposals have been publ...
Within the context of telerehabilitation, serious games have a significant role, but creating software for serious games is resource demanding. We present Proteo, a modular and open-source framework for developing serious games from scratch. We also...
Serious Games (SGs) could be enriched with collaborative learning techniques, an approach that has the potential to increase the players’ gaming and learning experience. However, the design of Multiplayer Serious Games (MSGs) with science content nee...
Nowadays, one of the learning resources in the educational area are serious games, also called training games; they are games designed with a different purpose than fun, whose main objective is to reinforce the new concepts more creatively. However,...
In recent years, we have witnessed a growing adoption of serious games in telerehabilitation by taking advantage of advanced multimedia technologies such as motion capture and virtual reality devices. Current serious game solutions for telerehabilita...
Dyslexia is a cognitive disorder that affects the evolutionary ability to read, write, and speak in people, affecting the correct learning of a large percentage of the population worldwide. In fact, incorrect learning is caused because the educationa...
A serious game combines concepts, principles, and methods of game design with information and communication technologies for the achievement of a given goal beyond entertainment. Serious game studies have been reported under a brain–computer in...
A serious game is a type of game that is designed for a primary purpose other than entertainment. Instead, serious games are intended to achieve specific goals, such as education, training, or health promotion. The goal of serious games is to engage...
The potential of digital games, when transformed into Serious Games (SGs), Games for Learning (GLs), or game-based learning (GBL), is truly inspiring. These forms of games hold immense potential as effective learning tools as they have a unique abili...
This contribution analyzes the impact of factors related to story structure, meaningfulness, and concentration in the design of Serious Games. To explore them, the authors carried out an experimental evaluation aiming to identify relevant aspects aff...
This scoping review investigates the use of fuzzy logic in serious games. Articles were searched in nine databases: ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, IOPscience, MDPI, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley, and Web of Science. The search retrieved 4...
Serious games (SG), (video games with an educational purpose), provide teachers with tools to strengthen their students’ knowledge. Developing a SG requires knowledge, time, and effort. As a result, specialized tools to aid in the development p...
Serious games have to meet certain characteristics relating to gameplay and educational content to be effective as educational tools. There are some models that evaluate these aspects, but they usually lack a good balance between both ludic and learn...
The rapid changes in digital technology have had a substantial influence on education, resulting in the development of learning technologies (LTs) such as multimedia, computer-based training, intelligent tutoring systems, serious games, social media,...
Standard video games are applications whose development process often follows a traditional software methodology. Serious Games (SGs) are a tool with an immensely positive impact and great success. SGs enable learning and provide entertainment and se...
Serious video games are digital games designed for purposes beyond entertainment, typically to support education, training, health interventions, or behaviour change. They combine game mechanics with psychological and pedagogical principles, such as...
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced faculties including dental schools into a ‘new normal’, where the adoption of remote or distance learning is required to minimise the risk of infection. Synchronous learning historically was favoured due to the percei...
Nowadays, serious games, called training or learning games, have been incorporated into teaching and learning processes. Due to the increase of their use, the need to guarantee their accessibility arises in order to include people with disabilities i...
Integration of haptics in Serious Games (SGs) remains limited compared to vision and audio. Many works seem to limit haptic interactions to the mimicking of real life feelings. Here, we address this by investigating the use of haptics to promote lear...
This study examines recent research trends in the use of serious games for science education through a bibliometric analysis of 340 articles and a qualitative content analysis of 56 studies published between 2020 and 2025 in the Web of Science Core C...
In this paper, we describe an investigation of brain activity while playing a serious game (SG). A SG is focused on improving logical thinking, specifically on cognitive training of students in the field of basic logic gates, and we summarize SG desc...
Computational thinking and problem-solving skills have become vital for students to develop. Digital games and serious games are increasingly being used in educational settings and present great potential to aid students’ learning. This study a...
E-polis is a serious digital game designed to gamify sociological surveys studying young people’s political opinions. In this platform game, players navigate a digital world, encountering quests posing sociological questions. Players’ ans...
