The russians have always been good at noticing what is good for teaching styles. they encouraged chess in schools and now the top players in the world have came from those very same school systems. Of course chess has now been proven to help logical thinking. This orderly step by step process is duplicated in mathematics, and the sciences, and to some degree other subject matters. And computer gaming is a step further it combines logic with technology.
Just as know we find russians to be near the tops of mathematics and sciences, we may find them in thirty years on top of maths, sciences, and technology.
Not to mention, if opportunity for nationwide glory lays in sedetive tasks there is more opportunity for people to try to excel in something that requires large amounts of thinking.
Think about it, has the existence of Michael Jordan done anything to promote the advancement of the world (nothing charities or anything, that money would have found it's way there in some other way anyways). Gary Kasparov on the other hand has a supercomputer that was built to beat him, it showed us that no matter how good machines are a human still has a chance (he beat the machine a few games then made a mistake and the machine just kept whooping him).
One last thing, who's going to have a better chance to do something important: a 20 year old NFL pro, or a twenty year old in college playing Civ in his spare time?
The choice is obvious
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This has been Karl Marx the Penguin.
-- "Workers [penguins] of the World Unite"
