“Serious games can be defined as computer-based learning simulations that engage players in realistic activities designed to increase knowledge, improve skills, and enable positive learning outcomes” – (Prensky, M. (2001))

Modern day serious games come in various forms and sizes, although without a standardized approach for across the board implementation in various sectors and industries. This lack of a clear and homogenous execution creates many issues in regards to evaluation and review. However, some indicators inherent to all games can be verifiably used for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of good practices within the serious game sphere.

With these inconsistencies in serious game implementations taken into account, the following method was applied in this best-practice collection to enable the systematic review of serious games in entrepreneurship education:

1. Search strings —a number of key words and search strings were developed and tested to undertake searches. These search strings are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Search strings & keywords and the search engines used

1. Search strings were used in common search engines (see Table 1) to seek out an initial sample of serious games. Common search engines were preferred to literature databases due to the focus of the search on games rather than literature.

2. During initial searches for games, a large number of results were identified. These were reviewed by filtering in only web pages that had been updated in 2020. This approach was used as a means to uncover ‘‘active’’ products. 17 serious games were identified during this stage and these are reported in Appendix 1. However, upon deeper inspection, although the webpages were updated within the last year, access to some of the shortlisted serious games was not available. So the list was further broken down to 12 serious games.

3. Web pages for each game were reviewed in detail, and inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied to assess the relevance of the games in entrepreneurship education. Criteria included aspects such as: topical fit, technical availability, paid vs. free, open source code, and understanding of entrepreneurship education (traditional vs. wider). At this stage, 7 of the games were excluded from the sample for definitional or scoping reasons.

4. Exclusion of games: The removed games did not meet our definition as highlighted above. In most cases, these were games focused on entertainment and not serious games focused on education. In some case the games were simply not available anymore. Other cases included the scope of what the game facilitated - if the game’s scope included only a very narrow skill or process useful to entrepreneurs, it was excluded as well.

5. The Entrepreneurship SG Rubric. The remaining 5 games were analyzed based on a rubric (see section on Rubric below), which established a deeper review criterion.