Let me see...

Privateer 2 gave me a lot of practice in market research and basic profit calculations.

Infocom games significantly extended my vocabulary.

Wii Fit has seriously improved my Yoga skills.

And Resident Evil taught me how to stay awake and alert for over 36 hours (that's not helpful, is it)

I'll keep thinking...

I learnt from playing WoW (of all things), about how some people think that the bombing of Dresden was a response to the bombing of Coventry. And that some believe that Churchill knew Coventry was going to be bombed before it happened, but didn't evacuate people because he didn't want to let the germans know that they'd broken the enigma code.

Not because they talk about WW2 at all in WoW, but because there's a scenario where Arthas decides to exterminate everyone in this village because they have eaten this wheat that will cause them to rise as zombies overnight. So it's kind of a similar ethical dilemma; he can kill these innocent people to prevent more innocent people from dying, but it still requires him to kill a bunch of innocent people. Maybe you could look around at some gaming forums and get some conversations between people about different moral implications of various choices in video games. Could be interesting.

I also learnt a bit about organisational structures and leadership styles from playing WoW. Like it is interesting how in an mmo like that where you have a large group of people performing a series of abstract tasks but there isn't any legitimate power, how people organise themselves. Like you never really get that kind of scenario in the real world, like in a village, the eldest male is generally going to be the leader (or whoever, defined by their culture). Or in a non-profit, the board of trustees are going to be the leaders (the biggest financial contributors). Like in an mmo, the only thing keeping a person in charge is their leadership skills which is kind of cool.

I think a lot could be learned from mmos. Like you could test different economic theories without the risk of killing a whole bunch of people. There is NO way you can do that in the real world without running into huge problems, but an mmo would be a perfect way to prototype these things.

But yeah TED is awesome, I remember seeing Jane Mcgonigal and Kellee Santiago speaking a separate TED events. Both did a fairly unconvincing job of making games seem legit though, I recommend watching this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN0qRKjfX3s

This guy is the best person I've ever come across at speaking about the legitimacy of games. Although in that particular video he could of sounded smarter by adding in the terms "androgogy vs pedagodgy".

Good luck with the talk, I hope someone posts it on the TEDxTalks channel on youtube.

Nice one, hope it goes well :)

Let's see..

Well plenty of money stuff for one. I've just cracked open Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe. The loan system helps my understanding of interest and all that. More loan = more interest. That game requires lots of analysing, planning routes for trains, weighing up whether to have a corner of go over a hill, they both slow trains, but different amounts. Goods, transport. Etc.

Just how to analyse systems and manipulate them.

Play is the most important thing, and some play theory research has taught me that people learn best by doing/participating, than being told or watching.

Check Raph Kosters A Theory of Fun for fun in games theory. (spoiler: Fun is learning).

Huizinga's Homo Ludens is also a great source for play theory. His argument is that many things are play.

I'd say the flight sim genre has taught me a fair deal, such as the basics of flight aerodynamics, aerial combat tactics used by real pilots, battles of World War 2 and so forth. Very little of which is useful in my day to day life though.

Same here regarding flight dynamics. And same for cars when they fly through the air (thanks to GTA3+).

Not exactly what you're looking for I bet, but one of the biggest things I've learned was in Civ (I think, maybe it was AoE or something similar): If you have a large standing army, it will drive you broke if you don't use it regularly. War lets you destroy your old weapons technology and munitions so that you can clear space and funds for the latest and greatest in weaponry. And of course you take over profitable lands and steal their stuff. So basically, you trade expensive mouths to feed and rusting assets for valuable land and resources.

This helped explain why countries with big militaries like to use them a lot.

Maybe not so much 'like to use them' as 'want to use them'. Damn the UN...

Leadership, teamwork - MMO raiding (Wow), Competitive FPS (Counter-strike, COD4, Team Fortress 2)

Psychology (more game design, than game playing but) - reading into games and why developers did something, and how and why people react to those things

Project management, Money management - RPG, sim games

Basic driving theory, basic road rules (or rather; how to break them - thanks GTA)

Countless "Tangent learning" subjects (DWWilson's YouTube link)

Being from Sweden I actually learned a lot of English from video games when I was younger (I never played any that was made specifically for learning). A lot of the time it was that I wanted to understand what was written and didn't know that much English, so I had to look up words.

The games that really forced me to do this was the word-command adventure games.

I'm a bit sad that nothing else comes to mind....but I'll try to think of something more.

Thanks everyone for your comments! Really helpful. It's going to be hard keeping this to 11 minutes.

@DWWilson. Thanks for linking to the James Portnow talk on Tangental Learning. I had seen that ages ago but lost it.  It is very much one of the ideas I want to touch on.

One of my problems/challenges is: we have lots of examples of tangental learning (I got interested in history playing Civ), and abstract learning (project management, problem solving) - all of which is great and necessary and in my talk.  

BUT how often do we ever get to use our flight sim skills, army tactic skills in real life?  I think it is a sad indictment that we hardly ever use our online leadership and teamwork skills from a WOW guild in our work lives, even when collaborating with teams online in a multinational!  Maybe we need to design life to fit our gaming skills (is this what the 'gamification' trend is doing?)

I think money, trading, numeracy and literacy skills are good solid examples of practical skills learnt from games.

Others I can think of are Fold-it: learn genetics/biology in a game; typing in any online chat world....  I'm sure there are lots of niche examples, but it depends on what your job is and what skills you need.

I forgot to mention Lemonade Stand on the C64, it taught me the basics of supply-and-demand economics.

I was thinking if there's an inverse relationship between the usefulness of the skills and knowledge you get from a particular game, and the amount of people that play that game.

>>I was thinking if there's an inverse relationship between the usefulness of the skills and knowledge you get from a particular game, and the amount of people that play that game.

I think you're right.  We can all cite general skills, and maybe each of us can cite 1-2 very specific skills from particular games that matter to us.

Thnx

Just thinking some random thoughts on the subject out loud..

Skills and knowledge gained from games can be either practical or theory. Practical skills can only be taught from simulations of the actual skill, theory skills can be taught by virtually any genre of game (Apogee's Maths Rescue for instance).

Unless they have an outside motivation to play the games (Such as studying towards a test) people will usually only play games offering practical skills if they're wanting to play as that role, such as pretending to be a pilot, truck driver etc. Games offering theory skills on the other hand need an unrelated gameplay mechanic (such as Platforming) to be fun.

"Video games lead to faster decisions that are no less accurate"

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/uor-vgl091010.php