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[Astral]

Another one for Minecraft. I've always been interested in electrical systems, and having redstone model electrical systems down to the point where you can create turing complete computers is a bonus. On the other hand, I also developed a bit more towards planning ahead and the importance of organization, as I got tired of having to remodel the base I create whenever I add a new machine. Don't forget troubleshooting tactics; when you've got a network consisting of a hundred individual parts, if not more, it pays to have a bunch of ways to figure out how to fix it. Even if that way is still Google sometimes.

Pharoah + Cleopatra, Zeus + Poseidon, and the Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom city builders of old gave me a love for ancient history growing up. They had a lot of extra real-world information in them if you knew where to look.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms series interested me from a very early age, even before I was able to understand what most of the concepts meant, and even though a large number of the events portrayed are fictitious. I have a distinct memory of trying to explain why Yuan Shao was one of the best factions to play on in elementary school, when the version for the Sega Saturn was out. It also led me to read the enormous text that the series was based off of.

Civilization, for the reasons cited in the original post, though I never picked it up until Civilization 3.

Battlefield 3-4 with friends in a large enough group to attempt organizing our efforts; while I am not too great at first person shooters in general, aside from sniping (as motion prediction is a fairly simple skill for me at long ranges), being able to get a group of people and actually organize with tactics, armor doctrine, and air support where needed is a blast. Of course, many times we ended up just saying screw it and went all zerg rush, but that's a tactic in of itself.

[Aoi]

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.

Monopoly gets a lot more complex if you play it with the auction rule (as intended) which involves layers of risk/reward and reading your opponents. Jack up the social interaction by limiting the amount of money the bank has, so you're forced into interacting with other people faster. I played with a version that let you call to privately meet with one person each round to draw up backroom agreements, which may or may not be enforced, but at the cost of exposing the deal...

Yeah, it wasn't very friendly.

[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.

Monopoly gets a lot more complex if you play it with the auction rule (as intended) which involves layers of risk/reward and reading your opponents. Jack up the social interaction by limiting the amount of money the bank has, so you're forced into interacting with other people faster. I played with a version that let you call to privately meet with one person each round to draw up backroom agreements, which may or may not be enforced, but at the cost of exposing the deal...

Yeah, it wasn't very friendly.

Acquire does most of that without house rules. Until you hit an actual auction, Monopoly per the rules is roll and move and make no decisions. Automatically buy if you have the money or auction it off or do what a card says. The end. A two player game can be over 30 seconds after starting. If you want backroom deals then play Diplomacy per the rules.

[a1s]

We never had any "backroom" deals, just regular deals- selling people their missing monopoly street for oodles of cash, faking out at auctions you don't want to buy into, offering people that last $100 they need at near 100% interest- ah, being 12 was awesome. (Actually I still introduce "loans" to every game I play, it's amazing how rarely I get ripped off- I guess Rousseau Was Right. That or I need more devious friends.)

[Tawa]

The Ace Attorney games caused me to look up the Japanese court system.

[Scoops Novel]

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.

Hold your horses, this:

Influent

looks promising

[Retropunch]

Hold your horses, this:

Influent

looks promising

I hadn't heard of that before, but it looked really interesting so read into it and asked around. Turns out a friend who is a language teacher had a go with it. They said it's rather good for teaching household words/nouns and whatever, but rather limited in scope. You certainly aren't going to learn a language with it or any conversation, but for vocab it's pretty good. It's also a rather 'overt' learning game - you definitely know you're learning and whilst it does gamify things, it's not quite enough to make it a 'game'. I'm also not too keen on how the devs have continued with it - they did a rather ill advised kickstarter where they tried to raise $25000 for a basic 2d shootery game by using the promise of adding more content for influent if they succeeded. It flopped massively, so I'm unsure of the future of influent now

Also, for anyone learning languages using games/movies - get a paper dictionary rather than google translate!! It's amazing how much better stuff goes in when you actually have to search for it rather than google translate it. I felt with GT I was subconsciously thinking ('oh I can alt+tab and just search it instantly so why bother') whereas with a dictionary I had to go allllll the way back to wherever it was

[sambojin]

Frontier Elite 2: Why space battles will never be as cool as they are in the movies. Even basic Newtonian physics has shown us that.

