The recent re-emergence of serious games as a branch of video games has introduced the concept of games designed for a serious purpose other than pure entertainment. To date the major applications of serious games include education and training, engineering, medicine and healthcare, military applications, city planning, production, crisis response, just to name a few. If utilised alongside, or combined with conventional approaches serious games could provide a more powerful means of knowledge transfer in almost every application domain.

This book Serious Games Development and Applications offers an insightful introduction to the recent development and applications of games technologies in various domains, thus reflecting the multi-disciplinarity required in the development of serious games. It includes cutting edge academic research and industry updates that will inform readers of current and future advances in the area. The book is suitable for researchers, students, and domain experts who are interested in using state-of-the-art games technologies in their areas, as well as game professionals who are trying to gain a thorough understanding of issues involved in the serious application of video games technology. The book is also applicable to programmers, game artists, and management contemplating or involved in the design and development of serious games.

Serious Games Development and Applications arose from the International Conference on Serious Games Development and Applications (SGDA 2011), which was the second conference on SGDA. The First International Conference on Serious Games Development and Applications was held at University of Derby in 2010. The event had since become an annual conference and is supported by the Gala European Network of Excellence in Serious Games, the TARGET project which are both partially funded by the European Community under the Seventh Framework Programme, and a number of partners such as the Glasgow School of Art, University of Derby, INESC ID, and Technical University of Lisbon. The Technical University of Lisbon (IST/UTL), Portugal hosted the second annual conference (SGDA 2011) in September 2011. Besides the papers published in this book, SGDA 2011 also contains the position papers of Ben Sawyer, recognized visionary in the field of serious games, Elmar Husmann of IBM and the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), and Dr. Jon Purdy from University of Bradford.

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