Geogames have matured from an emergent field in the 2000s into a transformative intersection of game design, geographic information science, and games with a purpose. This thematic issue advances the geogames research, education, and praxis agenda through 10 articles organized into two sections. Section 1 establishes geogames as rigorous research and educational instruments, exploring their theoretical foundations, methodological applications, and pedagogical value for fostering spatial literacy and emotional engagement. Section 2 demonstrates geogames as operational tools for real-world urban planning, showcasing their implementation in participatory consultations, communicative planning, and sustainability initiatives. These contributions frame geogames as a socio-technical epistemology rather than mere representational or engagement tools, revealing their capacity to address complex contemporary urban challenges. By bridging virtual simulation with material intervention in games, this issue presents a unified framework for reimagining research, teaching, and the transformation of urban spaces through geogames-where the concept of Gaia (Earth as a living system) converges with gameplay-in an era marked by unprecedented spatial, environmental, and social challenges.

Resilience training for critical infrastructure decision-making is essential for preparing against both cybersecurity threats and natural disasters. Traditional training methods often lack flexibility in scenario customization, limiting their effectiveness in simulating complex crisis environments. Recent advancements in agentic AI have shown that it can solve complex problems that require multiple steps. In this work, we present LLM-ResiGame, a multi-agent large language model (LLM)-driven resilience game that dynamically generates scenario-based challenges involving cyberattacks and natural disasters. The game framework enables players to manage critical infrastructure, allocate resources, and respond to evolving crises through interactive decision-making. We evaluate the content quality, user experience, and game engagement of our approach through a user study where players play with customized pre-generated scenarios and real-time events. We found that users were able to successfully configure and adapt scenarios, and that our multi-agent LLM system maintains scenario relevance while balancing the game elements and components. These findings highlight key benefits and challenges in using LLM-driven multi-agent systems for enhancing scenario-based resilience training in critical infrastructure management.

In an era marked by rapidly evolving cyber threats and increasing disaster risks, geogames offer innovative approaches to education and training. Motivated by the need to understand the current landscape, this paper systematically maps the landscape of 92 geogames at the intersection of cybersecurity and disaster management. This study examines the availability of these games, their application areas, genres, target audiences, and other design characteristics, such as medium and publisher type. By categorizing games based on these criteria, we offer a comprehensive overview of what is currently available in this domain. Notably, this paper provides a structured resource that highlights trends and gaps in the market, thereby serving as a valuable reference for researchers and developers seeking to understand and enhance the role of geogames in cybersecurity and disaster management training.

Critical infrastructure (CI) organizations increasingly face disruptions that cascade across interdependent systems. Preparing for this fact requires thorough training, yet many existing training methods, especially tabletop exercises, are too resource-intensive, classified, or narrowly scoped to prepare diverse civilian and military stakeholders effectively. To address this gap, we introduce resilience games, a form of serious gaming with wargaming elements. First, we present the JV4.0 technical framework, the latest iteration of the U.S. Army Cyber Institute’s Jack Voltaic series, an open-source, modular architecture for creating, running, and adapting such games. Second, we demonstrate Access Denied and Sector Down as two implementations of the framework. Access Denied is an entry-level, non-technical card game focused on incident recognition and communication. Sector Down is a cross-sector game that trains CI decision-makers to sustain essential functions under cascading attrition. We describe gameplay mechanics, alignment with practitioner taxonomies (e.g., CISA lifelines, MITRE ATT&CK/ICS, D3FEND), and insights from formative playtesting across military, academic and public venues. We conclude by outlining next steps for empirical evaluation and policy integration. The aim is to provide a scalable, accessible tool to help Department of War installations and civilian communities prepare for disruptions ranging from cyberattacks to extreme weather events.

In game development curriculum, mastering programming skills is important. Traditional methods to teach programming in computer science curriculum often face challenges in relevance for game development students, leaning towards individual mastery of the knowledge. This has shown a sign of contrast with the collaborative nature of game design and development courses where teamwork is emphasized. In our approach, especially for a game programming assignment that is often integrated with computer graphics requirements, we introduce the strategy of embedding “imagined social elements” into individual programming assignments, simulating team dynamics without a formal team structure. Through this approach, an assignment promotes the integration of independent contributions while maintaining the individual rigor essential for programming practices. The proposed assignment aims to be adopted in a game programming course. We have set up a git repository for this assignment (https://github.com/LizhouCao/Integrating-Independent-Contributions-in-a-Game-Programming-Assignment.git), with build instructions and required dependencies included.

Spatial Computing integrates technologies like Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and the Global Positioning System, enabling immersive, natural, and intelligent multi-modal interactions in physical and virtual spaces. With the huge potential to benefit users in multiple scenarios (e.g., gaming, education, design, and healthcare), Spatial Computing is growing at an incredible rate, with different attempts to define and capitalize on the growth in both industry and academia. Beyond the location, shape, and relationship of geographic objects, Spatial Computing delves into the social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of shared spaces. However, the human-computer interaction research on Spatial Computing faces a notable gap, particularly in user experience areas like collaboration, trust, ethics, and accessibility. Addressing this gap, this Special Interest Group (SIG) seeks to unite experts from academia and industry to explore current and future trends in Spatial Computing.

