Serious Games

Serious games are digital games that must fulfil a dual mission (effectiveness and attractiveness). In the context of sports and exercise, exergames, i.e., digital games controlled by the arm, leg, or whole-body movements, are a possible approach to making training effective and attractive in various application areas. In this chapter, the fields of application, the possible mechanisms of action, and selected examples of exergames are presented. The current state of research shows great heterogeneity as well as methodological deficits. On the one hand, exergames have a great potential for application in preventive and rehabilitative training. On the other hand, the respective specific boundary conditions (context, target group, training objective) must be taken into account to enable individualized and adaptive training with exergames and thus ultimately ensure the “dual flow”.