Hah I remember playing junk flash games in a certain professor's class who didn't know anything. But then I realized I was better off finishing assignments while pretending to take notes, so that I could use that hour to later play games that I actually liked.

Turn by turn strategy games, easier to stop, addictive enough and people often won't recognize them so they rarely comment. I've seen colleagues playing WOW tough...

When I took Medieval History 300 CE - 1000 CE, there was a girl in class with a netbook, and every day she'd be playing some kind of game, be it Sudoku, or some weird farm game, or something. She failed every single one of her quizzes. I don't know what she got on her Final, but that was only worth 60% of her grade, which means she likely failed.
Now, I'm taking two art history classes back to back, and the lesson plan is even harder than the other class. As much as I would love to play games in class, I'd rather make sure I aced the midterm/quizzes/final.

You know, they generally don't take attendance in college. If you aren't there to learn, then why show up at all?

I don't have boring lectures. I love my major.

I never did this in undergrad, but grad lectures (especially for my thesis, which was basically how to cite APA style and use statistics - 2 things I already knew) were often completely worthless and it was really noticable if you weren't there (small classes), so I used to go and read digital comics. Easy to flip back and forth between that and jotting down lecture notes. I doubt I could've gotten away with games.
Ditto my old job. I had down time on Fridays (slow day) so I did the same thing. Wasn't exactly a secret though. My boss probably knew I did it. I usually had all my paperwork for the week done by thursday.
http://www.gitcorp.com/
They discontinued the Marvel ones though, which were the best. The Star Trek set is still really good though. The DC run of ST:TNG is surprisingly good.

Take my laptop to school?
Are you MAD!?
(But usually it is Fallout or Stronghold Crusade.)

Well, it was a pleasant oasis to my desert. I really didn't know what I was in for....

Hell, I love mine too, but that doesn't mean I don't have to take an awful class here and there to fill requirements for it.

It's called selective learning. Or, in other cases, the lecture slot may just happen to fall in between other lessons. Or some other miscellaneous reason that you can figure out for yourself.

Does a really low attention span count as selective learning?

Empire Total War, Imperial Glory, Empire Earth, Napoleonic II Total War (Rome: Total War mod) etc.

It's kind of impossible to take a laptop and play games in high school here. It may be possible in college, but I doubt I will do that, because I am actually interested in learning and getting through my classes. Besides, there will be plenty of time to play games after classes (after I take care of studying, of course). The school I will be attending, OSU, is the largest gaming university in the United States. Stillwater Oklahoma had the number one amount of pre-orders for Modern Warfare 2, so I won't be in short supply if I'm looking for a pal to game with.

I play COD MW 2, while on a conference call to Baghdad...Mute key is excellent

From my experience, though, having Plants vs Zombies or Crayon Physics on your laptop to keep yourself awake by playing in intervals of 2-3 minutes never hurts. Playing in a lecture doesn't necessarily imply the person's not interested in learning lol. More importantly is the amount of effort one puts into studying outside of school.