The Serious Games Showcase & Challenge (SGS&C) committee has selected the 2025 finalist games to be showcased at the Interservice/industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), in Orlando, FL, Dec. 1-4 in booth 2285 as part of the EcosySTEM of Learning Discovery Den. Winners from this group will be recognized at an awards presentation on Thursday, Dec. 4 at 1:00 p.m. in the EcosySTEM Discovery Den Stage adjacent to the SGS&C booth.
“Last year we focused an initiative to reach out to the broad community of university game development programs to encourage their participation in the SGS&C, that effort brought in diverse academic lab and student-developed serious game submissions, and we are excited by the number of universities represented among our finalist this year.” said Clifton Garner, Simetri, and the 2025 Industry Chair.
Below we announce the 23 finalist serious games chosen for 2025. Our Evaluation Committee is hard at work evaluating the games to determine the winners of the: Best General Audience Serious Game, Best Government Audience Serious Game, Best Student-Developed Serious Game, Best XR Serious Game, Best Serious Game Innovation, Students’ Choice, and People’s Choice.
23 Serious Games will be Showcased at I/ITSEC in Booth 2285
This year’s finalists categorized by audience are:
General Audience Games
- Becoming Fei by the Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California
- Bin It Right! By students at IIT Kharagpur
- Conclave of Chaos by Pandamancer Games
- Cyber H20 by Virginia Digital Maritime Center
- Forensics V.I.U. by students at Utah Valley University (UVU) under support from Meta
- Graph Navigation by students at IIT Kharagpur
- Influent by Three Flip Studios, the SGSCE 2025 Winner
- Life As A by students at National University of Singapore
- R-ECOMECH by students at Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA) and University of Florida (UF)
- Speak Your Heart by students at Carnegie Mellon University
- Tune by Kaliens Kollective
- Venture Valley Business Tycoon by Singleton Foundation
- Wayfinder by Benjamin Rush Independent
- Wildfire Resilience Minigame Collection by students at University of California Santa Cruz
- Year of The Cicadas by Yale School of Medicine
Government Audience Games
- Battleline: Taiwan Defense by Gronstedt Group
- Dragonfly 2 by Army Game Studio for Defense Acquisition University
- FutureView Accelerated Learning in an Ill-defined Military Setting by ACSILabs, Inc.
- MilExTS: Tactical Trauma Trainer by Exonicus, Inc.
- Sector Down by students at Rochester Institute of Technology
- Serve to Lead by British Army
- Surface Warfare Officer Reactive Decision Simulator (SWORDS) by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
- Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Sexual Harassment Prevention Virtual Reality (VR) Training by Customer Value Partners (CVP) and ECS
Jennifer McNamara, Breakaway Games, and SGS&C director, said, “For our 20th event, our showcase highlights creative approaches to learning and assessment, we welcome finalists representing five countries, many from outside of the standard I/ITSEC community who have never participated at I/ITSEC before. We encourage everyone attending I/ITSEC to visit the showcase in booth 2285 to interact with the developers and their games. Playing the exemplar games and having conversations with their developers could spark innovative ideas for future training systems. Plus, every I/ITSEC attendee has a ballot in your badge to vote for the 2025 People’s Choice Award, make sure to cast your vote for the winner.”
The SGS&C Appreciate the Support of Our Volunteers and Generous Sponsors
This event wouldn’t be possible without the support from our all-volunteer committee, and our global evaluators. We thank them and their organizations for sharing their valuable time to help build the showcase of exemplar serious games as part of I/ITSEC and to determine the winners of the SGS&C Awards.
We thank our 2025 Sponsors for their monetary and in-kind support of the SGS&C: Applied Research Associates, Box, BreakAway Games, Engineering and Computer Simulations, Inc., Hatalom Corporation, HP, Mass Virtual, NTSA, RAVE Computer, Simetri, Trideum, and Xiphos Partners. Additional sponsorships remain available, see the prospectus or contact us for for an overview of available sponsorships and benefits.
Questions about the competition, becoming an evaluator or sponsor, or serving on the committee? Send us an email to [email protected].
About SGS&C
SGS&C grew from a Team Orlando initiative spearheaded by Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division and sponsored by National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA). SGS&C’s first I/ITSEC was 2006 and it has been a thriving part of the I/ITSEC experience since, bringing first-in-class serious games and novel game design and technology demonstrations to the I/ITSEC community.
More information about SGS&C can be found on the SGS&C website (https://sgschallenge.org/.)
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