M.U.L.E. The competitive/co-operative nature of a closed system, where you have to be #1, without crushing your competition completely. This is very hard for humans to learn how to do.

Capitalism: Business baby. So much business.

Transport Tycoon Deluxe: Nothing in the real world works like this. But somehow it made me feel smarter. I like that setting up a model train signalling system can do that to me.

Civilisation: And Lo!, did the chariots of the Mongols wipe clean from the Earth all other peoples. They then went into space. In about 500BC apparently. From: "The Completely Didn't Happen History of the Mongols (that we know of)."

Merchant Prince/Machiavelli: This is how the church worked. And a little bit of supply and demand and horribly expensive mercenary armies. Quite a good game.

Colonization: Yes, European settlers were bastards to everyone. Natives, "indentured servants" (slaves), other European settlers, even their home countries if they could manage it. Everyone.

Democracy 3: Because if Australians didn't drink or smoke and we gave all our police machine guns, surely everything will be fine and we'll continuously vote for a nameless white guy with no idea about politics. Surely.....

EUIV/CKII: Hell, I never even knew most of these countries ever existed. Then all their families died and the troops moved in and they became Samland. Sucks to be them.

Pirates!: You may hate it, it might seem boring and repetitive and completely at odds with every other facet of your life, but learning how to dance is worth it. The chicks dig it.

GTA: Crime does pay. But they will shoot you for it. All of them.

Indianapolis 500, the Simulation: Basic concepts like downforce, heat management, gearing ratios and tire camber. And that a game made 25 years ago still probably has the most spectacular crash mechanics of any game made so far.

[Scoops Novel]

Much thanks retro!

[Noel.se]

In general, real-time strategy helps my multitasking skills and Turn based strategy helps my planning skills.

Crusader Kings helps with geography, as has been mentioned. While some things regarding the feudal system are wrong/simplified I did get interested in it and learned about it elsewhere.

Thanks to D&D I looked up medieval demographics.

Battlestations: Midway and Pacific started my obsession with warships in general and the IJN in particular.

Cites:Skylines - Interchanges. Just interchanges. Oh, and now I feel pity for those who design road networks.

[BigD145]

Cites:Skylines - Interchanges. Just interchanges. Oh, and now I feel pity for those who design road networks.

They almost always need to tear down every building around the road to redo the road properly. Instead they build up and down and around while causing other problems, like not solving the issue they needed to fix. Skylines lets you tear things down without much impact to the city except a better/different road structure, which also isn't very realistic but not much of the game is.

[Neonivek]

Looking at everyone's list it seems like people are just listing games for basically any reason so long as they have even remote educational quality (Especially the games with a rather fictional approach to history)... but SOMEONE needs to actually try in this...

SimCity 2000 and I believe 3000 as well.

The advisors and citizens that would pop up and ask for certain programs and changes to be made? These were actually real people. The game actually became a sort of educational game if you had the right mindset as it taught you the ways in which a city changed over time and the challenges as new technology was introduced and made obsolete. Even right down to the motivations for these changes, such as the homeless shelters starting off for less than altruistic reasons.

[Retropunch]

I do have to agree with Neonivek that some of these are rather a stretch. I mean, they may improve general abstract skills, but I wouldn't say that a lot of what has been mentioned teach you actual skills from scratch or 'educate you'.

That being said, the examples cited are still probably the best examples! It really makes me think if there is a niche for adult/advanced educational games which are actually good. I could easily imagine a language learning espionage game, or an bomb defusing game that teaches proper electronics
 

[Neonivek]

One game I saw a letsplay of I thought was pretty amazing because it took place in a fictional China but the concepts and things in that game were so culturally thick that you really did learn something about that country while you were there.

It wasn't trying to be educational but it did make me somewhat interested in a game that could take place in... saw... Tibet where if you honestly tried you could learn quite a bit about Tibet.

---

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father

Now this game wasn't trying to be educational, but they actually copy and pasted a TON of text book information about Voodoo and its many forms. You definitely will learn a lot about voodoo in the process.

[PTTG??]

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

Kerbal Space Program is a stealth educational game in the way that Godzilla is stealth. Sure, you see it coming, you just can't help but enjoy learning from it. And/or getting stomped on by a giant lizard.