Mark Evans Wrote: "Not all games have educational value, nor does an educationally valuable game require fancy graphics on a high spec machine." ------ Absolutely! I didn't mean to give the impression that that was what I was trying to state. You are of course correct- and finding the balance between "educational" games and "fun" and also making sure the game appeals to a broad audience is a major problem we had when setting up the "LAN Gaming Club" Hence we decided that where a game may not "inherently" have educational content or value, the technical lessons learned from setting up a LAN prior to gaming and troubleshooting that same LAn when problems arise can of themselves lead to educational value. For us it worked really well. The club was oversubscribed. Games such as Age of Empires, Cossacks, and similar wargames based plots were very popular all round--and yes--even Command and Conquer Red Alert. These games aren't "educational" in the strict sense of the term, but have some historical value; teach economics on a real basic level etc etc. However, there is a danger in trying to take games and philosophise about their general educational value--this gets out of hand. We used games such as Unreal Tournament and Quake for the older student club meetings a lot--and after setting up the LAN and configuring the hardware and software found that that alone gave them a sense of educational accomplishment followed by some raw fun. As I said--it worked for us, but may not work for you. The LAN Gaming Club actually turned into more of a " bring your own PC and we'll have a hardware night" sort of thing in the end. PCs were fixed, lessons learned on configuring hardware, installing drives etc., and gaming was often forgotten about. Ironically, it was at this point the teaching staff decided that the club had run its course :-O Paul