Let's get the easy one out of the way first. Proponents of video games always point to their ability to help train the hand-eye coordination link. While that may be true, its actual benefit would seem to be limited to the activity you can only pursue using a screen. Video games can't train you to hit a speeding baseball with a bat, for example, or teach you how to thread a needle, or any of a thousand random tasks that require dexterity. However, one of the things that games can help with is in problem-solving. People who grew up playing games tend to have a knack for exploration and trying things out on their own. This sort of experimental tenacity serves one well in most aspects of life. There will be many situations in which you'll need to puzzle things out for yourself, and a history of playing games can set up the proper mindset for treating everything like it's a game to be mastered and won.

This is not to deride the power of hand-eye coordination, of course. As our lives become increasingly digital, the tools we use to work and navigate our lives begin to resemble the kinds of stimuli we find in the average video game. Small wonder; many of us have been putting into the world the things we want to experience, and those things are frequently informed by our love of video games. It's one way we make the world bearable, by turning everything into entertainment.

Video games are also great disseminators of information. I'd be willing to bet that people learned more history from playing Civilization than they ever had from taking courses in high school. You could argue that Spore teaches about genetic selection and diversity. But the main thrust of education via video games comes from the Serious Games initiative, which combines the play of video games with the rigorous nature of teaching knowledge. Any number of topics benefit from this, including engineering, civic planning, health issues, foreign affairs, and military strategy. There have also been games that teach first responders the skills they need to master, in fields like fire fighting, paramedics, and disaster control. While nothing really replaces first-hand experience, a lot of protocol can be absorbed through play, and it's been proven that repetition does help to keep skills fresh, even when not actually being physically performed. By rehearsing actions in the mind, the body becomes adept at applying those actions when called upon to demonstrate them in real life.