While it’s surely no surprise to the tech-savvy, it bears repeating that video games are no longer just kids’ stuff.

So what do more intelligent video games look like? Anyone who grew up on the trusty Apple IIc or IIGS may remember the campy but lovable Oregon Trail series of games. The goal was to shepherd an enterprising band of settlers across the mighty American West, and the result was a first-hand connection to history, as players had to cope with a range of real-world problems, from food shortages and diseases to hazardous river crossings and buffalo stampedes. Similar edutainment spin-offs included The Yukon Trail, Africa Trail and The Amazon Trail.

In Activision’s venerable Civilization Call to Power (1999) and Call to Power II (2000), gamers were given the “god-like” task of creating an entire society, balancing such factors as infrastructure development and social well-being. Similarly, Maxis’ iconic “Sim” lineup presented virtual world builders with myriad challenges and possibilities, from SimCity (1989) to SimAnt (1991), SimLife (1992) and beyond. Maxis’ forthcoming Spore is widely anticipated, both for its ambitious content—in which players pilot a single species through multiple levels of evolution—and for its sophisticated backbone technology, including advanced procedural generation.

Today these games are seen as educational for the player, but in a recent post, gaming expert and blogger David Edery asks if video games can be used to “effectively aggregate individual players’ actions into a form of collective intelligence.”

Edery came up with the idea by realizing that 1) the wisdom of crowds often means that more heads are better than a few (and lots of brain power is directed towards video games) and 2) video games are good incentives for people to do stuff and think about problems.

Given the phenomenal growth of massive multi-player online programs, from World of Warcraft to Second Life, which boast millions of users, Edery may be on to something. Since there are millions of bloggers out there, and many of those bloggers are clearly interested in news and reporting, then it stands to reason that there should be a way to harness that collective wisdom into something bigger, better and more accurate.

Edery envisions a serious game that tackles real world problems, like Sim City, that would record a player’s decision into a central database, where in Digg-like fashion they are aggregated as collective votes on actions that should be executed in real life situations.

Take the D.C.-based Serious Games Initiative, which is leading the way in applying video game technology to training, health and public policy. The institute has highlighted the U.N.’s popular Food Force, for example, in which players act as aid workers on a mission to feed the starving population of a fictitious war-torn island. Influenced by Food Force is Darfur is Dying, a title that aims to help people better understand the troubled region and inspire action.

If we really take to heart the notion that the wisdom of the crowd is greater than the individual, than we might want to start tapping into the thousands of people who play these games as resources for how we approach these situations in real life. Through video game incentives we could create a way to get the general public to dump their collective wisdom on some of the world’s most important topics.

The potential for video games to harness collective intelligence really begins to sink in with a game like CO2FX, which explores the relationship of global warming to economic, political and policy factors.

Brian C. Howard is a graduate student at Columbia School of Journalism. He spent five years as Managing Editor of E/The Environmental Magazine and has written for Connecticut Magazine, The Green Guide, Alternet, Fairfield County Weekly, Oceana, Clamor and Britain’s Ergo Living.