Digital game-based learning is a hot topic of research and development. Since the advent of computer and video games, educators were inherently interested in utilizing the beneficial aspects of computer games for educational purposes. These factors are primarily the intrinsic motivation of games, immersive environments, engaging stories, and an artful balance between challenges and continuously growing abilities. Proponents of computer games delivered a large number of empirical investigations revealing that games may foster the development of abilities and competencies. Besides the advantageous aspects of computer games, a variety of problems were reported by researchers. Due to the high costs of professional game development, many educational games are technologically poor and cannot compete with entertainment games in terms of visual design, possibilities for interactions, or storytelling. Moreover, many current educational games do not incorporate a sound psychological, pedagogical, or didactic background; instead they are focusing on transmission or rehearsal of isolated facts or skills. Finally, such games lack the ability to adapt to individual competencies failing to balance challenge and abilities regarding knowledge or skills. The ELEKTRA project, introduced in this article, aims for addressing these problems relying on an interdisciplinary approach of cognitive science, neuroscience, pedagogy, game design, and game development. The project will develop an adventure game that can keep up with commercial games and that focuses on primarily curriculum-related educational purposes by incorporating a sound psychological and pedagogical framework. Moreover, the project will prove the outcomes of research and development by a comprehensive game demonstrator.

This study describes the learning potential of serious games and their success in a number of domains such as the military, healthcare, education, and emergency services. The work aims to highlight the training opportunities available for serious games in the police domain in general, and in the Dubai police force in particular, and the challenges facing the serious games domain. The success of serious games in the Dubai police force is demonstrated by the development of a serious game for traffic accident investigators. The benefits are highlighted by the serious game’s ability to improve the performance of participants during an experiment conducted in 2006 in the Dubai police force for 56 police officers. The study also describes the implications of the use of serious games in the Dubai Crawford (Crawford, 1984) states that games are the most ancient and natural vehicle for learning. McLuhan said that “[a]nyone who makes a distinction between games and learning doesn’t know the first thing about either ” (Becker, 2006a). If this is true it is ironic that one of the difficulties stated for the lack of use of games in education or training is because of the difficulty in getting acceptance for

The study introduced in this paper examines some of the issues involved in the design and implementation of serious games that make use of tangible AR environments. Our motivation is to understand how augmented reality serious games (ARSG) can be applied to some very difficult problems in the real gaming world. Emphasis is given on the interface and the interactions between the players and the serious games themselves. In particular, two case studies are presented, ARPuzzle and ARBreakout. Results from both case studies indicate that AR gaming has the potential of revolutionizing the way that current games are played and used as well as that it can help educate players while playing.