Playing for Keeps: A Narrative Review of Serious Games and Gamification from Abt's Serious Games to Evidence-Based Health and Learning Applications
Year: 2026
Type: review
Abstract: Serious games and gamification redirect play's motivational power toward non-entertainment purposes---learning, health, training, and behavior change---and four decades of research have turned the promise into an evidence base with known strengths and failures. This article presents a narrative review of the field's canonical line: Abt's 1970 founding of serious games as simulations with pedagogic intent, Malone's 1981 theory of intrinsically motivating instruction, Prensky's and Gee's 2001--2003 digital game-based learning arguments, Ryan, Rigby, and Przybylski's 2006 self-determination theory of game motivation, Baranowski and colleagues' 2008 health behavior framework, Deterding and colleagues' 2011 definition of gamification as game design elements in non-game contexts, Kato's 2010 synthesis of games in health care, Wouters and colleagues' 2013 meta-analysis of serious games' cognitive and motivational effects, Hamari and colleagues' 2014 review of whether gamification works, Squire's 2011 theory of video games and learning, Sailer and colleagues' 2017 experimental decomposition of gamification mechanics, and the field's contemporary integration. The synthesis is organized around three themes: motivation, in which intrinsic-drive theories explained both the promise and the novelty effect; design, in which fidelity, feedback, narrative, and competition were formalized as transferable mechanics; and evidence, in which meta-analyses produced moderate cognitive gains, fragile motivational persistence, and clear moderators. It is concluded that the field's maturation lies in treating game elements as experimental variables---and that its enduring challenge is designing for engagement that outlasts the intervention study.
Authors: Revista, Zen, GAME, 10
Institution: Faculdades Guarulhos
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204690481