Video Games and Education... holding hands

I don't mean in the moral way (although they often try), but in the I'll sit down and dedicate my life to something for 20 hours kind of way. My time in education has made it pretty clear to me that students can often have a difficult focusing on their work for long stretches of time. For some, short stretches are a real challenge. Now, I remember myself as a child dedicating hours and hours to what can fairly be called some of the worst video games on earth... terrible, horrible, awful pieces of entertainment. However, like I said, hours and hours of dedication. So, I'm curious how education could have harnessed those hours I spent on Alfred Chicken for SNES and turned them into something useful. I've got a few ideas.

More to come...