Every game has something to teach you, and while that’s usually in the way of tutorials for gameplay mechanics you might forget after you’ve finished the game, others have some real-life impact.
I’m not talking about games that intend to make you better at video games, either, as that’s something any game can do.
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There are a few games out there that intend to help you with some real, valuable skills, whether for everyday things or very niche skill sets.
I’ve compiled a few that I consider to be teaching genuinely valuable things you could use, whether that’s flying a plane or brewing coffee.
10Lethal Company
A Terrifying Lesson in Team Building
Lethal Company
ThoughLethal Companyis oft remembered as thesilly game where you peep the horrorsand hear your friends screaming off in the distance, it’s great for learning how to cooperate.
You could say this about most co-op titles, but I feel Lethal is especially effective at teaching you how to work with the people you’re around.
This is mainly because you must use your collective knowledge, communicate with walkie-talkies and limited views of the facility, and work together to get high quotas.
If you watch high-level gameplay of Lethal Company, you’ll see every player working in sync, and every single one of them contributing equally, which is a great skill to have.
9Guitar Hero
Vaguely Teaching Guitar, Mostly Teaching Rhythm
Guitar Hero (2005)
Guitar Herodoesn’t really teach you guitar, but it can teach you the fundamentals of rhythm, holding an instrument, and some nice hand-eye coordination with a very unusual controller.
It’s crazy what rhythm game players can achieve, and especially if you get into the depths of the hardest Clone Hero tracks, you’ll need insane dexterity.
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As long as you’re actually making an effort to play on the harder difficulties, you’ll get better and better at learning rhythms and playing your fake guitar.
If you want to learn real guitar, you’ll find that all that Guitar Hero expertise will transfer over at least as much as high school credits do to college.
Crash Course in Game Development
While every video game can teach game development, just as any book can set you up as a writer,Portal 2is both a banger game and great at enlisting you into the game dev business.
This is in no small part due to the developer logs, which detail quite a lot of the game’s creation, and all the small hitches and fun design details you probably never noticed.
On top of those great audio logs, you’ve got a very extensive level editor, modding community, and workshop support to let you make the game your own.
I think this is one of the best games to really explore and mess around with if you’re looking for something to get into game development, and all the advice is obviously great, coming from Valve.
7Microsoft Flight Simulator
Fun for Pilots, or Messing Around
Microsoft Flight Simulator
I didn’t want to include a ton of simulators on this list, since it’d be a little unfair to call them “games” per se, but I thinkMicrosoft Flight Simulatorcounts as a game.
For one, it’s really fun to fly around a full recreation of the planet, just to mess around with very realistic plane physics, and Microsoft treats this series with thesame type of marketing as all their other games.
It should go without saying, but a flight simulator is intended to make you better at flying planes, and is accurate enough that pilots use this game for training.
It’s an incredibly niche skill, sure, but if you ever wanted to start learning how to fly, there’s no better place to start, and even if you don’t, trying to find your house on the map is fun.
6Persona 5
Passionate Coffee Brewing
Persona 5is usually described as half social simulator, half JRPG, but I’d like to add that it’s also half coffee nerd’s paradise.
As a certified bean juice enjoyer myself, I find the really intricately animated pour-over technique, the various trivia cards about coffee,and Sojiro’s dialogue about itto be excellent at making people learn what coffee is all about.
It’s really cool that if you use the trivia to pick out the beans you want, get them to a coarse grind in a pour-over glass, then replicate the technique you see in-game, you’ll have a damn good cup of joe.
It’s, again, a pretty niche skill, but it was done so in-depth that I’d be remiss not to mention it.
5Gartic Phone
Become an Artist
If you’re looking for a game similar to Drawful fromJackbox, then Gartic Phone has that and more, with a great incentive to get better at art.
If you’re playing something like Animation mode, you’ll constantly have someone else’s art in the back, which can help you learn by tracing.
It’s especially nice if you can manage to get a fun, supportive group, and since there’s no real scoring or goal other than having fun, it’s a pretty great space to learn.
You could just lean into the bad art for funny drawings, but having high-effort art of ridiculous ideas is even better.
4Forza Horizon 5
Tuning to Perfection
Forza Horizon 5
If you’ve ever playedForza Horizon 5with someone who does manual tuning in-game, they’re probably a massive car nerd in real life, and I feel that correlation isn’t without basis.
This game does a superb job at helping you learn the intricacies and mechanics of cars, and would help you be knowledgeable in tuning one in real life.
It’s not going to make you the most accomplished mechanic ever, but knowing how to tune a car, all the little specifications you’d make to it, and every small thing to boost performance are great skills to have.
Forza doesn’t have the most realistic racing and car physics ever, but what it does have is this, and this is pretty handy information.
Learning to Breathe
While it won’t teach you how to double jump,Celestehas some great lessons on managing anxiety, getting over self-hatred, and climbing mental mountains.
While all that is absolutely incredible, I do want to mention the scene on the cable cart ride, as it genuinely helped me during stressful times.
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Theo tells Madeline just to imagine a feather going up when you breathe out and falling back down slowly, telling her to breathe slowly and keep it stable in the middle.
This is just a simple visualization trick to help you breathe, and yet, it’s something I constantly come back to, and it’s a big reason why I recommend this game to so many anxiety-ridden people.
2Minecraft
Discount Computer Science Class
Minecraftis a game of a million different avenues, and while I certainly think it can be a good route to learning designing or decoration,Redstone is the main thing that comes to mind.
you may make wild contraptions using the cool crimson powder, from massive doors to simple addition calculators, to full-on computers.
When you factor in Command Blocks, Minecraft essentially becomes a platform for all sorts of coding shenanigans. Whether it’s an emulator or working video calls, you can find just about any random computer science project done with these, and playing with them is probably what led to me becoming a programmer later in life.
1PC Building Simulator
No Cable Management Required
PC Building Simulator
Even less serious of simulator than Flight Sim,PC Building Simulatorgame-ifies the PC building process and puts you at the helm of your own PC repair shop.
You’ll obviously be learning how to swap out PC parts, adjust and fix broken bits in a computer, and build a whole PC from scratch.
This is a pretty niche skill to have, but given you’d be playing the game on a computer that someone had to build, it’s a niche that hits home.
Being able to adjust any bit of your PC in whatever way you want, whether for an upgrade or just to fix something, is incredibly useful, and this is the best way to practice.
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I hope you’re in a good mood right now, because shortly, your blood will be boiling, and you’ll be calling this the worst article ever written.
