Serious games, i.e. video games to further training and education objectives, and immersive virtual reality experiences are increasingly used in a variety of domains, including health and safety. However, compared to entertainment games, the design and evaluation of such computer applications is more complex because it needs to take into account several additional factors that are not well understood yet. Our research focuses on the design, rigorous evaluation, and deployment of serious games and virtual experiences, aiming at improving their theoretical grounding as well as their practical effectiveness. The real-world domains for which we have built and deployed applications include aviation safety, medical first response, civil protection, and crime response.