How was the designation serious game born? What were the first games to be called thusly? Who are the pioneers? If you thought that these questions were to remain unanswered, you are mistaken! A French group of researchers have tried to propose an answer through a quite informative scientific publication.

Like jeuxserieux.fr’s team, in the past years you have witness many video games history mushroom, but nothing (or very little) has been done on serious games. Quite normal! This gap is just beginning to be filled with the recent publication of several contents more or less serious.
However, do not worry: in our case, the article is a real documented scientific article. Published in the joint publication Serious Games and Edutainment Applications (published by Springer), the article « Origin of Serious Games » presents a very good analysis of the emergence of the serious game phenomenon.

The study is focused on the origin of the term “serious game” itself before unearthing games with a serious purpose created before 2000. And on this matter, it is quite surprising to see that the French researchers, during their near archeological quest, even go back to the video games origin! Who said that video games could only find their origins in Pong or the backroom of a pub?

The last big part of the article will be an opportunity for the readers to better understand the roots of the present serious games’ trend and to compare the nowadays production to their “ancestors”.

We hope you will enjoy the read!

The article Origin of Serious Games is directly available at ludoscience.com. Please note that it’s also possible to order the complete publication from the publisher’s website.