The creation of the centre for Playware is seen against the background of several years of collaboration between various curricula and institutes, established during the periods 2002-2004 and 2005-2007 by means of two large and consecutive research and development projects under the auspices of the Ministry of Science research fund, The IT Corridor, and in collaboration with business enterprises.
These projects, by means of which the research field of "playware" has been established, represent an innovative application of results derived from Danish humanities research into children's and young people's play culture at University of Southern Denmark and The Danish University of Education and research at on robotics and modern artificial intelligence at The Maersk McKinney Moller Institute at University of Southern Denmark.
- The play culture branch of research has itself been developed since the mid-1990s, primarily through the five-year research programme "Children's Culture and Childhood" at SDU (1996-2001, sponsored by LEGO A/S and KOMPAN A/S), and the two three-year research programmes "Children's Culture, Play Culture and Media" (SDU and DPU, 1997-2001) and "Children's growing up with Interactive Media" (DPU, SDU, RUC), supported by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities.
- The technological branch of research has developed since the mid-1990s with e.g the LEGO Lab founded by Henrik Hautop Lund and the edutainment robotics work developed by his research group, National Research Council projects related to the development of robotic building blocks such as I-BLOCKS and A-BLOCKS for entertainment and education, and EU projects such as the HYDRA project.