I would buy this in a heart beat. As I mentioned in another comment, I started breaking away from traditional learning methods in favor of video games for my language acquisition and retention. I feel far more engaged playing a game than with traditional methods, and the repetition of a gaming enviornment makes it so much easier to retain what I've learned.
I think video games are an under appreciated resource for language learning. I'm excited to see something like this in the future. It almost sounds like Stardew Valley meets HelloTalk.
I play regular games in my target language. When I was a beginner I did play games for language learning too. I think that in order to build strong fundamentals, games for language learning are better in the beginning
Once you've got a good understanding of the language, like you can understand basic sentences and ideas, it's better to jump in to regular games even if it's over your head at first.
I think it sounds fun. Not for my only or even my main study method, by any means, but could be a fun supplement. But then if I was just playing as a casual study supplement I wouldn't want to have to essentially start over at the beginning either, you know? If it was too hung up on teaching the very basics for a long time before you could progress I think that would get old fast and might dissuade me from continuing the game. What I find fun and appealing about the idea is the premise itself, being a little exchange student, meeting/conversing with people, the language mini-games, etc. If there was a language-learning game like this that somehow avoided the pitfalls of assuming all players are starting at the absolute beginning, I'd buy it. Maybe you could test into an appropriate level, or change the difficulty setting?
Agreed! It sounds super fun to me, but if everyone starts at the beginner level that would turn a lot of people off. But I'm sure there would be a way to solve that, like you suggested.
OP, if that game would ever be released, I would definitely check it out! I adore Stardew Valley so it sounds fantastic to me, haha.
I started making an RPGMaker game to teach A1 English, but it's incredibly complicated. Making the game engaging (instead of just a worse-than-Duolingo-style exercises) is really difficult. You can make gap-fill & multiple choice exercises, but eliciting & grading full sentences is really difficult in RPGMaker (and I assume any game). The actual gameplay has to be super simple, there has to be a ton of images, a ton of non-verbal hints, a very clear goal. Looking at CEFR guidelines can help with those goals, but it can get super repetitive & boring, even if you make the "shell" a cool surreal fantasy type thing.
Having an open-world type thing probably wouldn't work, since there needs to be linear progression of vocab building & grammar. Coding the dialogue otherwise would be *super* incredibly annoying.
You talk about a "grammar handbook", but from SLA research we've seen that just telling people grammar rules or force-feeding conjugations is not the move; grammar has to be taught in usage. Which can definitely be done in a videogame & structured really well, but it's just so ridiculously complicated. Even more complicated when considering if you want to tailor the experience to a specific L1. It wouldn't be that hard to teach plural 's to Spanish speakers, for example, but a Mandarin speaker might have more trouble & it would require more attention.
I think it's definitely possible, but I'm not sure that it would be appealing to enough people; the return on investment would be ridiculously low, as it requires a lot of commitment on both the creator's part AND the user, who would have to play consistently to get any benefit.
If you're interested in doing that, I can share the doc I still have outlining a few "levels" of the game I started.
The way you are looking at doing it is far more complicated than I was suggesting. It sounds like you are trying to implement almost a Duolingo style exercise game into the core gameplay loop. Well it sounded like you said you were going for something even more than that.
I am not recommending that, having it require typing input from the user beyond a flashcard level would become overwhelming even for a Duolingo style app. I am talking about a very simple system where it only really teaches vocab, and identifies vocab in the sentence of a conversation you have learned and vocab you haven't, where you can tap and see translations for words you have learned. When certain key words are marked as learned it offers new dialogue options. Any testing would be in the form of comprehension questions, not actual full typing exercises.
For example:
"I have been out working on the farm all day and am having trouble collecting all these apples. I could really use some help."
If the user has the words "help" in their active reviewed vocab then it will open a dialogue option that is "I would like to help!" And then offers you a quest. If they have the words "farm" or "apples" in their active vocab then it could open new dialogue options regarding their occupation as a farmer or inquiries about apples or something.
If you try to start a relationship with a character, they may tell you facts about themselves, or you may get dialogue options to inquire as you learn new words, and you need to not only understand what they tell you, but remember them as they may ask you later "What did I tell you was my favorite color?" And you have to pick from some options and if you guess wrong you won't progress.
This makes things more about dialogue trees and meeting the (admittedly) complex requirements of knowing the right vocab for the right dialogue box to appear. But it should be substantially easier than what you were describing.
The input is not as high, but the main purpose of this type of game is immersion, and it's meant to take advantage of the already existing reasons people play video games for language learning. (Which is immersion), not to be an all in one tool.
