Gaming is often seen as a waste of time or a fun distraction at best. But contemporary gaming is different. Online video games are increasingly learning tools that help gamers develop life skills.

Here are three games that are unlike anything you’ve seen before.

Learn about the economy with Eve Online

Eve Online’s Odyssey expansion Eve Online

Eve Online is a sci-fi massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in which you play the role of a spaceship pilot and compete with tens of thousands of other players for fame and fortune.

What is astounding about this game isn’t only the beauty of its universe, but also an intricate approach to the economy. Eve Online boasts a fully functional player-driven market, as well as player-led corporations and alliances, making it a complex virtual-economy simulator.

Trading platform in Eve Online Eve Online

It goes to such depths, in fact, that Eve Online employs a chief economist, Eyjolfur Guomundsson. When asked how one may benefit from playing Eve, Guomundsson said in a BusinessWeek podcast: “We can learn from watching the market behavior within a confined world like Eve Online and learn about how price bubbles, for instance, are formed, and what triggers them. We can also see in terms of social interaction how people form groups, and what it is that makes people work together.”

He said Eve Online makes an excellent business simulator. Business students set up and run their own corporations, and see how their decisions play out in a complex market.

Sharpen your driving skills with iRacing

The starting grid iRacing.com

This isn’t your average Gran Turismo. iRacing looks more like a professional driving simulation than a typical car-racing game. Although graphically inferior to modern arcade titles, iRacing blows them away in terms of complexity and realism. Suffice to say that professional racing organizations such as NASCAR and Skip Barber Racing not only endorse the game, but they also use it for training purposes.

If you’re a car aficionado, but you’re having trouble scraping together the funds for real-world amateur leagues, iRacing is the perfect solution. You can improve both your driving skills and your technical knowledge by training on iRacing’s professionally endorsed sim platform. Just be sure to have the patience to cope with its steep learning curve.

Crash and burn iRacing.com

Develop your survival skills with Project Zomboid

Survival of the fittest Project Zomboid

Although there are many survival-theme games and the zombie survival genre is considered mainstream, Project Zomboid manages to raise the bar by being original and unforgiving in its approach to game play. Its rudimentary “old school” graphics hide a complex survival system that forces players to think ahead and plan actions carefully.

Stressed, injured, hungry ... just a regular Project Zomboid day. Project Zomboid

While in many other zombie-themed games it’s enough to take a gun and shoot the walking dead, Project Zomboid takes a drastically different route. In this game players are regular folks, forced to fend off zombies while fighting boredom, depression, sickness, dehydration, hunger, lacerations and more. This game will teach you about the FIFO (first-in, first-out) concept of food preservation, as well as the importance of organizing your supplies. You will also learn how to prioritize your daily trips to waste as few resources as possible and to gain maximum benefit.

The game scenario covers months of a zombie apocalypse and, as such, helps you realize the value of long-term planning and preparation; this goes especially for stockpiling supplies and the relocation of your base.

While you won’t learn the exact, real-world steps required to survive, Project Zomboid provides an excellent foundation for learning and understanding the value of the basic principles of self-preservation.

For a longer (and more concise) list of games you can learn from, there’s an entire blog dedicated to the topic. In the author’s own words: “... video games have real, long-reaching educational value. Next time someone says video games are pointless, send them here.”

If you considered computer games to be a waste of time, has your opinion changed after reading this article? If not, why? Do you have any games you’d like to add to the list? Please comment below.

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