Well, I've been doing a bit of pondering (what else are you to do after a freak boomerang accident leaves you stuck in one place??) and I've come up with a few things:
For the Gamecube:
Monkeyball and Super monkeyball (or was that Super monkeyball and Super monkeyball II??) are fun little games that your kids may enjoy (I know I do!) and while they aren't exactly educational, it's the sort of thing that I could imagine your son would want to play with you.
Another one I think would be a good idea would be Animal Crossing! This one's a fun game where you pretty much build a city. Not like sime city though, you controll a character and you meet new people and go on quests like getting items for them. You can buy items or play games to get them, there are things to decorate your house with, there are trees to plant and fish to catch and so on. I think that this one would be a good one in terms of the social aspect in two ways: 1) much of the game revolves around meeting new people, developing relationships, and helping others and 2) this would be something that I could see you and your son spending a lot of time on! If your son takes an itnerest in this one, then I'm sure he'd love to show you how his village has grown and how his house has changed. Heck, you could even create your own village so he'd still have the satisfaction of kicking your butt, but he might feel sympathetic and try to lend you a hand, too!
I'm not sure if your son would be interested in any of those games, but I think it'd be worth a shot. I'm not saying that it'll lead to miracles, but all of them are tame, and (especially the last one) seem to have some good potential for being games that you can connect with, and heck, if all else fails, he'll probably at least enjoy them! I may have written them out to sound kind of "kiddie" but I know that people of all ages enjoy them (myself included)
As for the computer, well I haven't thought of many because I didn't think to, but when you said the SIMS, a little lightbulb went *ding!* right over my head. What thought of was:the Creatures games!
I LOVED these games growing up, and when you think about it, there is a LOT of educational value! There are 3 games in the series (well, I think they made a kiddie version, and there is the online bit, but I've fallen a bit behind in that news) and they revolved around AI creatures called Norns that you take care of.
(I remember the 3rd one best, so I'll concentrate on that) There are Norns, Ettins, and Grendels in Creatures 3, all of them having different look, speech, likes, environment, genetics, and so on. The
Norns are the species of creature that you start with. They are curious and love to play and learn and interact with other AI creatures as well as the animals and environment around them. You start by hatching a Norn (or however many you want) from a few basic different looks. You teach them to speak, you can either use the help of machinery that teaches words to pictures, or you can teach them yourself, or both! You can continue to teach them however you like. You can teach them your name (you are a hand that helps them out, you can pull them along to places, speak to them, interact with the surrounding environment,) the names of plants and animals around them, and pretty much whatever you want. Here are some of the wonderful aspects of this game:
--There are patches and agents to download GALORE! You can download new Norn looks (there are a LOT!), items for seasonal events, different foods, toys, critters, everything!
--You build relationships with the Norns and help them build relationships amongst one another, they can even have a child together (in a very nongraphic way which consists merely of a big *smooch!* noise [they like giving Norns they like little kisses]) and the rules of genetics apply! So they will have characteristics of their parents, that coupled with the fact that you can download other types of norns, the combination possabilities are limitless!
--The educational value is out the roof! There's this doctor machine where you can choose from a GIANT selection of agents to give to your Norn to feel better (real life things, heck, I don't know what half of them are, and the inquisitive mind could learn a LOT!) The genetics go from simple look inheritance from parents to a genetics kit that you can download (I have yet to look in to this though, but from the looks of it, with it you can go REALLY in depth.) There's also the matter of taking care of the environment that the creatures live in, "bioenergy" is the limiting factor in creating certain objects, more can be obtained by training the Norns to get upgrades scattered throughout the parts of their world and by recycling biomass.
--The upgrades for the world that the creatures live in is a challenge in its own! There are some in the dangerous Grendel world where disease-bearing mosquitos, jumping crabs, piranhas, and other nasties rules, others in the hot Ettin world, hidden amongst all of the various items that the curious (and sometimes thieving!) Ettins live, as well as all around the rest of the world! These upgrades include bioenergy related items, activating functions on the ships (such as the item generator, and gene splicer which allows you to combine two creatures of different species, exponentially increasing the number of possabilities for a creature to turn out!) and giving you control over the other creatures so that you can teach and train them as well.
--This game has a lot of social interaction, the Norns will express themselves, or you can ask them how they are feeling and they will tell you. You can watch relationships develop between different species of creatures and between the same species. Teaching and interacting with the creatures creates a sort of relationship between you and them, and although their lifespan (if I remember correctly, is something around 8 or 9 hours) is short, you still get to feel connected to each one as you learn their quirks. And if you don't want to deal with one dying, you can always export it out of the world so it's safe.
--The environment is constantly changing in this game! There are several fully working ecosystems. The one your Norns start in has different fruit-bearing trees, herbivores, predators of critters, ants, fish, and so on. Should the life cycle ever be thrown out of whack, new critters can be placed back in to the eco system, along with flora, as well.
--The agents: you can connect many different types of agents to build contraptions. For instance, if I don't want a diseased, and potentially dangerous Grendel from entering my Norn habitat (Grendels tend to be agressive,) I can build a contraption to protect my Norns: I can connect a species sensor to a teleporter, when the sensor detects the Grendel, it initiates the teleporter, sending the Grendel back to his own ecosystem (or wherever you want!)
I believe that I have an extra copy of this game around here (I thought I lost the CD so I bought it again for like 5 bucks) and if you think your son(s) would be interested then let me know and I'm sure I'd be able to send one your way! If you have any questions, then feel free to shoot them my way. Sorry for making this post so Über long, but I wanted to give you a good idea of what this (highly fun and education) game is like so you can see if anyone of you or your kids is interested in it. Oh, and by the way, it isn't the newst game out, so it isn't very hardware intensive so you should probably ot have a problem running it. Well, lemme know if you're interested!
--Jonathan (the younger middle son [#3 of 4])