Serious Games - Creating an Ecosystem for Success

Serious games have been steadily increasing their use in many sectors of society, yet it seems that a true killer app remains elusive. This paper will review some existing game based efforts and explore what the research and development community is doing to bring game use and game engines more into the mainstream of society. It is the authors'' view that three major impediments that must be worked on in creating the ''killer app'' are related to culture, validity, and business models. Culture is meant to encompass generational issues between users and decision makers as well as organizational inertia. Validity includes a statistically valid methodology that the game performs as intended. The business model entails intellectual property, development costs, and pricing. Each of these items is discussed individually and collectively with respect to creating an ''ecosystem'' of furthering the use of serious games in society. This paper reflects on these aforementioned items through a review of the literature and through selective discussions with experts in gaming education and use. Suggestions are made throughout the paper on ways to continue to accelerate adoption of serious games.