Gaming and language learning

Out of my own experience, gaming can be a great medium for language learning in itself.
Any game is composed of a task to be accomplished by the player, and in that sense, it can be used as a task-based learning activity. When the player is a NNS of English, the player is faced with a massive learning opportunity as s/he is expected to understand and accomplish the task using instructions, clues and information written or voiced in English and for the learner to understand the task, s/he has to decode these instructions and understand what it means. This takes us back to the idea of negotiating meaning, but in this case the player is negotiating meaning with the structure of the game. For example, if the instructions indicate that the player should find a "vehicle" and use it to get to the beach. First of all the player infers that a vehicle is a tool used for transportation (assuming that s/he does not know what a vehicle is) and when s/he find the vehicle in the game and get a message indicating that the first objective is complete, s/he is presented with a visual representation of the meaning of the word "vehicle" that would stick in his/her mind forever.