Most people tend to think that you can't learn anything from games and that in fact they rot your brain. They couldn't be furthur fromt he truth. Games have been a way to learn since prehistoric times. In fact the phrase "It's just a game" often implies that the "Game" is just practice for the real thing. For example back in the stone age a game of tag might help children ready themselves for hunting.
Puzzle games are a good example of how you can learn from playing games, they often teach you logic and critical thinking. In Tetris you have to think quickly to be able to place the blocks accordingly to fill the empty space and when I play Professor Layton I have to pull out my entire mental capabilities to solve the puzzles I ecounter from math to slider puzzles.
Playing a game or a simulation allows us to experience a particular situation in a safe manner such as the Red Flag Missions used by the U.S Air Force to provide the first ten missions for new pilots in a realistic simulation. In a simulation you can "die" as many times as needed and still come back armed with the knowledge of your previous mistakes. In the real world if you lose, that's it you're dead.
Games may not teach you math or philosophy but they do teach you some basic skills and then give you a problem in which you figure out how you use those skills in a variety of ways from aiming atraight in a FPS game or rescuing the princess in an adventure game. Games have been a way of teaching life skills for all species since the dawn of time.
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