PlayMancer (A European Serious Gaming 3D Environment) is a Collaborative Project, started on 1st of November 2007 and running for 36 months in total. 8 partners from 6 countries participate in the project.

The potential of games for entertainment and learning has been demonstrated thoroughly from research and clearly in the market place. Unfortunately, the investments committed to entertainment dwarfs that which is committed for more serious purposes. Furthermore, game development has become more complex, expensive, and burdened with a long development cycle. This creates barriers to independent game developers, and inhibits the introduction of innovative games, or new game genres, i.e. serious games, or games accessible to communities with special needs. Playmancer is investigating the potential of games in the Health Care sector.

The objectives of the project are :

1. Playmancer aims at integrating a development platform, based on an existing games engine, with tools and mechanisms that will allow for interoperable binding, inclusion and access of existing, emerging and new multi-modal I/O devices.
2. Playmancer evaluation objectives include recording of interaction data aiming at making them available on a readable and standardized manner, thus allowing therapists to evaluate and better understand the status and evolution of the patients.
3. The Playmancer evaluation system platform will be tailored for realizing serious games scenarios for health and consequently it will be tested and validated in the domain of two applications (on pain rehabilitation and mental health) involving the integration of innovative I/O devices.