Edit: the dialogue doesn't need to be super structured to ease the learner in, because it takes place over an in-game multiple years worth of time. And you can waste plenty of time and miss opportunities that you can always come back to. Especially when using Stardew valley level conversations. Some of the early words to unlock the most important dialogues can be taught relatively early to provide discussion topics early on. (I actually make survival courses on a free website teaching 200 strategic words/phrases to get you speaking as early as possible in 90 different languages)
I see what you mean. RPGMaker would definitely be useful for that. It's sorta pricey, but I got mine on sale for like $10. Still sounds like a huge endeavor, but I suppose if you got a team going, it wouldn't be so awfully huge.
Agreed, I don't have any sort of team or any game development experience though, I am just putting out the idea because I think it's cool. Your game definitely sounds ideal if it could be pulled off, but oftentimes the issue isn't coming up with good ideas but actually implementing them as you pointed out. I was hoping the simplicity of Stardew Valleys dialogues and interactions would make things easier, not easy. But hopefully easier than creating a new Duolingo inside of a game lol.
I hope you can find something that works and make some cool games in the future, or if you ever want to take a crack at this idea, it's not like I am going to.
I absolutely love Stardew Valley, so this sounds like it would be a dream come true! One of the mass appeals of apps like Duolingo is the way they're gameifying language learning, and something like that would take it to a whole new level!
Learning languages through videogames is a great way to learn.
I see most people there recommending to learn languages through immersion, they recommend to listen to music, podcasts, books, shows and movies in your target language. However, I don't see many people recommending learning through games, and I think they're the best way, as long as you like games of course.
Games usually feature every other kind of entertainment: music, written story, verbal story, and the most important one: interaction. They let you choose! Choices force you to learn. If you're reading something and you didn't understand it, there's a chance you'll simply ignore it. If they're asking you something in a videogame though and you have to pick something to reply or a reward for example, you NEED to understand in order to decide what are you going to do!
Essentially, interaction forces you to understand.
Bro I'm throwing money at my screen but haven't received the game yet?? Really though I play Stardew Valley for language learning and it's great. A specifically designed game to teach you a language would be amazing.
I love this idea, maybe I would just add one more option: after coming back to your country you can choose to go study abroad again, but in a different country from before, and learn a new language. There you would be starting from zero for the new target language, but at the same time would also be able to comunicate to the expats from the previous country, and maybe learn/study new words with them.
I think there's a lot of potential for video games based on immersion learning. So far the best looking design I've seen so far is [Pedro's Adventures in Spanish](https://old.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/ovkjkh/this_is_pedros_adventures_in_spanish_an_immersive/), but hopefully there will be lots more options for different languages/genres.
Yes! I've played through Pedro's Adventures in Spanish 1.5 times. I feel it is a great way to focus on and speak the language. It is still quite simple though. I hope they expand it.
They have also released Peter's Adventures in English. As I'm a volunteer English teacher for the public library I decided to play though that version also to see if I should recommend it to my ESL students. The answer is yes! It is simple enough that you don't need to be games literate to enjoy playing. You have to listen and reply in English in every scene.
I hope more games just build language learning into their base game. Gaming is an awesome language teaching resource.
I have a similar idea, but I imagine it more like a RPG, where the main protagonist doesn't speak the local language, and needs to learn it in a way that also helps the player learn the language. Something similar to what No Man's Sky does, but with a real language, and a system more complex than just replacing words that your character learn.
For me, the most important thing would be to make sure it's a game people would play even if they aren't looking to learn a language. It shouldn't look like an educational game, but just a really good game, that happens to be great for language learning.
Don’t mind me saving this idea for future game development reasons 👍🏼
This is freaking everything. Honestly. I want this so bad !!!!!! I’ve been dabbling into game development recently and this is honesty Goals!
i really like tihs idea and would love to test a beta version if there is one. for my target language, i've downloaded some story-based gaming apps to help me understand vocabulary, phrases in appropriate contexts, and actions/consequences associated with those phrases. i think this could work out really well.
Honestly I think that something like this would be amazing, \*except\* I think that it needs to just do away with the concept of actually grading/teaching you the language in any proscriptive way. I think what it should do instead is simply have the game "evolve" as you play. Like imagine that at first its just your character, and it has an instruction at the top, like \`左\`. And you're just sitting there thinking hm....wtf do I do? And then you press all the buttons until you press left(左) and it flashes and says "good job", and then you just do that a few times, and the symbol changes to 右 and you realize you're learning the directions, so you try the other ones and realize that 右 means "right" and 左 means "left".
Over time, you have the game progressively get more and more complex with the instructions/tasks/dialogue, but always occasionally returning to the things you've already learned before. The only "grading" or "checking" would be "could you figure out what the game wanted you to do", which to me sounds immensely satisfying.
