The crazy things they're using computer games for these days.

Valorie pointed me to this article at the Washington Post (Free registration required, sorry :(). 

Everyone knows about the current crop video games - Doom 3, Halo 2, Half-Life 2, The Sims 2, GTA: Vice City, etc.  Even the U.S. Army's gotten on the bandwagon with their quasi-recruiting games (Full Spectrum Warrior and America's Army).

But then there are some of the more obscure games that will be hitting the market during the next year...

For instance, there's Glucoboy, a game for the Gameboy to help kids with Juvenile Diabetes, and SuperCharged! which helps kids understand physics.

And they're releasing the Federal Budget Game, a game to solve the federal budget deficit.

There's even a trade group for people who write games about serious subjects, the "Serious Games Initiative", and they have a trade show that ran on Monday and Tuesday of this week, the "Serious Games Summit".  This is a big deal forum, sponsored by the U.S. Army, the GDC, Gamasutra, etc.

My only issue with this is, I thought games were supposed to be for fun, not serious...

On the other hand, with panels like "Non Combat Military Game Efforts", "Is Open Source the Silver Bullet for Costs, Time and Process", "The Potential of Games in Healthcare" and "Things You Should Know About Serious Games But Probably Don't: Better Collaboration by Avoiding Key Stumbling Blocks", how can they go wrong?