Introduction on games, serious games, simulation and gamification

Over the last 20 years, games have arguably become the largest form of entertainment, surpassing the movie industry (Maslow 1954; Isfe 2010). The starkest increase in annual revenue for the games industry has occurred in the last year (2020) in which the global pandemic forced us to stay home and entertain ourselves (Perez 2020). AAA titles such as Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto have budgets of billions and are played by millions of people. For example, Grand Theft Auto Five generated more than US$815 million in worldwide revenue in the first 24 hours of release, surpassing blockbuster movie releases in the same time period (Ejinsight 2020). So we have to wonder, why do people play games and what attracts the players to those games? And what does this tell us about the necessity to bring games and play into our classrooms?