Geography, GIS and gaming: Learning tools or just for fun?

GIS will continue to play a big role in today's and tomorrow's digital geography games. Matt Artz writes about this in one of his blog posts at Esri that the sophistication of video gaming today has come to a point where researchers can leverage this gaming technology, tied with GIS and real world geospatial layers, to create virtual environments that duplicate the actual environment. Board games are another type of game in which geography plays a role. When one considers the physical object, board games all have a two dimensional surface and have game pieces that move from one space to another on the board. In almost every case, all forms of these games have migrated, in one way or another, to the digital world and have become sophisticated video games that are played on X-Box, PS3, Wii, or online. These games also have some type of spatial or geographical component to them.