**2. About serious games**

Games have been in society for a long time, there are evidence of dice playing since 3.000 ac, the go or Weiqi a board strategy game dates from 2.500 years ago played in China, many games had some learning concepts associated.

Serious and games seem concepts that are not normally related, but recently Serious games have proven to be effective to help experiential learning and that students can learn while they play.

"Serious games are games designed in which education (in its various forms) is the primary goal, rather than entertainment" [10–12].

Even though that there no agreed definition of Serious Games, this is often the case of new disciplines, basically the concept refers to games that have been primarily designed to learn rather than entertainment.

The field of edutainment, serious games or learning game design fields, have made big advances during the past years, they help understanding specific topics and acquire complex competences and they have expanded rapidly in primary schools, universities, and corporations, but they are still not very use in most Universities [8].

There are a few fundamental questions that this research attempts to address such as How has gamification been applied? What policies and strategies could help to successfully incorporate gamification, how is the learning process achieved and how students rate these serious games activities?

There are many Serious Games for higher education or simulation companies in the world today, such as:

Stratx Simulation (France), Cesim (Finland), EON Reality (USA), Simcoach Games (USA), Peak-Brainbow (United Kingdom), Costa Edutainment (Italy), and some new startups companies dedicated to develop games like Digital Dream Labs (USA), Game Lab (Chile), Fingerprint (USA),

We also have some traditional game base or simulation games such as Flight Simulator that was first launch in 1982, and now Microsoft Flight Simulation with a 2020 version, and is the longest running software from Microsoft, Pulse is a training serious game that simulates surgery on patients, Minecraft with an educational edition that was specially develop for schools.

Certainty COVID has been a catalyzer for technology adoption and distance learning in Higher Education since 2020 until 2022, but it has not really impacted Serious Games adoption jet, even that the need of engagement from students specially online and blended students is more necessary than ever.

### **3. Educational games (edutainment)**

In **Table 2** we can see the most important concepts related to Serious games, even though they are related, their main purpose and learning objectives are different.

Educational games, can be traced back to the 1970's where "non digital" games where used in schools for math-related or social science understanding. The digital applications started around 1990's with the first multimedia computers, evolving the term to edutainment, but because of the poor quality and lack of understanding the interest decreased. Research has shown a positive effect of games as educational tools in various skills such as: strategic thinking, planning, communication, collaboration, group decision making, and negotiating skills [13, 14].

Edutainment, comes from "education" & "entertainment" it is designed to generate motivation, interest and a better understanding throw technology using games, music, internet or television to help both students and teachers in the process of learning. The market of business simulation for education are mainly centered on marketing, finance, strategy and optimization.


#### **Table 2.**

*Concepts related to serious games and edutainment. (own elaboration).*

Gamification blends game mechanics with traditional eLearning activities and modules. For example using leaderboards, points, and eLearning badges add incentives for students to be more active on their online courses. Gamification and serious games are often grouped together they both motivate online learners and enhance their eLearning experiences [15].
