Editorial: the NOVATICA collaboration

This edition of the EAI Transactions on Serious Games represents a collaboration between SEGAN, EAI and ATI (Asociación de Técnicos de Informática – Association of e largest, oldest, most active ssociations of Information Technologies (IT) professionals existing in Spain. Founded in 1967, ATI has 3,500 members and permanent offices in Barcelona (Headquarters) and Madrid. ATI has ring different areas and aspects of the IT spectrum and promotes many IT events in Spain and Latin America. ATI is Spain’s representative in, and founding member of, CEPIS (Council of European Professional Informatics Socities, www.cepis.org), an organization with a global membership of above 300,000 European informatics professionals. ATI is also Spain’s representative in IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing, www.ifip.org), a worldwide umbrella organization for national societies working in the field of information processing. ATI is a member of CLEI (Centro Latinoamericano de Estudios en Informática – Latin American Center for Informatics Studies, www.clei.cl), an organization that reunites a hundred Universities and Research Centers in the region. ATI publishes the digital quarterly journal Novática. Born in 1975, it is the oldest periodical publication amongst those specialized in IT existing today in Spain. Novática will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2015 with some special issues and events. www.ati.es/novatica (detailed information about ATI can be found in http://www.ati.es) This monograph includes eight papers about different aspects of serious games. Baltasar Fernández Manjón et al. addresses some still existing controversy about serious games and the challenges that make it difficult for their use to be generalised. The paper deals with these barriers – in their sociocultural, educational and technological dimensions –, and with the strategies to overcome them, suggesting lines of work – reducing the social rejection, increasing the educational value, using new development and deployment techniques. Olivier Heidemann’s paper presents the basic knowledge about the theme: terminology definitions, the creation process and its didactic and technological considerations, etc. This paper is a good introduction for those readers that are not familiar with the theme.