Interactive digital media, or video games, are a powerful new economic, cultural, and perhaps
educational force. Games are now a multi-billion dollar industry, with conferences, journals, and
research initiatives. Video games provide situated experiences where players are immersed in
complex, problem solving tasks. Good games teach players more than just facts, but ways of
seeing and understanding problems and opportunities to “become” different kinds of people.
“Serious games” coming from business strategy, advergaming, and entertainment gaming
embody these situated learning features and point to a future paradigm for eLearning. Building
on interviews with leading “serious game” designers, this paper presents case studies of three
organizations building serious games, coming from different perspectives but arriving at similar
conclusions. The study concludes with emerging trends in game-based online learning. It argues
that such games challenge us to rethink assumptions about the role of instructional design in
eLearning.