Traditional location-based advertising (LBA), such as billboards and signage, has long been a staple of direct-to-consumer advertising. In recent years, however, the prominence and popularity of location-based games have made digital LBA even more appealing. This article draws on an original research project devised to explore a notable gap in the literature on locative media: the impacts of LBA on small businesses in the location-based game Pokémon GO . The project was conducted between August and October 2021, employing semi-structured interviews with 35 businesses leveraging Niantic’s sponsored location LBA. Our findings indicate that (1) participant businesses found location-based game advertising to be rewarding, (2) LGA can act as an amenity offered by the business, and (3) local community is an essential factor for success in location-based game advertising. In sum, this research demonstrates that local businesses could successfully utilize LGBs like Pokémon GO to advertise themselves.

This work presents the design, development, and evaluation of an exploration-based educational VR game for learning about historical Apollo lunar roving missions. The design and development are conducted with a three-phase progressive methodology that covers Modeling & Simulation, Gamification & Edufication, and VRization. The immersive experience presents the gamified content in an engaging way and enables learning activities through exploratory play. Players are given the choices of active and passive learning modes to explore the virtual lunar environment and learn spatial, factual, and operating knowledge. We run a user study to understand the learning effectiveness and engagement with this VR game and the influence of different learning modes on the learning outcomes. We discuss the findings and pedagogical implications that can be applied to the development of educational VR games for learning about similar historical events.

With the expanding popularity of Location-Based Games and the rise of advertising therein, there exists a need to comprehend the impact of Location-Based Game Advertising (LGA). This paper seeks to identify what makes positively affective LGA, leveraging Pokémon GO as a probe. Researchers conducted twenty-seven (n=27) semi-structured interviews with Pokémon GO players to reveal lived experiences regarding LGA. Our findings highlight the following direct implications for LGA: (1) LGA act as a digital billboard, conveying qualitative alongside locative information, and (2) well-received LGA enhances the player's agency. We additionally identify findings that have auxiliary implications to LGA: (3) positive memorability occurs when points of interest match physical reality, and (4) ludic engagement is a mediating factor in the memorability of locations. This research demonstrates that LGA in Location-Based Games is surprisingly well-received. However, developers must provide extra consideration to the player's agency for such techniques to be effective.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have shown a great potential in creating, identifying, and trading digital ownership, and can be used to build the economics in the future metaverse. It is important for the users to understand the basic concepts of NFTs before they engage in a virtual society or application that uses NFTs to represent digital assets. Traditional learning methods like reading articles are inefficient to support active learning of a new concept. In this work, we designed and developed a multi-user VR-based learning method that provides a learner-oriented experience for users to create their own digital assets, witness the process of minting the assets into NFTs, and trade the NFTs. We conduct a study with participants to understand the learning efficiency of the VR-based method in comparing to the traditional reading-based method. The evaluation result shows that the multi-user experience was more engaging than a solo reading-based experience, and the participants became more motivated to learn about NFT topics in the VR experience.

In recent years, the notion of the Metaverse has become the focus of a growing body of work in the industry. However, there is no consensus on the conceptualization in academia. To date, much of this attention has revolved around technological challenges. However, what is notably missing from these discussions is a consideration of the human factors and social aspects that are considered more critical challenges within HCI. The aims of this SIG are as follows: Firstly, to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners to engage with the various definitions and the ways in which the Metaverse is developing. Secondly, to discuss the opportunities, challenges, and future possibilities in the context of HCI. This will lay the foundations to build a network for academics interested in the field for future multidisciplinary research relating to the Metaverse.

Location-based advertising (LBA), such as billboards and signage, has long been a direct-to-consumer advertising staple. As locative media such as Location-Based Games (LBG) begins to rise in prominence, digital LDA becomes increasingly appealing. In this paper, we explore the impacts of LBA on small businesses in the LBG Pokémon GO, a lacuna in the literature. We gather participant experience through a collection of 35 semi-structured interviews with businesses leveraging Niantic's sponsored location LBA. These testimonies indicate (1) participant businesses found LBG advertising to be satisfactory, (2) LBG advertising improves brand recognizability for local commerce, and (3) local community is an important factor for success in LBG advertising. These findings indicate future patterns for integrating local businesses into LBG like Pokémon GO, suggesting potential for LBG advertising to assist local businesses.

