Many of my lifes favorite things have come through gaming. I read old D&D books in the library growing up. I played many games, and countless puzzles and brain teasers. My best friends and I role played and munchkin'd it up. I fell in love with my wife years ago over a game of Monopoly (which amazingly is still a game I hate).
So what. Games are something we do for fun and to relax. Or could they be more? I learned to calculate odds on the fly playing war games and poker. I have been a thief, a psion, and countless other people interacting with worlds with rules different than our own. I have worked on my thought processes with set, word recognition and spelling with boggle and scrabble. I have been part of a team and a betrayer.
The point of all of this is that I am a better person for having rolled dice. Games have kept me, and other people I have known out of trouble growing up, it has helped my friends autistic children to grasp concepts and connect with their peers. Games can be a connection point and a way to reach kids who otherwise couldn't be.
People always ask what would you do with your life if money wasn't a thing. For a while now I have had the idea of starting some kind of non-profit that just went in and gave kids the chance to play and learn about games. Supply models/books/games etc, teach them strategy, logic, underlying mathematical principles. Don't know if I could make a living at it though...
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