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This paper outlines the barriers for using computer games in an educational setting by drawing on a study of a two‐month history course with the historical strategy game Europa Universalis II. The paper draws on the limited earlier literature on the subject to identify classic areas of difficulty. Some of these are time schedule, physical setting, class expectations, teacher background, genre knowledge, technical problems, experience with group work, teacher preparation, perception of games, class size, priority issue. It is concluded that these factors add up to a tremendous workload on teachers that wish to engage with educational computer games and demands that the teacher possesses a variety of skills.

This special issue of On the Horizon focuses on strategies for applying games, simulations and interactive experiences in learning contexts. A facet of this issue is the interactive and collaborative method in which it was created. Instead of separated individual articles, the authors and editors have orchestrated the articles together, reading and writing as a whole so that the concepts across the articles resonate with each other. It is the intention that this special issue will serve as the basis of many more discussions across conference panels, online forums and interactive media that in turn will engender more special collaborative issues.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the use of “serious games” with students can improve their knowledge acquisition and their academic performance.

The research is an exploratory investigation resorting to the use of a serious game to evaluate the evolution of the students’ competencies in project management, through questionnaires processed using a structural “learning model.”

This research shows indeed that the use of “serious games” improves the knowledge acquisition and management competencies of the students with the evidencing of significant factors contributing to this improvement.

The findings of this research show that serious games can be an effective tool to be used in teaching students particularly as traditional methods are less and less accepted by today's students.

Although the use of games is not something new in education, it is still limited in teaching practices in higher education. This experiment can help lecturers and trainers to resort to them in their pedagogy and to conceive them according to variables that can enhance their effectiveness.

This paper aims to investigate children’s experience as consumers of video games and associated digital communication technology, and the role this experience may play in their evolving senses of identity.

Qualitative depth interviews and discussions were conducted in a convenience sample consisting of 22 children of both genders aged 6-12 years, parents and video games company executives in the southwest of the UK. The fully transcribed data sets amounting to some 27,000 words were analysed using discourse analysis.

The findings revealed the heightened importance that the knowledge of video games plays in children’s strategies for negotiating their nascent sense of identity with regard to peer groups, family relationships and gender identity. Video games were not only a leisure activity but also a shared cultural resource that mediated personal and family relationships.

The study is based on an interpretive analysis of data sets from a small convenience sample, and is therefore not statistically generalisable.

This study has suggested that there may be positive benefits to children’s video game playing related to aspects of socialisation, emotional development and economic decision-making. An important caveat is that these benefits arise in the context of games as part of a loving and ordered family life with a balance of activities.

The study hints at the extent to which access to video games and associated digital communications technology has changed children’s experience of childhood and integrated them into the adult world in both positive and negative ways that were not available to previous generations.

This research addresses a gap in the field and adds to an understanding of the impact of video games on children’s development by drawing on children’s own expression of their subjective experience of games to engage with wider issues of relationships and self-identity.