I think video games are more inspirational then they are educational. Of course, their power can be channeled to make them more useful but success stories are r

I think video games are more inspirational then they are educational. Of course, their power can be channeled to make them more useful but success stories are rare, if there are any. I know the head of the largest gaming magazine in Turkey, who quit his job years ago to consult Turkish game companies as well as the government to build such games. The government basically funded everything but the result is still below what they wished for. Reforming education is hard. So is building video games. Now they had two problems. Reminds me regex. :) The games that taught me real lessons were always those hardcore, for fun ones. Back in the day (2005), we didn't have Turkish translations for DnD rulebooks. I pirated PDF scans and read all of them (very slowly) to be able to play as a DM for my friends. That is still the most challenging reading comprehension practice I've ever done for the English language. I played the entire Monkey Island series with a dictionary open. Finished Starcraft BW multiple times just to be able grasp the story. Played Medieval Total War with many factions just to see what had been the differences among them during those times. Started researching the cold war after playing MGS3 since it was otherwise a really opaque thing to look at as a kid from Turkey. I owe my almost reflex-like analytical skills to those games where number crunching is the deciding factor for success, such as WoW with its auction house, Dota with its item combinations, Cities Skyline with balancing resources, and all those other tycoon games that I don't even remember. Finally and most importantly, I'm a computer engineer today because Starcraft BW, Heroes 3 M&M and Warcraft 3 had world editors that can produce maps even for "multiplayer". Thank you Blizzard and 3DO, I owe you people big time <3.