After informally reviewing the main concepts from game semantics and placing the development of the field in a historical context we examine its main applications. We focus in particular on finite state model checking, higher order model checking and more recent developments in hardware design. 1. Chronology, methodology, ideology Game Semantics is a denotational semantics in the conventional sense: for any term, it assigns a certain mathematical object as its meaning, which is constructed compositionally from the meanings of its sub-terms in a way that is independent of the operational semantics of the object language. What makes Game Semantics particular, peculiar maybe, is that the mathematical objects it operates with

1 Higher-order model checking (more precisely, the model checking of higher-order recursion schemes) has been extensively studied recently, which can automatically decide properties of programs written in the simply-typed λ-calculus with recursion and finite data domains. This paper formalizes predicate abstraction and counterexample-guided abstraction refinement (CEGAR) for higher-order model checking, enabling automatic verification of programs that use infinite data domains such as integers. A prototype verifier for higher-order functional programs based on the formalization has been implemented and tested for several programs.