"I thought you were up here killing space aliens."

"No. I'm building a new franchise."

While games are picking up a bad rap here and there for a variety of reasons, there's at least one more person who doesn't seem to mind her kids gaming.

Danielle Crittenden, both a mother and a writer, recently wrote a personal piece about how video games didn't seem so bad. In their case, her son was explaining the process of creating and building a franchise for MLB Baseball, parking lot fares and attendance tallies included. From creating a team of nobodies in a sports sim, her son has to train them, make sure they do the requisite training, and occasionally make sure they study for their classes. That's a lot of responsibility on one young gamer's shoulders, though it's funny how the video game version of a college sports sim seems more interested in a student's grades than the real college leagues.

After some thought, she realized how games could entice gamers to learn more about a particular topic. On the subject of WWII FPS games, she writes, "The games serve as an entry level, graphically exciting introduction to World War II - much more so than those black-and-white newsreels that seem to run on a loop on the History channel. When my son wants to know more, he has to seek it out in books and other materials." For any and all fanboys out there, every time you try to prove a point on the supremacy of your console or the coolness of a game, you're doing just what Mrs. Crittenden says.

Of course, it doesn't mean you disregard giving gamers limits to their play, but when you hear the words, "I gotta find out what was Shakespeare's most popular comedy," because the game asks that question of his character, then it can't be all bad, can it? How about you? What games or consoles have made you want to do some extra credit?