WoW = Science Inquiry?

I love this:

...What is science? It's a technique for uncovering the hidden rules that govern the world. And videogames are simulated worlds that kids are constantly trying to master. Lineage and World of Warcraft aren't "real" world, of course, but they are consistent -- the behavior of the environment and the creatures in it are governed by hidden and generally unchanging rules, encoded by the game designers. In the process of learning a game, gamers try to deduce those rules.<

This leads them, without them even realizing it, to the scientific method.

- Clive Thompson, "Games Without Frontiers" Wired.com September 9, 2008

The article goes on to discuss the findings of Constance Steinkuehler, a game academic at the University of Wisconsin, who studied almost 2,000 messages posted on a World of Warcraft discussion board. She found that a majority of these messages were analyzing the game, with posters going back and forth positing hypotheses and responding with experience-based rebuttals - the marks of good science inquiry.

Indeed, the conversations often had the precise flow of a scientific salon, or even a journal series: Someone would pose a question -- like what sort of potions a high-class priest ought to carry around, or how to defeat a particular monster -- and another would post a reply, offering data and facts gathered from their own observations. Others would jump into the fray, disputing the theory, refining it, offering other facts. Eventually, once everyone was convinced the theory was supported by the data, the discussion would peter out. - Thompson, "Games Without Frontiers"

In the classroom, it's difficult to inspire student-driven inquiry. How do you get them to ask their own questions and seek out their own research to answer it? We can see that teens will use this method on their own, and do to play games - shouldn't we be able to get that same behavior to test gravity, momentum, chemical reactions, etc? They don't realize they're doing it when the goal is to win the game. How do we get them to try it in the classroom?