Four billion people worldwide are estimated to spend over a trillion hours yearly on digital games. People play games across all continents, cultures and demographics. Games are now an integrated part of social life. They are activity hubs, places to hang out, and communication platforms. Games now represent a core part of our daily behavior.

Gaming activity supports a $230bn+ global industry, which is rapidly growing and innovating, creating and adopting new advances in interactive technologies such as graphics capabilities and generative AI, at a fast pace. Games and their underlying principles are also being used in situations where games have not historically played a role, through the gamification of systems and education. When we build new social and technical systems, we use principles and ideas from games. Digital games are also playing an increasing role in education. Games can help training children in essential 21st century skills and provide a means of social interaction for disabled people worldwide. Games are also used as platforms for citizen science.

With the rise of digital games has also come a series of challenges, including increased screen time among children and young adults, issues with physical, mental and financial wellbeing caused by gameplay, the continued social stigma among game players, lack of representation of diverse audiences, data protection issues and monetization strategies which resemble gambling. These issues mean that games are subject of intense policymaker interest, as nations seek to realize the positive societal potential of games without compromising the safety and health of their citizens.

Digital games have given rise to a prolific and cross-disciplinary domain of research. Computer science is the heart of this research environment, with game technologies and game data being used across e.g. AI, data science, software engineering/development, educational technologies, computational creativity, information systems and HCI. Thousands of papers are produced yearly supported by dedicated conferences.

The impact of games research

20+ years ago, when the first academic research on games started appearing, there was widespread agreement that games would transform entertainment across engagement and adaptation to the individual player, usher in a new wave of education technologies, and improve social cohesion by allowing populations locally and globally interact in virtual environments. Unfortunately, despite the growth of a global games sector, these ambitious but societally beneficial goals have not unilaterally been realized. Rather, the global games sector is to a substantial degree funded by monetization techniques under scrutiny by policymakers, and there are ongoing issues with game addiction and disordered gaming, all of which are acknowledged societal challenges.

For every positive story about games, there is a negative one. While there are many examples of games research striving for positive goals such as games helping the aging population stay active, targeting loneliness in society by helping players build meaningful social connections, or improving education, the large-scale impact of such efforts has not manifested. Additionally, games academia is, with a few exceptions, notably game AI, largely without sustained at-scale impact on industry or other aspects of society beyond the educational pipeline. There are a lot of reasons and underlying complexity for this, and the goal here is not to point fingers but to encourage a change of strategy in how such impact can be realized.  

Industry as a research leader

Today, the games industry is the undisputed leader of many aspects of games research, having hired thousands of former academics or advanced degree research graduates. The industry is out-competing academic research by a factor of hundreds. White academic research can still contribute in industry-dominated domains, this has left a discord which also impacts the ability of academic research to scale and achieve broader impact through industry collaboration. 

Policy implications

In 2023 alone, three important policy frameworks have been released by the EU and UK: The VGRF framework published by the UK government, the EU AI Act, and the EU Commission’s 2023 report on the state and future of the EU games sector. These join the GDPR framework in creating a policy foundation for the future of games. Added to these are the UN future goals, where notably “Health and Wellbeing” (SDG3) sets expectations for the contribution that games can and should make in the future. These reports set out some of the expectations of policy makers on what games can and should contribute to society, including consumer protection and player wellbeing. But there is no clear answer from the games research community (across industry and academia) as to how to respond to these expectations.

The need for a roadmap

There are a number of topics that are in critical need of attention across academia, industry and policymakers, if we are to realize the full potential societal benefits of games. These include but are certainly not limited to:

• Player Wellbeing: The challenges and strategies to ensure mental, physical, and financial wellbeing of players in digital gaming environments.
• Ethical Monetization: The ethical dimensions of monetization strategies, especially those resembling gambling, and their regulation.
• Educational Potential of Games: How games can be leveraged as effective educational tools, and how to enhance their educational impact.
• Policy Frameworks and Gaming: Recent policy frameworks from the EU, UK, and other entities, and their implications for the gaming sector.
• Industry-Academia Collaboration: The disconnect between academic research and the gaming industry, and ways to foster meaningful collaboration.
• Data Protection and Privacy: Data protection, privacy issues, and the ethical use of behavioral data in gaming.

We need a roadmap for the considerable academic and industrial presence in games for the future towards meeting the expectations of society, and inform those expectations. To develop such a roadmap, we need to navigate the interdisciplinary nexus of digital gaming with the emphasis on computer science. This includes AI, computational creativity, data science, development and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). These disciplines undergird the development, analytics, and user-centric design of gaming environments, facilitating a deeper understanding of gaming behaviors and the potential for educational and societal engagement.

Bridging the discourse between academia, industry, and policymakers is necessary to construct an actionable roadmap to harness gaming’s potential for positive societal impact.

In March 2025, with professors and friends Lennart Nacke and Johanna Pirker, I am co-organising a Dagstuhl Perspectives Seminar bringing together a range of experts to try and tackle these important issues. Based in work leading up to the seminar and the work during, we hope to be able to collaboratively create a first, tentative version for a roadmap for the future of games research. I will admit to being excited about the opportunity, and thank the Dagstuhl Foundation for hosting the seminar.