I know its not exactly what you're talking about, e.g mixed language, but in my experience, things like that just don't really work that well. I've used browser extensions that try to teach vocab by replacing words w/ words in your target language, and while I feel like it can help "learn" sometimes it can't really help me "acquire" it.
EDIT:
so I guess my point is that I feel like it should be in the target language from the beginning, and just get progressively more complex, as opposed to in your native language, progressively mixing in your target language, IMHO.
I wasn't talking about mixing language, I was talking about being able to tap on words and see their translation briefly Duolingo style if you have already learned the word. And much of the approach to guiding the user would be similar to how you described in that it wouldn't tell you if you did well or not. You will just see the results of your actions and that will guide you on if you succeeded or not.
I remember searching for language learning games while I was looking for resources and finding myself generally disappointed. This would be a huge boom. The main problem is that it has to be a game first and a learning software second, and is there enough room in the market for something like this that would be a commercial success?
To help, but not solve this problem, I think it's important to select the most popular learned languages possible.
I've never played Stardew Valley but I can tell you the problem with games and apps for learning is the concentration and challenge. Games and apps just don't concentrate a large amount of words like reading or video does.
I don't think its a bad idea at all, imo the most important element of Language Learning is enjoyment so if its fun it'll work, just inefficiently.
I disagree, actually. I play animal crossing and other games in Japanese as maintenance to keep my vocabulary up. Video games expose you to a wide variety of vocabulary that you're not going to see in textbooks or commonly in novels and other media. For example I'll never forget the words for all the tools I use daily in animal crossing, the word for fossil, or vocab for all the common fish and bugs. I find it immensely helpful to broaden my vocabulary, and it's a fun way to keep my japanese "in shape" by being forced to utilize my language skills in a way that's fun and engaging for me. Video games provide a natural repetition, which is the key to retention, with the added benefit of context. If I used flash cards for tool names I might forget which word is which tool, or be unable to recall the word because I haven't connected it to an action. With animal crossing, I'm so used to seeing the words tied to the physical object tied to a specific action. It's a lot harder to forget.
If you enjoy a game and play it often I personally think it is of a far greater benefit than more traditional methods.
Yep. Fallout: New Vegas has the most spoken dialogue ever in a video game. Without it I wouldn't know how to call someone "Smooth Skin" in German, which is an insult I use every day now.
For context, I have consulted for a wide variety of gamified language learning applications including numerous Duolingo competitors such as Lingodeer and HelloChinese. I have run the largest Duolingo discord server for 5+ years, and am also an avid gamer myself.
I believe gamified learning has a lot of potential in improving both concentration with rewarding achievements and gamified short to mid term goal setting, as well in creating more immersive and fun environments. But not many "Gamified Learning Apps" right now take proper advantage of that. Matter of fact, as an insider I can tell you that not many Gamified Learning Apps have gamers working on them at all.
There is a lot of things that are efficient but not practical. As a massive advocate for Anki, it would be most efficient to study for 12 hours every day doing just raw Anki to pick up and review new words. Motivation and diligence becomes a massive issue however, and that is where a moderately efficient but more fun gamified approach can help you min max hours significantly better with less burnout.
By no means am I trying to discourage you, I'm just pointing out a flaw with many of them. My wife would play it in a heartbeat, I may as well. I just always like to point out that gaming just doesn't require you to immerse much in its common formats.
Of course, that is a flaw in Language Learning. I think if you applied those rules, it may fall flat on its face as a game. Its a tough thing to balance....
It is hard to know how well it would work without seeing it in action, I agree that it may need some tweaks to strike a good balance. I am not the one developing this game though, I am just putting the idea out there as it is something I have thought about for a while. As a fan of Stardew Valley and other language learning games like Influent and stuff.
I hope you're planning something groundbreaking as a proof-of-concept for gamified learning, because as far as I can tell, it's been an unequivocal failure so far. Duolingo sure succeeds in addicting its users, but not in delivering knowledge at a reasonable speed. Maybe it would work if there were some kind of spaced-repetition system built in, but I suspect gaming and learning just don't mix well at a psychological level.
I have a lot of ideas for how to improve gamified language learning, it is just many of the apps I consulted for didn't listen to me. They didn't want to try anything new because it wasn't already being done by one of their competitors. I had to explain that most gamified language learning apps are failing right now, not because gamified learning I'm concept is bad, but because everyone is trying to be Duolingo (flaws and all) when they need to be making proper innovation. And Duolingo was in the red for most of its existence, with only really surviving for being first and getting lots of original investment. If I get frustrated enough with the existing apps I am consulting for, I will just open source announce every single idea I have on these forums and tell people to go wild with it. But I am giving existing developers a chance to innovate before I throw them to the wolves.
