Not too many words needed here. What have you learned about real life from playing games? What’s changed your perspective and approach?
OK, bonus. Design a curriculum you’d want to take your real or theoretical kids through to equip them as functioning people.
Area majority games are a great way to teach how effed-up first past the post voting systems are and how they can be manipulated through the drawing of district lines. I have not played Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game | Board Game | BoardGameGeek, but it was basically designed for this purpose.
I’ve learnt a lot about import taxes.
Today I put in a crossword the answer for this clue based on knowledge from a game
A domesticated animal; to talk a lot (3)
yak
Based on the fact you control this animal in the game!
What have I learned?
That I’m a horrible, horrible person that will go to any length to win. Thus, I must have really good friends, since they still come and play with me!
Okay, not really. I won’t cheat to win. Anymore. Or any less…
I may have more serious life lessons from games later…
Mainly that I used to care about the game but now know that I don’t really care what we’re playing as long as the company is good.
In terms of curriculum:
Might think of more later.
Boring answer: I don’t like taking life lessons from board games (or video games). There are two problems with this: 1.) A person has assumptions. The game then nod at those assumptions and the player then thinks that it is thematically immersive (correct) and assumes that this reflects reality (yes/no/maybe). 2.) The game is taken as thematic/realistic and then the players take the lessons as facts of reality. The games MAY work as an allegory and nothing wrong with immersing oneself with certain assumptions and can be aware that these are games that tell a story.
Anyway, my mental maths have improved (still bad) since I started board gaming. A lot of references to real life like Twilight Struggle allows me to learn about them.
Also, knowing this graph and then playing Evolution is very funny
Is that just the jump arcs of those animals?
I have; it’s on BGA. Quite fun though it basically only has one thing to say.
More specifically for area-majority and racing games, “coming in just behind the leader gets you just as much as coming in just before third place, but costs you more.”
As time has passed I’ve shifted from competitive to trying to find a model in which everybody wins. But I think that isn’t so much “what a game as taught me” as “the sort of game I enjoy”.
I agree that one should view games as fiction and should take the opinions expressed via the medium as such and not fact. It is difficult to gain knowledge from a game when theme almost always bends to game systems and rules. Even games with historical or economic themes that seem most grounded in reality will usually compromise “accuracy” in favor of “being fun to play”.
Which is why I based (most) of my examples above on experiences rather than thematic lessons. Geo-engineering aside, I think the experiences we can have while gaming can be quite real and teach us valuable skills.
And I admit I do not understand the graph. What does it display?
Predator pop increases, which decreases prey pop which decreases predator pop which increases prey pop, which increases predator pop and so on and so on…
The game Evolution has carnivores and can eat other players’ species. Predator population then decreases when viable prey population decreases. So, players have to change tactics gradually through the game
Now I get it, it’s the wobble-equilibrium 
Interesting that most responses have veered toward topical knowledge. I’ll agree that games with a “lesson” (e.g., John Company, Archipelago, Underground Railroad) can be a bit fraught.
In my mind, and the impetus for the topic, games are far more valuable at teaching skills and perspectives as opposed to information or opinions.
There is a (generally viewed) western view of information as science - it must be definable and communicable. The books of the Bible written by western authors may say something like “God is Love.” Ok, got it. The eastern concept is more vague but with a different goal. An eastern writer may write “God is a fortress.” What does that mean? He’s inscrutable, we can’t really see inside and understand him? He is a place of safety for those who run to him? He is strong? He was there before and he will be there after? The eastern answer would be, simply, yes. All of those things, and keep thinking on it as your understanding will grow the more you contemplate it.
Sorry, the point of that wasn’t religion, just an explanation of the two different types of teaching and learning.
You go to debate club and they teach you debate tactics. OK. Very western. You go to a debate competition, or model UN, or whatnot, and you try it out. But it doesn’t really matter, everyone knows it isn’t really real. That’s where games come in - play Twilight Imperium or Diplomacy and, on one level, it isn’t real. But the game isn’t trying to be a fake version of something else, it’s a real version of itself. And, in that way, it matters for its own purposes in a way that model UN doesn’t. And trying out your skills, social or cognitive, there, matter in a way that other simulations don’t. Not sure if that makes sense.
