I learned quite a bit from video games, but I'm not some company's advertisement agency. Glad to see advertisers are so competent that they have to bribe people with free copies of games to do their jobs for them. But, hey, these people know what they're doing, right?

Thanks to Pharaoh, I passed an exam about History of Ancient Egypt during my degree in History.

Video games taught me countless uses of a lever: from open a closed door to saving the world. Oh! And to always keep a rubber chicken with a pulley close to me... you never know when you're going to need it! :D

Save scumming is the way to go...no, wait, that's the one thing that doesn't apply to real life, huh...
Oh well, I got nothing. :P

I learned about space from Spore many years before I did it in school.

Stuff like black holes, binary star systems, and the terraforming of planets was really interesting to me and I throughly enjoyed watching space documentaries whenever they came up on tv.

Heretic (or Heretic 2): You should not chat with your girlfriend on phone and play on LAN with your team mate at work simultaneously or you become a sheep in a short time (and ruin your image as a hard-worker due to your colleague's triumphant roar).

Vegas Stakes for the Super Nintendo taught me that gambling isn't about big wins, it's about sitting at the same table for hours at a time, hearing terrible music, seeing garish patterns in the floors and walls, and plodding my way through the hours to make back the $1000 I lost in the first five minutes of gaming.

I play it every New Year's Eve, and it's perfect.

I have improved my skill in English immensely by playing Oblivion a lot. I mean, really lot. I've read through probably every in-game book, note, letter, you name it.

Aside from the obvious ESL answer "I learned english by playing video games", I learned how to read music because I thought it needed to solve the skulls puzzle in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade (it wasn't).

(warning: Shadows of the Colossus spoilers!)

"... what have you learned from a video game that has helped you in real life?"

Having been an idealist, I have always sought to fight wrongs. I have marched, picketed, and volunteered time and money to fight tyranny and "monsters" in our midst. Doing what is right has always been at the core of my being, and then there was...

... Shadow of the Colossus.

There are few games about fighting giant monsters that are so exhilarating -- climbing, hacking, plunging swords deep into the behemoths and watching their blood spray. It is one of the great "David and Goliath" power fantasies -- the small and inconsequential topple evil giants. The hunted becomes the hunter -- accomplishing the impossible and ridding the world of abominations! As each monster one-after-another falters, crumples in agony , and dies under your sword, the gameplay and moral imperative builds to a crescendo --

-- only to turn on the player in the last act.

In your zeal -- wrapped in good intentions (as in "the road to hell is paved with good intentions.") -- you have been manipulated by dark forces into doing their sinister bidding. Becoming the unwitting tool of evil, you have blood-thirstily murdered the Colossi, possibly the last remnant of good in the world. And in so doing, you are the true monster.

The moral ramifications of Shadow of the Colossus -- backed by time, age, and experience -- have stayed with me and informed my thinking. While I am still an idealist at heart, I am much more vigilant in researching the sides of arguments before proclaiming "right" and "wrong." I try not to take issues at face value... and never accept sweet words that sound nice and agree with my thinking over hard data that might call into question my own perspectives and opinions. For although I still believe in fighting tyranny and giant monsters...

... I could not live with myself if I was in fact the unwitting tool of evil.

While Shadow of the Colossus was not the only element that lead me to this realization, it is a crucial one... and a game I think on often for this very theme. It has directly informed both my life and my own creative work... and I would be the lesser had I not played it.

Stardew Valley taught me that it's better to live in a small town or a village and plant crops and trees. Clean air , friendly people , clean water , healthy food , What else do you need . :)

Sometimes you just have to RTFM (Read The Funky Manual)!
Not everything can be intuitive nor should it be.
Patience and preparation can pay off.

When I was ... 10 or 11?, I learned some extremely rudimentary English verbs and phrases from playing the Secret of Monkey Island - enough that when camping with my parents on vacation in Austria, I could use it in attempts to communicate with a girl. Sadly, most of what I retained were the swordfighting insults. Luckily, at that age, in that time, that counted for flirting purposes.

(Thanks for the contest, and for running it not only on social media, but also on this forum! Here's hoping for RimWorld!) :)

Video games have taught and helped strengthen my creative, environmental, and logical puzzle solving abilities.

I learned the names of different jeweles from playing Diablo 2.