2021 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge: 13 Finalists and the Winners
The 2021 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge named 13 finalists in government, student and industry groups; six awards were given, with two games sharing People's Choice.
Updated
The 2021 finalist list
The finalists were announced in October 2021, after a call for entries that drew games from industry, academia and government, including international entries and organizations new to the challenge. An international panel of evaluators reviewed the finalists and picked the winners, who were to be named at the awards ceremony on December 2, 2021, during I/ITSEC in Orlando, Florida.
Five games came from government developers: CoronaQuest, Explore: Tower Defense, Joint Inspection (JI) Simulator, Legends of Europe and NIH Clinical Center Treasure Tour. Three came from students: CodAR, Lunar Exploration: Past, a VR experience of the Apollo Lunar Roving Adventure, and Vector Unknown: Echelon Seas. Five came from industry: Basic Vectoring powered by StrataGem, Crowd Disaster, OtherWordly, Street Smarts VR and Tactical Combat Casualty Care Simulation (TC3Sim) 2020.
The announced award categories were Best Government Developed, Best Student Developed, Best Business Developed, People's Choice, the Innovation Award and Best XR game.
The challenge describes how several of these are decided. I/ITSEC attendees vote for the People's Choice Award with ballots from their registration, dropped at the SGS&C booth. The Innovation Committee judges the Innovation Award for a distinctive feature or technique that improves a game in a new way. Best Student Developed Game and Best XR go to an international panel, and the student award is open to competition among top colleges and universities. The conference ran from November 29 to December 2, 2021, with the awards ceremony on December 2.
2021 winners
| Award | Winning game |
|---|---|
| Innovation Award | CodAR |
| People's Choice Award | Legends of Europe and Tactical Combat Casualty Care Simulation (2020) |
| Best Student-Developed Game | Vector Unknown: Echelon Seas |
| Best XR (VR/AR/MR) Game | Street Smarts VR |
| Best Business-Developed Game | Basic Vectoring powered by StrataGem |
| Best Government-Developed Game | CoronaQuest |
Source: the 2021 results page of the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge, read in November 2026. The page spells some titles in short form.
What is true today
The challenge's website still lists the 2021 edition. It shows the 13 finalists in one list without the group headings, under slightly different titles for a few games, such as AMC Joint Inspection Simulator and NIHCC Treasure Tour. It does not give developer names for the 2021 games. Whether each game can be played today is not recorded there, and the games in this list are marked unconfirmed in the games directory until their own pages are checked.
The awards were reorganized later. From the 2022 edition the challenge has given Best General Audience Game and Best Government Audience Game in place of the business- and government-developed awards, and the Innovation, People's Choice, Best Student Developed and Best XR awards remain. The 2026 edition closed submissions on September 11, 2026, with the showcase at I/ITSEC in Orlando from November 30 to December 3, 2026.
Questions about the 2021 finalists
How many finalists did the 2021 challenge have?
Thirteen: five from government, three from students and five from industry.
Which game won Best Government-Developed Game in 2021?
CoronaQuest won Best Government-Developed Game, according to the challenge's 2021 page.
Do the 2021 award categories still exist?
The Innovation, People's Choice, Best Student Developed and Best XR awards are still listed. The business- and government-developed awards were replaced by General Audience and Government Audience awards from 2022.