I just love, for instance, Coup. The chance to learn how to lie, what it’s like to be caught, what it’s like to suspect someone else of lying, accuse them and be wrong… or not accuse them and always wonder. The chance of being accused of lying when you aren’t. Lying and getting away with it. Telling the truth and losing. Within Coup, it all matters in the scope of the game. And then it doesn’t matter once you stand up. You can learn a lot about how the world works and be given the tools to decide who you want to be. It’s an eastern style of teaching that gets into your gut instead of your head.
I like that.
Ok, so apart from the general skills of math, multi-step planning, contingency planning, and soft valuation we all do all the time here, here are some of the lessons I’ve learned.
Summed up in a very Western tidbit but you’ll have to play the games to get the full Eastern idea 
Innovation (and Dr Mario): Don’t panic. Panic reinforces whatever is happening. Stay calm, work the system, and see what you can make of it.
Isle of Skye/Ra: It’s ok to lose a bad deal. Don’t focus on winning. “Winners” lose when they overpay. (who hasn’t wanted THOSE TILES and ended up with some very cheap suns and no path forward?)
Chinatown: Similar. Don’t offer more than its worth because someone turned you down.
The Zen of Agricola: Don’t fixate when you are blocked. Work on something else. It’s all valuable, and the first path will open later.
Netrunner: It’s ok to wade into a situation without enough information, once you’ve tried everything else. What you learn in the failure is worth more than what it will cost you.
GwT/ First Rat: When there is too much to do in the time you have, success is choosing what not to do.
El Grande / Memoir 44 / Samurai: Even if you can’t win, just applying some pressure can cost your opponent more than they can afford to maintain, and shift the balance of power down the road. (see: global politics)
Keyflower: If it’s really important to you, don’t get cute. Do whatever it takes to secure it. Protect what is most important or you’ll lose it by also going for everything else.
Flamme Rouge: Be patient. Focus on fundamentals. Whoever looks like they are winning/losing may not be.
In General: There is a time to build up. And there is a time to stop building and start harvesting.
This goes for a lot of games. Don’t give up just yet even if you made a mistake. It is one I still try to teach to the players who keep complaining “I’ve already lost” after a single bad turn.
Also that after a mistake, you may not win but you can recover. And that’s a real life application right there. Mistakes are not the end of everything. You need to stay calm and deal with them.
(Not that I always do that.)
That’s what I meant with “pivoting” … you need to adapt, debug your strategy, solve problems, defer things to a later point until you have the resources/information you need to do what you can’t do now. Am I talking about my job? Possibly
Aligns with the 80/20 principle. Find the 80% solutions that take 20% of the time Efficiency is important …
Games are one of the few spaces, maybe the only one, where we are allowed to lie within certain parameters. It’s a good thing to explore (see BotC) if only to understand the thing better.
It makes sense to me at least. Each game presents its very real own problem space that can be explored and experimented with. The skills needed to explore it can then be used for similar problem spaces that may exist in the real world.
Still one would need to be cautious with certain areas, I am reasonably sure that games presenting us for example with economics do feel real in some cases and one may recognize the patterns in the real world. But such systems are invariably more complex… and so we need to beware to not mix up simplified fictional systems with all too real systems which is where knowledge gets more topical again anyway.
Auctions - auction games made me realised the psychology of people wanting to win the auction contest itself - or maybe driven by the impulse to own it - forgetting that the auction was just a means to a greater end. And so the amount keeps going higher than what could be considered reasonable.
With hard science of space travel with games like Leaving Earth and High Frontier: I get to understand in a basic level what a massive pain in the bum space travel is and how to escape the gravity well of our world (and other worlds).
Also, I really love Sidereal Confluence for its positive-sum system, since trade (hmmm… topical!) is positive-sum. I wish there’s more of these. I’ve played with someone who is often suspicion of trading in Sidereal because they thought they are being “cheated on”. There are so many people stuck with monkey-brain thinking like this thinking that society is zero-sum (a lot of them are also people who don’t wear red caps).
Games have made me realize:
Timing (and sequencing when there’s a difference) is everything.
Life is not a game unless it’s SPACE INVADERS.
Some people (looking at you Jenny Southern) can talk aloud through all their planning and strategising and still beat me!
It’s important to have enough mental resources to keep yourself occupied while other people are taking five minutes to make their move.
