Introduction : gaming goes beyond gaming -- Video games and twenty-first-century skills : why the sudden worldwide interest in video games and learning? -- The Nickel and dimed challenge : designing new forms of socially conscious play -- A young girl becomes a designer and goes global : succeeding at twenty-first-century skills but not at school -- How passion grows : a retired shut-in goes from making a purple potty to gaining millions of fans -- Passionate affinity groups : a new form of community that works to make people smarter -- A young girl and her vampire stories : how a teenager competes with a best-selling author -- From The Sims to Second Life : a young woman transforms her real life -- What does it all mean? : what women and The Sims have to teach us about what education and learning will look like in the twenty-first-century.