The notion of using digital games with educational purposes is not new. As soon as digital games appeared in the late 70’s and early 80’s, some authors such as Malone already identified their great potential, without even dreaming the enormous social impact and economic size that the game industry would acquire in the course of the following 30 years.

The idea was seen in the academic field as interesting, and different authors occasionally reflected on the educational potential at the intersection of games, motivation, fun and engagement. However, it was at the turn of the century that a new generation of authors managed to structure the foundations to establish "Digital Game-Based Learning" as an academic field with a unique identity. This generation included many authors and it may be unfair to highlight a selected few, but any academic working in the field would quickly recognize names such as Papert, Gee, Jenkins or Prensky. While they cannot be considered founding fathers of the idea, they did bring forward the right ideas at the right time, just when the growth of the videogame industry exploded.

As a technologist and researcher in technology enhanced learning for more than ten years, I must admit that the confluence of factors that are appearing lately in the area make me think that we are at the verge of tasting a mouthful of disruptive innovation. The perception is not only mine, granted, but the analogies used to describe what is happening are really reveling. In The Campus Tsunami, David Brooks quoted John Hennessy the president of Stanford University saying that there is a tsunami coming. A bit of an exaggeration (specially after viewing the countless videos of the Japan disaster in youtube) but nonetheless reveling of the perceptions at the governing ranks of the leading institutions.