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Innovative Approaches to Serious Games

The field of serious games (SGs) focuses on the design, development, application, and use of games for other purposes beyond entertainment. Education and training are the main application areas, but SG has been successfully used in different domains such as health, research, planning, emergency situations, advertising, and military for different purposes. However, despite the evidence of their effectiveness, displayed also in this IEEE RITA issue, there is still limited use of SG. There could be many reasons behind this (e.g., cost), but we think it has mainly to do with social issues and preconceptions about using games for serious purposes. Therefore, initiatives like the SEGAN network are very relevant because they address the need to systematize approaches to SG. SEGAN is a community of practice that promotes the exchange of ideas and experiences related to SG. We think it can be the right place to continue and extend the discussion on the high-quality articles that we present in this special edition about innovative approaches to SG.