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[Sonlirain]

Well since the thread got reanimated...

Caesar and other Impressions games.
You can read quite a bit about ancient romans, greeks, egyptians, chinese if you are really curious and click the questionmark button.

[gimlet]

Board/card games were pretty good at this.  My favorites were

• Mille Bornes - Great for younger kids - lots of subtraction, some planning
• Monopoly  - Fair amount of math, planning and strategy, elementary business
• Scrabble & other word games - build vocabulary
• Darts - lots of subtraction
• Legos/Meccano sets - building, mechanical operations, spatial manipulation
• Game of the States - A US picture puzzle, learn where the states are, products, capitals
• Clue - logic and deduction
• Mr President & other election games - learn the US campaigning and election system
• Pursue the Pennant, Statis Pro Football, Paydirt, Strat-o-Matic Football - rules, details and strategy for sports
• lots of pretty detailed history games - Afrika Korps, Stalingrad, Battle of the Bulge, Gettysburg etc good for geography too
pretty much all of them help with family interaction, learning to take turns, plotting to gain advantages and win, etc.

The computer versions of these unfortunately do all the addition/subtraction for the player, so there's no drill for that.

Computer games - I learned a *lot* of geography from war games, especially in the Pacific.  I was motivated to learn where all those islands were, and the countries of Southeast Asia, mainly from Pacific War.  And a bunch of the eastern European countries 'cause of games like Hearts of Iron.  And Europe at various time periods from games like Europa Universalis, Merchant Prince, Crusader Kings.

• Shadow President is good for world geography, country alignments, population and production rankings
• Capitalism - pretty good simulation of business, markets and manufacturing strategy
• Wall Street Raider - *very* realistic sim of stock market, corporate finance and manipulation
• those typing training games that drop letters and you have to kill them by typing that letter on the keyboard
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms/Nobunga's Ambition - historical personalities and some of the dynamics of China's Han dynasty/feudal Japan
• Harpoon, Command MANO, TacOps (the Major H game, not the crappy shooter) - detailed capabilities of weapon systems, armaments and sensors on ships, planes, vehicles

The real gains come when a game motivates you to research the subject more - I read a lot of history books to learn more about the battles and the strategic framework of the conflict.

[Akura]

Fraction Frog Teaches Typing. I think I learned more about insect reproduction with FFTT than anything else.

Never marry a stripper.

What's wrong with a stripper wife?

[BigD145]

Monopoly has only one strategy: buy if you can afford it and auction if you can't. There is no planning. You don't even have to think about 'buy low, sell high'. For that you want Acquire. Acquire also has spatial analysis and multiplication and division. It's a far superior money game.

[TempAcc]

The Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings and Victoria series from paradox all covertly teach you about history, geography, geopolitics, sociology, medieval culture, state administration, politics, economy (to a lesser extent) and war. Faaaar more then any civilization game.

X3: Albion Prelude can also teach you the basics of stock exchange and supply & demand, altough its a highly predictable system. Its easy to manipulate the stock market to make yourself infinirich.

Additionaly, most major MMOs can end up teaching you about supply & demand and the effects of product scarcity or overabundance in an economy.

[Uristides]

I'm not sure that counts as covert but I've been playing World of Guns: Gun Disassembly and I learnt a ton about how firearms operate and it got me into researching what each part does and what designs are out there, etc.

Other than that I can only think of the usual suspects that have been brough up over and over on the thread.

Also the thread title remembered me of this small article where a historian gamer goes on about how mainstream games like Assassin's Creed and God of War can spur people into learning more about the periods the games portray.

[Krevsin]

Kerbal space program. It's rough, but it teaches you a lot of things about rocketry and orbital dynamics.

[Scoops Novel]

Larry Laffer and Space Quest expanded my english vocabulary with many useful words.

Anything like this for other languages? Come to think of it, does anyone know some dedicated languages games?

Bump

[a1s]

Larry Laffer and Space Quest expanded my english vocabulary with many useful words.

Anything like this for other languages? Come to think of it, does anyone know some dedicated languages games?

Bump

Well there are at least 2 Flash games to learn Kanji (Japanese writing and (by necessity) basic vocabulary) but, to my knowledge, nothing that could match even Dora the Explorer for other languages.
I'll try to hunt down those 2 Kanji games tomorrow.

[BigD145]

Larry Laffer and Space Quest expanded my english vocabulary with many useful words.

Anything like this for other languages? Come to think of it, does anyone know some dedicated languages games?

Bump

Well there are at least 2 Flash games to learn Kanji (Japanese writing and (by necessity) basic vocabulary) but, to my knowledge, nothing that could match even Dora the Explorer for other languages.
I'll try to hunt down those 2 Kanji games tomorrow.

Influent

[Retropunch]

Anything like this for other languages? Come to think of it, does anyone know some dedicated languages games?

I've been looking for something like this for a long time, and unfortunately not. HOWEVER, once you've got the basics down, I'd highly suggest getting an old lucas arts adventure game (or similar) and putting that into subtitle mode for the language you're learning (some even have the voice acting in a lot of languages). As they're so well animated, and the dialogue relatively sparse, you can normally get through pretty well!

I improved my language skills a lot this way.

Also if you're learning Russian, here is a hilariously bad Russian Space Quest ripoff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv2NIPbwKYw

[Nuttycompa]

* Liberal Crime Squad (the reason I know more than my friends about American decisionmaking)

"The best way to change public opinion to your side is gun down everybody on the other side."

Yes that sum up American decision making quite well 

[itisnotlogical]

Thirding/fourthing/whatever-ing Minecraft. Taught me a thing or two about the importance of timing in mechanical systems.

[MrRoboto75]

Tropico taught me that pineapples grow on little bush-like plants.

[Rince Wind]

Eve Online can teach you about economics and social behaviour.

Aurora 4x can teach you about the bodies in our solar system and to a lesser extend about extrasolar ones (while the planets are more or less randomly generated outside sol, at least the stars are real one). If you play with real star systems on of course.