The 2019 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge: 25 finalists

SGS&C runs alongside I/ITSEC, the training and simulation conference held every year in Orlando, Florida. The 2019 conference ran December 2 to 5, and winners were announced at the awards ceremony on December 5. A panel of evaluators from around the world judged the finalists in the Business, Government and Student groups.

Every finalist was eligible for the Innovation Award, judged by the Innovation Committee, and the People's Choice Award, voted by I/ITSEC attendees. Games using virtual, augmented or mixed reality could also compete for Best XR, which carried a Grand Prize, and about 40 percent of the 2019 finalists qualified. Games aimed at middle and high school students were eligible for the Students' Choice Award, which students themselves judge. Together with the three group awards, that makes seven.

Two of the seven winners came from U.S. military programs: Talon from the Army Utility Helicopters Project Office and Chain Of Command: Capture the Sea from the Naval Information Warfare Command. The other five came from companies, a university center and a university team. The winning student game was SIGNAL from UC Berkeley, whose full title describes a strategic interaction game between nuclear armed lands.

The 16 business finalists were DroneFisher, When Rivers Were Trails, X-Hacker, Get a Life, PTSD SleepAid, Project Azriel Bulletproof Brain Train, Functions of the Machine, Community Health Nursing, Fire VR, SkydiVR, Liquid Marx, Swibo Tilt, Earth-to-Mars, Invite Only VR, myDRIVESCHOOL and the VestAid Game Suite. Community Health Nursing came from BreakAway Games and Invite Only VR from the Yale Center for Health and Learning Games.

The five government finalists were Chain of Command: Capture the Seas, Contagion from the Naval Postgraduate School, U.S. Army STARS Anatomy from Army Game Studio, Talon, and NATO Children of Armed Conflict from C2 Technologies, Inc.

The four student finalists were Vector Unknown (Arizona State University, Clayton State University and Florida State University), Signal (UC Berkeley), Reverse Engineer VR (Orange Technical College) and Nano Technology Lab Process VR (Utah Valley University).

The contest continues. Its site shows a 2026 edition with submissions closed, a submission window that ran from May 1 to September 11, 2026, and finalist games showcased at the SGS&C booth at I/ITSEC in Orlando from November 30 to December 3, 2026.

The 2019 results page lists the same 25 finalists and seven winners. Individual game availability varies by title, and the games directory on this site tracks status for the ones listed there.