Contrary to popular belief, video games aren\u2019t just for killing an idle Thursday evening. In fact, a variety of recent studies have begun to demonstrate their teaching potential. The trick is to pick the kinds of games that will exercise the right parts of your brain.<\/p>\n
Though they are no substitute for online GMAT prep<\/a>, video games, in moderation, can stimulate your brain in a lot of constructive ways and even inspire new ideas. Check out our suggestions below, and let us know in the comments if you have any of your own!<\/p>\n Casual DS Games:<\/strong> Phoenix Wright, Professor Layton, SimCity DS, Brain Age<\/p>\n Each of these games is good for a quick mental workout while riding the subway to work. Professor Layton and Brain Age are chock-full of logic games that can help you with CR inferences. Phoenix Wright and SimCity on the other hand are longer games that reward players over time with a variety of problem solving opportunities.<\/p>\n Sports: <\/strong>Madden NFL, F1 2010, MLB The Show, Football Manager 2011<\/p>\n Sports games provide a lot of business-flavored brain food. For starters, they tend to involve a hefty amount of arithmetic, as you\u2019ll spend a good deal of time negotiating salaries, calculating probabilities, and fine-tuning various player or vehicle parameters. You can get a good refresher on statistics with many of the titles recommended here.<\/p>\n Furthermore, sports team management makes for a fantastic interactive case study. As you set in motion your long-term vision for a franchise, you will see how your ideas play out in a sophisticated simulation. Not only does it make for good cognitive exercise, but it may also be the only way to see the Cowboys win the Superbowl under Wade Phillips<\/span> (note: Wade Phillips was fired shortly after I wrote this post)<\/em>.<\/p>\n Role-Playing:<\/strong> Fallout Series, Fable III, Civilization Series, Galactic Civilizations 2<\/p>\n Strategy games force players to look for multiple solutions to various problems. Galactic Civilizations is particularly good because of its competent yet fair AI. Fable and Fallout start on a much smaller scale, but similarly reward long-term planning and pattern recognition. For turn-based strategy -- perfect for a little multi-national negotiation practice -- it doesn\u2019t get much better than Civilization.<\/p>\n Business Simulation:<\/strong> Capitalism II, The Movies, Monopoly Tycoon, Restaurant Empire 2<\/p>\n There is a wide market of business simulation games for the computer. Many are quite dry and slow for a typical gamer, but the four listed above are both fun and stimulating. Capitalism II has been around for a while, but it\u2019s still one of the best \u201cmogul\u201d games on the block. The Movies is great for film buffs, and Restaurant Empire 2 is extraordinarily endearing thanks to the new caf\u00e9 \/ dessert shop options.<\/p>\n Happy gaming!<\/p>\n Contrary to popular belief, video games aren\u2019t just for killing an idle Thursday evening. In fact, a variety of recent studies have begun to demonstrate their teaching potential. The trick…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11,243],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-mba","category-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5007"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5092,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007\/revisions\/5092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}