Our society is undergoing a transformation, where the role of networking, collaboration and new technologies get more focus. This transformation requires changes in education and training activities for the involved emergency management professionals. Training collaboration in various contexts can be supported by different technologies and applications, especially virtual reality, simulations and serious games (SSGs). By allowing higher experiences in new, changeable situations, these technologies promise new ways to learn to handle a number of new situations, e.g. accidents with electric cars or new sun panels in the neighborhood, handling extreme weather conditions, helping patients with multiple diseases in various situations. This presentation is based on several studies of why the available and promising SSG technologies can be difficult to use, even a long time after their procurement by the user organizations. The focus is on training ambulance professionals, and firefighters. The data is collected via interviews and observations with major stakeholders from procuring organizations, but also from SSG developers and researchers from eleven different countries. Learning from these studies contributed to two experimental studies performed in Sweden. The results confirm the possible benefits of SSGs to achieve preparedness for new societal challenges, but also highlight an urgent need for new approaches to better integrate these technologies into educational practices in local organizations. To experience meaningful training, there is a need to determine recognizable training situations relevant to the training goals and clarify how the technology adds value for both instructors and students and organizations. The obtained results provide further suggestions on what knowledge sharing- and stakeholder- relevant factors have to be considered when making technology adoption and implementation decisions. This knowledge is necessary for planning simulation rich scenarios for future emergency training.