This survey paper introduces engineering educators to a subfield of computer graphics called physically-based animation (PBA) to advocate for collaboration in creating courses to improve student learning in STEM fields, especially in engineering.Engineering students may not realize the degree to which they can leverage their education to enter the entertainment and simulation industries.The central hypothesis of the paper is that introductory physics can be taught via PBA.The paper provides case studies that demonstrate early promise.The paper gives an overview of how "game engineers" leverage theoretical physics and mathematical concepts merged with design aesthetics to portray realistic and fun experiences, manifesting as game physics.As computing power has increased, the convergence of real and fake physics presents an opportunity to teach physics to non-game students.The field of PBA shows promise for enhancing physics education, but much work remains to determine how it may happen and the place in a college curriculum. Call to actionThis paper initiates a call-to-action for STEM educators who may be unaware of a kind of entertainment computing-game physics and the broader field of physically-based animation, which are defined below.Games are very appealing, and there are entire colleges producing graduates in the entertainment arts and technology.There is an opportunity to "join forces," so to speak (and forgive the pun), to collaborate to improve learning and retention for all: Can students learn physics by making games?The paper summarizes current research and findings in physics/game physics education that show the potential of teaching the real with the fake.Starting with basics of animation, the paper steps the reader through the various fields and references that introduce concepts from outside of typical STEM.Case studies provide animations and interactive examples not easily shown in a paper.To clarify the hypothesis, a brief summary of the author's game physics course on teaching "fake physics" is presented to help demonstrate the striking connections with "real physics."The paper concludes with a summary and a roadmap to implement this call-to-action to explore the exciting potential of games physics to teaching physics outside games.

The “Introduction to Programming” course is an essential part of any first-year engineering program. As part of a common first-year curriculum, one of the biggest challenges of this first programming course is to both teach fundamental programming concepts and give students practical tools that can be applied easily to upper level courses in different engineering disciplines. At Cornell University, we offer a new first-year programming course that uses two very different programming languages: MATLAB and Java. This one-semester course balances the need for working knowledge of a fundamental programming language, such as Java, and the need for working knowledge of an engineering computing tool so that upper-level courses can focus on high-level, conceptual issues rather than programming details. Furthermore, this new course accommodates students in arts and sciences who are interested in a programming course that has a strong mathematical focus instead of a more traditional programming course offered in a computer science department. This paper discusses the challenges in developing the course, the ambitious one-semester syllabus that teaches both MATLAB and Java with depth, our evaluation of this new course, and our plans for improving the programming course in a common first-year engineering curriculum.

The goal is to raise awareness and encourage learning cybersecurity principles by making competitions appealing to a wider audience. In an effort to make events compelling, attractive, and watchable, the researchers will develop systems to support visualizations and make the transactions between teams in different cybersecurity competitions easy to comprehend. In informing and educating the audience on the intricacies of the competition through engaging visualizations, cybersecurity competitions will be opened up to a world beyond just participants. In doing so, we can potentially attract new talent into the field. Our team seeks to make prototype visualizations for key actions in various student cybersecurity competitions and assess spectator understanding of key principles of the competition.

The need for improvement of societal disaster resilience and response efforts was evident after the destruction caused by the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. We present a novel conceptual framework for improving disaster resilience through the combination of serious games, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial thinking, and disaster resilience. Our framework is implemented via Project Lily Pad, a serious geogame based on our conceptual framework, serious game case studies, interviews and real-life experiences from 2017 Hurricane Harvey survivors in Dickinson, TX, and an immersive hurricane-induced flooding scenario. The game teaches a four-fold set of skills relevant to spatial thinking and disaster resilience, including reading a map, navigating an environment, coding verbal instructions, and determining best practices in a disaster situation. Results of evaluation of the four skills via Project Lily Pad through a "think aloud" study conducted by both emergency management novices and professionals revealed that the game encouraged players to think spatially, can help build awareness for disaster response scenarios, and has potential for real-life use by emergency management professionals. It can be concluded from our results that the combination of serious games, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial thinking, and disaster resilience, as implemented via Project Lily Pad and our evaluation results, demonstrated the wide range of possibilities for using serious geogames to improve disaster resilience spatial thinking and potentially save lives when disasters occur.

College and university student media are independent or school‐affiliated, student‐produced news and information organizations. Typically, college media serve as the voice of the student body, although they also cover faculty and staff matters and occasionally the community in which a school resides. Student media distribute written and broadcast content across numerous publishing platforms, including websites, newspapers, terrestrial radio, television, podcasts, smartphone apps, magazines, social media, and streaming services. Student‐media workspaces are simulated professional workspaces where students can practice institutional behavioral standards and skills common to the field.

This article presents the interdisciplinary idea of combining geographic information systems (GIS) and serious games. We argue that further integration of GIS and serious game can have large ranging impact on learning and advancement of spatial knowledge and expertise in numerous application domains. In this regard, we draw heavily, although not exclusively, upon disaster management as an exemplar case study of the integration of GIS and serious games for education, spatial thinking skill development, and problem solving. We provide context for GIS and serious games through definitions of games, serious games, the difference between serious games and simulations, the idea of gamification, spatial representations, and serious games. GIS and serious game case studies are drawn from the research experiences of the authors that include (1) capacity development via emergency response exercises that incorporate geospatial tools with a real-time simulation exercise and (2) a virtual serious GIS game environment called serious GIS or SerGIS that allows for flexible creation of serious GIS game scenarios using real GIS tools. The article also provides discussion on evaluating spatial games as a means for further research on development and evaluation of new serious GIS games. The article concludes with a GIS and serious games research agenda.