CS: How games can change the world

This CS project has asked us to look at how "Games can Change the World". This is a vast project, but after a few seminars looking at how games can teach us something, I was compelled to look further into this. My question is a simple one, How do games teach the player and how can this be used to teach in other areas. Most of the research I managed to find from the incredibly helpful Penny Arcade internet video series, Extra Credits. Other references were used to back up this as a source and to prove some of the higher concepts I want to explore.
I have found that most games, good ones anyway, intend on "teaching" their players something through play whether they intended to or not. Tetris for example teaches mastery over the space given, the control of the pieces within it and, eventually, control over the mindset that allows you to operate on a level above normal conscious thought. Where as games like World of Warcraft use "Skinner Box" techniques similar to those used in gambling in order to give the players infrequent rewards and encourage them to continue playing long past the time when the novelty of the game itself has worn off. The key to these, I believe, is engagement. Game provide a fun, safe and friendly atmosphere where players can experiment with the concepts in the game to effectively teach themselves while the game guides them. A mistake many educational games used in schools across the country make is putting education first. This is a mistake. People, no matter the age, will find it more difficult to engage with something that throws raw concepts at them. An example could be a maths game that asks you to complete written sums in order to proceed to the next level. This will throw the same information a Maths class handout would and expects you to treat it differently because it is dressed as a game. However, the game Portal, manages to teach physics that do not even exist, ultimately making them intuitive. It does this by carefully introducing something new and interesting to the player, mixed with physics that the player is already familiar with, such as a large button that won't stay pressed unless held, cubes have weight, put a cube on the button, the button stays down, in order to create something the player can learn from while playing and experimenting with something they find engaging.
In the essay, the first thing I will discuss will be how these games bring the player into this state of engagement. I have managed to find several techniques, mostly from game design authorities. However, I also want to explore the idea behind "living consciously". This is an idea from psychology and philosophy that looks at how our actions become more automated as we get older, when nothing is new we begin to function out of habit rather than out of purpose. Although this idea has been somewhat diluted by it's overuse in the self-help medium, I believe there is a lot of truth to this principle. Most people in this field say that we should aim to see every experience as novel and new and engage with it as if we are seeing it for the first time. I think some games, certainly, have managed this, if some more than others.
So far I have all the research to start the essay and will gather more as I write. Although this may leave me with a broken and disjointed first draft, I will have all of the information on paper, which should be more than enough to rewrite into something I can be happy with.