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Something I have always been interested in is developing videogames with the idea of teaching another language as a goal. Imagine a game such as Skyrim, a rathe

Something I have always been interested in is developing videogames with the idea of teaching another language as a goal. Imagine a game such as Skyrim, a rather large and open world, but designed such that its goal was to teach you another language as you played the game. Of course one can just change the language of the actual game Skyrim, and this is decent for learning new medieval themed vocabulary, but imagine if the game were designed with the concept of language learning in mind. At the beginning of the game, the characters would speak clearly and with simple vocabulary. Perhaps with subtitles of written text in the same language. Maybe even with an English (or whatever your native language is) subtitle if you are really having trouble with a task. The vocabulary used would go along the same pattern of reinforcing while slowly building more. I think it might be a neat concept to explore, to learn a language passively while playing a fun game.

dougk16 14y ago
Totally. I did this with the Diablo games et al. to aid in learning Polish, and it was very effective, even though language learning was probably as far from Blizzard's mind as you can get. The problem is that you need the really high production values of AAA games to keep people engaged. A studio prioritizing language learning to any degree will have a very hard time putting on the polish (not Polish...joke!) required to retain players. I've thought a lot about this problem as well, and the best I can think of is to create mods, so you have the solid game engine and story already in place, and can then solve the language learning problem on top of that.
- gamegoblin 14y ago
  Mods are indeed a good idea. I have played through Skyrim in both French and German and, even though I already spoke those languages with a decent amount of competency, it really helped with various grammar and vocabulary aspects.
tszyn 14y ago
I've been thinking about this for years. Recently, I tried to persuade Double Fine to introduce some English-learner-friendly features in their upcoming adventure game, but I got the feeling that it's a very low priority issue for them. Here's a blog post I wrote about this topic: http://www.antimoon.com/blog/2012/06/making-adventure-games-english-learner-friendly/ http://www.antimoon.com/blog/2012/06/making-adventure-games-...

dougk16 14y ago

Totally. I did this with the Diablo games et al. to aid in learning Polish, and it was very effective, even though language learning was probably as far from Blizzard's mind as you can get. The problem is that you need the really high production values of AAA games to keep people engaged. A studio prioritizing language learning to any degree will have a very hard time putting on the polish (not Polish...joke!) required to retain players. I've thought a lot about this problem as well, and the best I can think of is to create mods, so you have the solid game engine and story already in place, and can then solve the language learning problem on top of that.

gamegoblin 14y ago
Mods are indeed a good idea. I have played through Skyrim in both French and German and, even though I already spoke those languages with a decent amount of competency, it really helped with various grammar and vocabulary aspects.

tszyn 14y ago

I've been thinking about this for years. Recently, I tried to persuade Double Fine to introduce some English-learner-friendly features in their upcoming adventure game, but I got the feeling that it's a very low priority issue for them. Here's a blog post I wrote about this topic: http://www.antimoon.com/blog/2012/06/making-adventure-games-english-learner-friendly/ http://www.antimoon.com/blog/2012/06/making-adventure-games-...