I want my Angry Birds- games in the classroom

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of games and simulations for educational purposes. The reasoning is sound:

• Young people "like" games-- their brains are adapted to them and it is a part of their everyday life to which we can connect our lessons if we are clever and open to the potential.
• Games and simulations allow us to quickly experiment with otherwise unavailable "stuff-- while I don't want future scientists trained exclusively on simulations, I do think we can help them see patterns and connections immediately and thus be well-prepared to see similar patterns in the slow-moving laboratory.

I have had several conversations (arguments is more accurate) with teachers about the appropriateness of arcade-style games. I have always contended that those games are not the one described in the literature as  being appropriate for classrooms and as benefiting people's cognitive skills. 

Then, along comes an article in which Angry Birds can be used to teach physics. Maybe I never saw the connection because, while I sometimes teach physics, I do not play Angry Birds!

This does still make the point I have argued with principals and that seems well-supported by the literature: Games are appropriate for classrooms, but how they are used and what aspects of the games we study matters deeply. The lazy educator will "assign" students to play angry birds and mistakenly call it "game-based learning." The rest of us will look at the game, come to deeper understanding of it and physics with students and accurately call it "game-based learning."