I guess we have to honest that the goal of video games is first of all pure entertaining. Of course there are positive side effects, such as children develop better reflexes or get a first insight on coding. Also via "gamification", games can transport relevant information, this could be done via educational games, but also as side effects, as different games present a unknown culture.

Different organization may team-up with game designers, for example users can support scientists:

Gamification is mostly seen as a possibility to communicate information. But the development went already one step further. The prestigious University of Geneva will partner up with the science-fiction online game EVE. The university will provide 167,000 deep space light curve images to the game community, where the users can use their virtual space ships to explore this information and support science to discover new exoplanets. EVE Online includes up 500,000 players and due to this, presents a relevant source to support the chronically understaffed scientific projects.

The game simulates a virtual world, where players can take on the role of spaceship captain and discover the wonders of the galaxy. With the connection to the university, the game becomes reality, as the users, sitting before their home computers, become scientists acting inside a virtual space. The software simulates a virtual object based on the scientific data and, inside his or her role, the human user evaluates it. If enough users evaluated the planet information, the games sends the information back to the university.