The field of Serious Games is yet quite new, although it is strongly rooted in its predecessors Edutainment and simulation.
Serious Games is an umbrella term describing games used for education, advertising, training and to encourage social change.
Developing games with a purpose beyond pure entertainment is quite demanding as it requires you to balance didactics and gameplay, creating a gaming experience that both educate and engage the player.

This book we recommend anyone to read, with an interest in the field of serious games. From the backside of the book: In this completely updated and revised edition af a contemporary classic, one of America's most well-respected educators considers more than thirty new video games in his provocative examination of their positive effects on learning. Gee includes recent games such as World of WarCraft and Half Life 2 and analyzes new theories of cognitive development, such as how individuals develop a sense of identity, grasp meaning, evaluate and follow a command, pick a role model, and perceive the world. This is a book that will open your mind to the possibility that video games are the forerunners of instructional tools that will determine how we learn in the future.

From the backside of the book:Are you teaching and training today's digital native learners with digital immigrant methods? Today's workforce is quicker, sharper, more visually oriented, and more technology-savvy than ever. To be truly benefit from Digital Natives' learning power and enthusiasm, traditional training methods must adapt to the way people learn today. Written by the founder of Games2train, this innovative book is filled with examples and information to meet the demands of both educators and employers.

If you are a game developer you should, with this in mind, strive towards being a good game developer and a great learner, as you will need to collaborate with and listen to people from other fields that will help you develop your games; and whom in many cases are also the recipients of them! When looking at this literature, do keep in mind that they often have more of an academic slant than other literature recommended in this list; readers who are looking for extravagant prose, beware!

Anchored primarily in social science research, the reader will be introduced to approaches that focus on the gaming process and the users' experiences. Additional perspectives will be provided in the concluding chapters, written from non-social science approaches by experts in academic game design and representatives of the gaming industry. The editors acknowledge the necessity for a broader interdisciplinary study of the phenomena and work to overcome the methodological divide in games research to look ahead to a more integrated and interdisciplinary study of digital games.

This book will help you learn how to take what you've learned in making games for fun and apply it to making "serious games": games for education, training, healing, and more. It will provide an overview of all of the major markets for serious games. This overview will include examples of what has been done with video games in these markets, and what is anticipated in the future, including market scope, goals of each emerging market, game types offering greatest potential, the shortest route to market by category, development budgets by category, and barriers for developers to consider.

Developing Serious Games is a practical handbook that details what's involved in developing these serious games. It explores the emergence of serious games as a viable niche in the multi-billion dollar gaming industry, and it covers the various types of serious games, including military, academic, medical, and training & development. From there it continues with a discussion of the enabling technology trends, emerging standards, and the tools that promise to reinforce the current trajectory of development and user demand for serious games. The second half of the book emphasizes the economic realities of the serious games industry, including and evaluation of the market, the economic potential of the space, and the customer base.