Example: How one hospital is using video games to manage kids' pain

http://www.denverpost.com/digitalfirstmedia/ci_22951996/how-one-hospital-is-using-video-games-manage

Example: Battle Zone

This game is widely considered to be the first computer-based serious game. 

Everything in this arcade is rendered in full 3-D graphics with vectors graphics. It was endorsed and used by the US military while some atari staff members refused to work on the project because of this. 

Example: PlayMancer

PlayMancer is a platform for rapid development of serious games, with a special focus on therapeutic support games for behavioral and addictive disorders. It is modular and combines techniques from multimodal interaction (speech, touch, biosensors and motion-tracking), 3D engines, virtual and augmented reality, speech recognition and natural language processing.

http://youtu.be/8AS4p_YYxMk
http://youtu.be/SPSFDvVYa_s

Paper: State of the Art Report on Serious games: Blurring the lines between recreation and reality

Eirik Vik. State of the Art Report on Serious games: Blurring the lines between recreation and reality. 2009. INF358 Seminar in Visualization, The Eurographics Association.


This paper provides a general overview of Serious Games. What I liked more of this paper was:

Serious Game taxonomy
Eirik Vik propose three different ways to classify Serious Games:

- Approach in terms of play:
     * Based Some: There are clear goals to reach.
     * Play-based: There are not defined goals. There is no real sense of winning or losing.

- Approach in terms of game play:
     * Turn-based
     * Real-time: The real-time option is by far the more realistic of the two.

- Via what domain it is intended for:
     * Health care
     * Defense
     * Education
     * Management
     * Government

Paper: Serious Games for Rehabilitation A Survey and a Classification Towards a Taxonomy

Rego, P.; Moreira, P.M.; Reis, L.P., "Serious games for rehabilitation: A survey and a classification towards a taxonomy," Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI), 2010 5th Iberian Conference on , vol., no., pp.1,6, 16-19 June 2010


This paper presents fundamental concepts relating to Serious Games followed by a survey of relevant work and applications on Serious Games for Rehabilitation.

As a reference, they  adopted the RehaCom System (see example link). This is a serious game application widely used for cognitive rehabilitation and well grounded in neuro-scientific theory.

Based on the literature reviewed they identify as important main criteria for the classification of Serious games in the rehabilitation area the following ones:

     * Application area
     * Interaction Technology
     * Game interface
     * Number of players
     * Adaptability
     * Performance Feedback
     * Progress monitoring
     * Game portability


Next table displays the classification.

Example:
http://anatomicalconcepts.com/index.php/products/gloreha-hand-rehabilitation#

Paper: A Case Study of Augmented Reality Serious Games

A Case Study of Augmented Reality Serious Games by Fotis Liarokapis, Sara De Freitas.

Este artículo se centra en examinar los problemas que involucra el diseñar e implementar un serious game que haga uso de ambientes de Realidad Aumentada (AR). Sobre este tema, proponen que todo framework para diseñar videojuegos serios en ambientes AR, deben de considerar las siguientes 4 dimensiones:

También da varios ejemplos de aplicaciones, pero se centra en dos: ARPuzzle y ARBreakout.

Para conocer cómo recibían estos juegos los alumnos de la escuela, fue que comenzaron con un programa piloto con 60 estudiantes. Las partes a evaluar los juegos fueron: visualización, colaboración y aprendizaje. En general les fue bien a los dos juegos en todos los apartados excepto la visualización.

Liga al paper:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.158.7434&rep=rep1&type=pdf