2025 gaming research in a nutshell
And looking ahead to 2026
LFG: Learning from Games is a series dedicated to making the complex world of video game research just a little easier to understand. I post one about 2-3 times a month in between my Science Shorts and Coming Soon series. This is the last LFG for 2025!
👋🏼Hello JOMT Reader!
The countdown to Christmas (if you celebrate it) and the New Year has officially crossed the less than two weeks threshold. This time of year is always good for some reflection, in preparation for the coming year. Earlier this month, I looked back at what I think could be the future of turn-based games. In this post, I want to do the same for gaming research before I sign off for the year.
Let’s start with a brief look at what the scientific world was talking about in 2025.
Almost half of all research was about gamification and serious games
If you take a look at all the game-related articles that were published in 2025 from databases like PubMed or Google Scholar, just under half of them were about gamification and serious games. 45% of published articles were about using games to teach or elements of gaming to enhance teaching.
Gaming has been a useful tool for teaching because it is generally fun and engaging. But there is a sinister side to gamification and serious games: the chocolate covered broccoli1. This refers to content (broccoli) that has a covering of playfulness and gaming (chocolate) but that doesn’t work to improve our understanding of the content. You can’t make everything a game or attach badges and leaderboards to make that content work.
Addiction is another side of gaming that gets far less attention than it should when it comes to gamification and serious games. We don’t want to introduce more issues because we want to use games for teaching. But we don’t have a good way to quickly assess what may or may not work with different people so some educators are left making guesses if they want to consider something like addiction.
What can we look forward to in 2026 with gamification and serious games?
I would love to see more nuanced why certain elements of gamification or serious games work or not. The either/or relationship between the benefits and risks of gaming is due for an update. There’s a lot more context that I think we’ll be able to discover as we go deeper into this topic.
Another half of all research was about gaming in medicine
A big reason why I started Just One More Turn was to talk about the positive side effects of gaming on our health. Everything from encouraging physical activity to rehabilitation, mental health, and brain function were the focus of about 40% of articles published in 2025.
This is an important topic given the negativity and stigma that continues to surround gaming and gamers. But as with gamification and serious games, there is nuance to when games are beneficial for health and when they are not.
The top three research areas in 2025 were about improving physical activity (through exergames), brain-related rehabilitation (after stroke or in conditions like dementia), and managing mental health.
What can we look forward to in 2026 with gaming in medicine?
The big opportunity I see is in using biometric data gathered during a gaming session to diagnose conditions. There is a lot of data that can be gathered during our play sessions, most of which we couldn’t due to limitations in technology. But our most recent technological advances, including analytical ability using AI, now allow us to track things like small changes in our voice, where we look, or how we move. Any changes from how we normally do these things can be tied back to our health. And with most of the planet playing games in one way or another, what better way to do it than passively while doing something we love?
What was I talking about in 2025?
Looking at my own posts in 2025 in the LFG: Learning From Games series, about 25% of my posts were about gamification and serious games and another 25% were about games in medicine.
A big focus for me, especially in the past several posts, was about categorizing games. My initial framework became too complex to be useful but I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I also realized I had been writing about it since earlier this year.
For example, I wrote about an addictability score for games, which could become a part of a personalized game categorization system. Motivations for playing a game could be layered on top of an addictability score for a truly unique game categorization system.
I think this is important for us to have a standard framework for how we talk about games. Maturity ratings, review scores, and genre tags only tell a part of the story. Addictability scores or how games address motivations for playing are just some of the ways an improved framework can help us understand games.
What will I talk about in 2026?
The One Categorization of Gaming. I’ll definitely continue to explore what that framework could look like. Beyond that, I am hoping to talk a lot more about some cool research being done at the intersection of gaming and science! Maybe even an interview or three, if I can get on the busy calendars of some of the researchers I post about.
Final remarks
2026 will be a year where I get to share more gaming-related science content with you. But for the remainder of this year and into the first week or so, I’m going to give myself a bit of a break, to enjoy some games, catch up on all the great posts I missed, and recharge while I think about how to elevate Just One More Turn.
Thank you all for reading, liking, reposting, and commenting on my posts. I could not do this without all of your support and enthusiasm! Who knew that my nerdy obsession with science and gaming would turn into something like this!?
My best wishes to you all for a safe and recharging holiday season!
I happen to like broccoli and would eat it just like that without a chocolate covering. Actually, the chocolate covering might turn me off of broccoli.
Thank you for all you wrote in 2025, and I am looking forward to what you share in 2026!