Serious Games Showcase & Challenge 2019: the seven winners

The Serious Games Showcase & Challenge (SGS&C) held its 14th contest at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in December 2019. The seven winning categories were announced at the Awards Ceremony in the Innovation Pavilion, Booth 2288.

Finalists came from three groups. Get a Life, from the K20 Center at the University of Oklahoma, was a finalist in the business and nonprofit category. SIGNAL competed in the student category, and Talon competed in the government category.

SIGNAL, short for Strategic Interaction Game between Nuclear Armed Lands, comes from the Project on Nuclear Gaming, a team of researchers from UC Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. Get a Life is built for grades 7 to 12 and covers the cost of college, the education requirements of careers, the effect of education on income and how to handle debt. Talon puts the player through a medical evacuation of a military casualty by Black Hawk helicopter, seen from each crew member's position, with the evacuation set within the golden hour.

Swibo Tilt belongs to a different field. The Swibo site describes a balance board with a recess for a smartphone, an app that measures the player's movements and computer software, which together turn everyday balance training exercises into games, with separate sections for home use and for clinics. Get a Life was one of two K20 Center games chosen as 2019 finalists, the other being Functions of the Machine. The Project on Nuclear Gaming, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, studies nuclear deterrence and escalation dynamics through three types of analytic games.

The contest is still running. The SGS&C site shows a 2026 edition with submissions closed, finalists notified on September 30, 2026, and the showcase at I/ITSEC in Orlando from November 30 to December 3. The award ceremony is set for December 3, 2026.

The current awards are called the Government and General Audience Awards. Whether each 2019 winner can be played today is not confirmed. The games directory on this site records the status of each one that has an official page.