The Serious Games Association: the 2012 launch and what remains

The Serious Games Association announced itself on February 13, 2012, and opened membership the same week. It described itself as an international trade group for the non-entertainment games industry, meant to bring together publishers, developers, technology providers and everyone else who works in serious games. Membership was open to students, developers, publishers, tool providers, analysts and other professionals.

The group's scope covered game-like software for educational, corporate, defense, political, advertising and charity purposes. Coverage in the trade press, among it Gamasutra, Edge, GamesIndustry.biz and IndustryGamers, explained that the word serious in the name points to serious purpose in training and learning.

The association planned to run the Serious Play Conference, scheduled for August 21, 2012, in Washington, and to keep a blog and a media site.

Coverage described the Serious Play Conference as the association's backer and said the group would build a directory and a platform for people who earn their living in games. Other reports said it would host conferences and support groups and cover simulations, corporate games, educational games and games with a social benefit.

Members were promised access to conferences and networking, a free listing in the Serious Games Directory, discounts on passes to the annual Serious Play Conference, and the right to enter products into the conference's awards. Standard membership cost $35 per year. A second tier, sustaining membership, cost $10,000 and made the member a conference sponsor automatically while giving it a deeper role in the association.

The association's web address, seriousgamesassociation.com, was given in Gamasutra's report of February 14, 2012. In November 2026 that address shows a Dutch-language gaming-guide page that has nothing to do with serious games, so the association's own site is gone from that address.

The conference lives on. The Serious Play Conf site loads in November 2026 and lists the 2026 edition for August 3 to 5 at the University of Washington in Seattle. It describes the event as an exploration of how play, games and gamification are changing education, training and knowledge mobilization, and it has an awards section with winner lists for 2024, 2025 and 2026. The page does not name an organizer, so a current link to the Serious Games Association could not be confirmed.