**5. Development of serious games**

Serious games did not come into wide use until the 1990s with the PCs sales increased, even though many games were created before those years. At the time, educational games and other software evolved into "edutainment". However, interest in edutainment soon decreased, partly because of the (poor) quality of the games themselves and that playful experiences were not well accepted by higher education faculty that doubted the connection of entertainment and formal learning [16].

The problems encountered in edutainment are reflected in phrases such as "edutainment, an awkward combination of educational software lightly sprinkled with game like interfaces and cute dialog" [17], or "most existing edutainment products combine the entertainment value of a bad lecture with the educational value of a bad game" [13].

With the general renewed interest in serious games, game developers have moved from "skill and-drill interactive learning paradigms towards situational and constructionist approaches" [18]. Games in education is gaining acceptance, but their use is not widespread, and it is a controversial issue [18, 19].

Educational games is also faced with the challenge of providing research evidence of the acclaimed benefits, which currently is "complex and thinly spread", possibly because the study of games and gaming relates to several different disciplines; "as a result of the diversity and complexity of games themselves, and the range of perspectives taken by researchers, there are few hard and fast findings in the literature" ([14], p. 2; [20]).

Despite the "few hard and fast findings", research is showing positive effects of games as educational tools. Games can support development of a number of various skills: strategic thinking, planning, communication, collaboration, group decision making, and negotiating skills [13, 14]; see also Gee, unpublished manuscript). However, "hard facts and evidence" is for future research to provide. There is also a number of concerns to consider in order to realize the full potential of games as educational tools: resources (many schools have computers that are too old for new games, technical support, time for teachers to familiarize themselves with the game, etc.), how to identify the relevance of a game to statutory curricula, difficulty in persuading school stakeholders to the potential benefits of computer games, etc. [18].
