The best thing about education and games would have to apply to Silent Hunter II, III and IV.

I have found out more about my computer and how it works due those three games.

I have found out how to add more ram memory, up grade my video card, clean my computer, how to defrag constantly, what video settings work and what settings don't work. I have found what page file means. I have added mods and deleated mods to get the game to work.

I have a better working relationship to my computer thanks to submarine sims and to be fair flight sim games like FSX, than any other reason.

I submitted that thought on the basis of accessability; the students who are most in need of education beyond the base curriculum in the classroom are frequently underprivileged and likely not going to be able to afford a PC that can crunch the latest renditions of Silent Hunter. Text-based games are cheap and quick to develop and could be custom-tailored to seem more 'cool' e.g. change the setting to an urban atmosphere rather than fantasy. Further, they can be run on the decrepit PCs that I have encountered in public school classrooms and libraries.

Silent Hunter is fun, but I don't feel it has taught me any practical skills, as I don't see myself serving in the diesel boats in the near future. Learning to communicate with people beyond your typical urban youth vernacular is a good place to start opening opportunities.

@ Fatty

Well, OK...

I guess I was thinking more along the lines of:

If you have a gamer on your gift shopping list, you can purchase these popular games for them and also feel good about the fact that they are getting something educational benefit out of it.

...or maybe a teacher could put together some lesson plans that coincide with some of these games. If the students should happen to have the games, great! If not, they can still do the lesson.

Your taking a slightly different direction on the subject which is certainly valid but not really the direction that I was headed. Your approach is sorta like "Here's what the kids really need", but not necessarily what they'd actually play. But your opinion is valid, thanks for the input.

I'm looking for mainstream, popular PC and console games that gamers enjoy playing and also may have the added side benefit of educational value. Almost like your covertly inserting some learning into their free game time.

There are definitely math lessons embedded in the stock SH series... in particular, time-speed-distance problems, various trig and graphic plotting examples, intercepts, angles, degrees, relative vs. true, there's really quite a bit in there and much of it would seep through at even the lower realism settings.

An RTS for instance that involves historically accurate maps of Europe might indirectly benefit the geography student?

Heck, there's all kinds of stuff.

Sid Meyer's Pirates. You learn a lot of geography that is still applicable to the modern countries involved.

Panzer General 2. It's fairly simple but contains all the fundamental political issues of that war, coupled with standard logistics and terrain planning for combat.

Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3. There's quite a bit involved with those.

Ages of Empires 2 (skip 3). There's a tremendous amount of history and basic logistics involved with that game.

I learned quite a bit about English geography from all the "Defender of the Crown" games. Many of the counties have been broken down further, but there's quite a few that are still applicable.

Any flight simulator is good. Standard VOR fixes, point to point navigation, emergency drills, basic avionics and aeronautics. People are going to be gliding on air for at least another century.

There certainly more but that's all I can come up with right now.

Obviously if we are ever invaded by aliens, then good skills with a trackball and experience with Missile Command will clearly be a vital contribution to the defence of the planet.

On a more serious note, wargames and simulations can spark interest in people to learn about the real events, so they are always a good choice and generally serve to widen people's knowledge.

As already noted, many MMORPG's and such like, can teach you stuff about economics and supply and demand as well as marketing. Ironically enough, EVE Online, which I played a lot for a while until I found out about the scandal and quit in disgust (their loss, as I had two accounts) showed that sometimes economies do not have a level playing field either! Many people also quit EVE in disgust because of that scandal too, so I guess that was educational, if not intentionally so, and more of a lesson for CCP than the players of the game:rotfl:

Knowledge gained from playing flight sims actually saved my life once while flying a real aircraft too, which was cool.

:D Chock

Hey, don't think all 15-18 year olds have a low attention span. Even in my early teens I was playing simulations on full realism!! :)

Of course I did like Halo too... :lol:

Half-Life taught me not to mess with zombies unless I had my trusty crowbar/shotgun/savegame

...and I think that's true of a LOT of high school gamers. We just tend to think they're all absorbed in GTA and Madden tournaments.

In high school I recall all my favorites were MicroProse titles, I also really liked the first edition of Pirates.


Ya know I was thinking of suggesting Gran Turismo for driver ed... but in reality, it's just not that hard to drive a car!

I'll put in my two cents, too.

Railroad Tycoon 2 & 3:
- business management, logistics
- geography (good for a european to learn all those locations of famous american cities, especially from western movies ;) )

Age of Empires 2:
- a huge amount of history you can learn if you browse through the in-game database
- basic strategy training exercise

Der Patrizier 2:
- again business management, logistics
- small amount of history (Zeit der Hanse)
- european geography, old trade routes and their consequences

Thniper

The RR Tycoon series is the only game I've come across that includes financing, stock/bond issuance, margin calls, hostile buyouts, supply & demand ,debt management... It's really a pretty cool intro to business and economics.

Too bad Sid Meier had to go and redo it in a dumbed down fashion and trash that aspect of the game. I had such high hopes...

Personally, I've never touched any of the "Sims" series...

Would anyone recommend any of the Sims titles for Social Studies or Personal Economics? ...or is there really nothing much of educational quality there?

The only educational value of The Sims is time management. That's what the game is about. You have 24 hours in a day that pass way fast and need to do alot of stuff in these hours: study, work, eat, make/keep friends, keep your character and the objects working (satisfy your "fun" and "social" needs and clean the house and repair broken stuff), sleep, and in the second game have babies baby to keep your family going.

Maybe you could use it to teach what happens when you spend more than you earn, as you receive bills every few days according to the objects you own. So with a cheap job you could still save money and buy the best TV and the best computer but then you wouldn't be able to pay their bills, or once being billed you wouldn't have enough money left over to buy anything else before passing away...:rotfl:

Oh I just remembered another great one. Close Combat! Something about top down low graphics games from the late 90s just kicks ass. That game teaches you so much about tactics and strategy. And the community mods are brilliant. Juno Sword Gold ftw! I just wish I could get a copy of CC:Marines. That one sounds brilliant.

In a slightly related note I suddenly found out a week ago that Infantry Zone is free again! Its a top down online soldier game from like 2000 that I played way back until they made it pay to play in 2002. But its back to free! Whats brilliant is that the game's dynamic forces team work. Even noobs report enemy position.

Check it out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_(computer_game)

Most of what I have learnt through games I have learnt because the game inspired me to learn, not because the game taught me.

However, most historical games teach you a lot of academic information. (I can name every radar set used on VIIC uboats in 1939-1945), but this kind of stuff isn't normally going to come in handy.

They also teach specific information/skills. (I know how to make a good convoy attack in a 1940s German submarine) but this kind of stuff isn't normally going to come in handy either.

What they don't often teach is the important stuff:
Key Skills (Math, English)
Culture (It's not like reading shakespeare)
Broad history (you might learn that Hitler used U-boats against America, but you wont learn about how the war started, what impact it had etc, etc.)
Work Related skills/trades (unless you are going to become a submarine captain)

test

Very true.