E-learning and digital entertainment techniques, tools and systems are becoming popular and can be found in many real-world educational applications in many co- tries. The driving force behind these technologies is the rapidly growing requirements of edutainment, especially from the perspective of the users. This has led to the increasing interest of researchers in this area. The articles in this issue give a rich overview of how edutainment technologies can be creatively used for training and education purposes. The first 12 articles of this issue represent a selection of outstanding contributions from Edutainment 2010, the 5th International Conference on E-learning and Games, held in Changchun, China, in August 2010. The main purpose of this event is to faci- tate the discussion, presentation, and information exchange on the scientific and te- nological developments in the emerging field of digital entertainment techniques and systems for education. These 12 papers concentrated on three aspects: e-learning s- tem and applications, game techniques for learning, and virtual reality techniques for entertainment. They are closely related to the topics of this journal.