The immune system of human beings plays a pivotal role in guarding against different types of diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people with weak immune systems were more likely to die. Regular physical activities and healthy food intake can sig...
The digital transformation associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution is having an impact on the way we teach. Under the term Education 4.0, new teaching methods, new technologies, as well as a student-centered approach, are expected to be used...
Despite a growing interest in player-centred methods for serious games, little is known on how to achieve this goal in practice when prospective users are children. Foundational questions remain unanswered, such as to which design dimensions children...
The use of serious games in the governance of natural resources and the environment is progressively increasing and includes games used for research and data collection, teaching and training, and fostering a change of practices. However, this divers...
Serious games offer a pedagogical alternative to mitigate the generational disconnect and demotivation in higher education. However, empirical research often evaluates single game interventions, leaving a gap in understanding general student percepti...
Games that use brainwaves via brain–computer interface (BCI) devices, to improve brain functions are known as BCI serious games. Due to the difficulty of developing BCI serious games, various BCI engines and authoring tools are required, and these re...
The increasing complexity of the built environment—encompassing three-dimensional spatial dynamics, environmental footprints, and socio-cultural dimensions—necessitates innovative educational tools. Serious games have emerged as immersive...
Addressing human trafficking is crucial due to its severe impact on human rights, dignity, and well-being. Serious games refer to digital games that are designed to entertain while also accomplishing at least one additional objective, such as learnin...
Competition is a basic element of our society. It drives us to rise above previously perceived limitations, increases our engagement and makes the world more interesting. Competition rewards our existing skills and prompts us to identify and improve...
Video games that are used as teaching tools are called serious games. However, there is an important factor that is not usually considered in the design of serious games— the inclusion of people with disabilities. Inclusion can be reached only...
With the occurrence of pandemics, such as COVID-19, which lead to social isolation, there is a need for home rehabilitation procedures without the direct supervision of health professionals. The great difficulty of treatment at home is the cost of th...
11 July 2019
Previous studies have shown the positive effects of educational video games (serious games) in improving motivation, attention and other cognitive components in students with learning disabilities. This study analyzes the effects on attention of a se...
Background: Human anatomy is a crucial component of medical curricula, requiring innovative methods to enhance students’ learning outcomes. Recently, various technology-based methods have emerged to address the limitations of traditional anatom...
The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new challenges for the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) sector, including drastically reduced visitation, constrained funding, and pressure to increase the amount and richness of digital rather than...
This systematic literature review analyzes the role of dynamic difficulty adaptation (DDA) in serious games (SGs) to provide an overview of current trends and identify research gaps. The purpose of the study is to contextualize how DDA is being emplo...
Mnemonics hold potential for promoting long-term memory. Hence, they are being leveraged in serious games aimed to support long-term retention and retrieval of information. However, there is limited work focused on synthesizing the published research...
Serious games are increasingly recognized as valuable tools in educational settings due to their capacity to enhance learning through engaging and interactive experiences. However, existing usability evaluation instruments often fail to account for t...
In recent years, serious games offer great opportunities for learning processes at schools. However, it is unclear whether this type of proposals can offer differentiated answers among the students according to their gender. In this context, the aim...
The Internet and technology have flooded all the activities of our daily lives, making digitalisation a reality. Education is no stranger to this reality and is beginning to incorporate new learning methodologies in the classroom. Methodologies such...
4 August 2022
The use of serious games may be an appealing and complementary way to motivate curriculum-based social and emotional learning (SEL); still, investigation into this potential usefulness is scarce. This study aims to address the usefulness of serious g...
Serious games are increasingly explored as collaborative tools to enhance social learning on sustainable management of land and natural resources. A systematic literature review was conducted to examine the current state of the art of the different m...
Nowadays, serious games have become a beneficial resource in the learning process; they are part of our culture and promote social inclusion. Designing accessible serious games is a complete challenge, even more for non-experts. Most existing serious...
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