Just ask anyone who's beaten Legend of Zelda

Young gamers today aren't training to be gun-toting carjackers. They're learning how to learn. In Pikmin, children manage an army of plantlike aliens and strategize to solve problems. In Metal Gear Solid 2, players move stealthily through virtual environments and carry out intricate missions. Even in the notorious Vice City, players craft a persona, build a history, and shape a virtual world. In strategy games like WarCraft III and Age of Mythology, they learn to micromanage an array of elements while simultaneously balancing short- and long-term goals. That sounds like something for their résumés.

The secret of a videogame as a teaching machine isn't its immersive 3-D graphics, but its underlying architecture. Each level dances around the outer limits of the player's abilities, seeking at every point to be hard enough to be just doable. In cognitive science, this is referred to as the regime of competence principle, which results in a feeling of simultaneous pleasure and frustration - a sensation as familiar to gamers as sore thumbs.