Beauty and the Beast - Serious Games in Health Care

True success of Serious Games depends on consumers' realization of the inherent value of those products for various self-efficacy applications in life. Additionally, there exist numerous challenges for Serious Games developers from a market perspective including smaller consumer audiences, higher development cost, the need for embedded evaluation and assessment functionality, as well as insufficient business models and distribution channels. This article aims at giving an overview on the field of Serious Games from a healthcare industry perspective. In doing so it identifies challenges, opportunities and resulting requirements towards business viability. Finally, this paper further outlines requirements for Serious Games R&D towards effectiveness as well as consumer acceptance and adoption. The article represents an extension of the keynote paper by the author (Encarnação, 2009) putting a special emphasis on discussing healthcare industry perspectives and requirements for Serious Games research and development. SERIOUS GAMES, PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGY, INDUSTRY VIEW, RESEARCH CHALLENGES, HEALTHCARE.