Are gamers more intelligent? Hmm, looking at myself as a case study, I've been playing strategy games for as long as I remember Civ, AOE, RON and very big into Paradox Games recently (Past 2-3 years)
What they used to do was give me a false sense of intelligence and a smug satisfaction leading to complacency. When I finally awoke from this arrogance I realised, sure, my history was well honed but I'm very much lacking in a lot of areas, including common sense, social skills, anything possibly regarded as practical and useful in the real world. I contribute a lot of what is wrong with my life at the minute, including the "nice, but dim" persona I feel most natural with, to computer games.
And yet I never learn!