If you aren't into games, you might wonder what all the fuss is about. If you are, have you ever had the experience of trying to describe why your favorite games are so engaging and powerful to someone who just doesn't get it? The reason may be that you're talking about different things.

There is a fundamental difference between generations when it comes to exactly what the word "game" signifies. When older folks - those whom I call "digital immigrants" - use the word, they still think of the early, pre-computer, simple games such as board and card games. These pre-computer games typically took no more than an hour or two to play - and often less. With only a few exceptions such as Bridge, Chess and Go - which are played seriously by relatively few - games of the pre-computer era gave kids very little to reflect on or learn at a deep or thoughtful level. Sure, the kids may have learned a few economic lessons from Monopoly, but games, back then, were, well, mostly just games. Distractions, if you will. A way to pass an idle hour on a rainy day. Trivial pursuits.

The consequences of this situation are extremely important. Because of these formative game-playing experiences growing up, when today's teacher (or parent) hears the word "game," the first reaction is: "trivial."

Today's so-called "educational" games on the computer include the hundreds of online games at Web sites such as NASA, UNICEF, National Geographic, the Nobel Prize site, and various math, science and other specialized sites. There are also educational games found in stores, such as Carmen Sandiego, Reader Rabbit, and Math Blaster . When parents and teachers look at these, they again find games not so dissimilar from the games they already know: games that take less than an hour to complete (often far less), with content that is simple and often one-dimensional.

While the adults agree that many of these "small" games are fun for kids (and sometimes even fun for themselves) the adults also know that whatever "content" these games contain is narrow and shallow. They know that when compared to what real education is all about, the games that they are seeing on computers are, again, trivial.

And they are right. Because they are only seeing half the games. The other half, which I'll call modern or complex games, are hidden from their view.

What are these "complex" games? Typically, they require tens of hours of concentrated attention to master. They demand the learning of multiple skills, as well as the ability to research and communicate outside the game. Complex games are almost exclusively what is sold in the game stores.

But most adults have never experienced a complex game first-hand as a player . So they only know about these games by hearsay. And what they hear, especially from the press, is often wrong. What they especially don't understand is that these "complex" games are not trivial at all. In fact, they are among the most non-trivial pastimes ever invented, requiring enormous amounts of effort, skill, and, most important to us, learning.

It is the fact that an entirely new type of game has emerged since the advent of the personal computer that most adults - parents, teachers and others - don't "get" (although they have probably paid for most of them.) The "complex" game, in the sense that I mean it here, did not exist when these digital immigrants - most of today's parents and teachers - were growing up. It is a new animal.