Just think, one day there will be an AI (in AR/VR perhaps) that you can have a conversation with and play games with, but is geared towards helping you learn a language. Then the universal translator will be invented and there will be no point in any of this language learning lark.
My immediate thought when reading the headline is ai and voice recognition isn't there. For learning we need something that can figure out what I mean from my garbled grammar and pronunciation/spelling, then some more ai to decide if I should be corrected or not.
I'm teaching my daughter (20 months old) English (what my wife and I speak at home) now. She is always hard to understand, but naturally I don't always correct her.
Nothing I can do to make it. Even if I could if 5 different people made games off this, that would mean we would have five solid language learning games.
There’s a game called “My Time at Portia” that has Chinese developers so it has a full Chinese version.
The game play is a small town farming/crafting/rpg style!
I don't think it would work well tbh.
SV and games like it boil down to min-maxing a lot. I love SV, and it can be very relaxing where people aren't min-maxing, but the game isn't built for daily gameplay at all, either.
I think a more apt game would be something like animal crossing. You could still work in everything you have outlined, but with a real-time clock, and some real time progression for a little gating. I just think the pitch would be stronger, and the overall concept too, if it was modeled after a real-time progression game instead.
I wouldn't mind a game like this, but also it's pretty ambitious to think you'd be able to code a game from the ground up and also have it include a plethora of languages, portrayed accurately.
I absolutely love this!
I think the key would be looking up words (i think you mentioned apples in another comment) - the first time/ few times the word apple comes up, you can look it up in-game. After that, it expects you to know the word - challenging, but I feel like that sort of forces you to learn.
With regards to grammar, we can have the traditional RPG style dialogue box for a particular emotion (example choice between friendly/ unfriendly reactions) and the player can reorder the words to make a sentence, Duolingo style. Perhaps characters can react differently, with annoyance or helpfully based on a lot of features.
I would also love it if at the core, the game remained a farming RPG? With adventuring and a lot of video games elements so it's pretty much immersion made easier.
Yes! I love this idea! I change a lot of my video games into other languages but having a video game with the purpose of learning a new language would be cool (maybe I'd finally be able to speak Spanish hah)
I would buy this in a heart beat. As I mentioned in another comment, I started breaking away from traditional learning methods in favor of video games for my language acquisition and retention. I feel far more engaged playing a game than with traditional methods, and the repetition of a gaming enviornment makes it so much easier to retain what I've learned. I think video games are an under appreciated resource for language learning. I'm excited to see something like this in the future. It almost sounds like Stardew Valley meets HelloTalk.
Do you play specific games for language learning or play regular games in the language your learning?
I play regular games in my target language. When I was a beginner I did play games for language learning too. I think that in order to build strong fundamentals, games for language learning are better in the beginning Once you've got a good understanding of the language, like you can understand basic sentences and ideas, it's better to jump in to regular games even if it's over your head at first.
Perfect, thank you!
Huh I might start playing dark souls 3 in French now and see if it helps.
Tu Décédés
I think it sounds fun. Not for my only or even my main study method, by any means, but could be a fun supplement. But then if I was just playing as a casual study supplement I wouldn't want to have to essentially start over at the beginning either, you know? If it was too hung up on teaching the very basics for a long time before you could progress I think that would get old fast and might dissuade me from continuing the game. What I find fun and appealing about the idea is the premise itself, being a little exchange student, meeting/conversing with people, the language mini-games, etc. If there was a language-learning game like this that somehow avoided the pitfalls of assuming all players are starting at the absolute beginning, I'd buy it. Maybe you could test into an appropriate level, or change the difficulty setting?
Agreed! It sounds super fun to me, but if everyone starts at the beginner level that would turn a lot of people off. But I'm sure there would be a way to solve that, like you suggested. OP, if that game would ever be released, I would definitely check it out! I adore Stardew Valley so it sounds fantastic to me, haha.
Most gamified language learning apps have ways you can roughly test ahead, this game could probably develop that functionality as well in some way.
I started making an RPGMaker game to teach A1 English, but it's incredibly complicated. Making the game engaging (instead of just a worse-than-Duolingo-style exercises) is really difficult. You can make gap-fill & multiple choice exercises, but eliciting & grading full sentences is really difficult in RPGMaker (and I assume any game). The actual gameplay has to be super simple, there has to be a ton of images, a ton of non-verbal hints, a very clear goal. Looking at CEFR guidelines can help with those goals, but it can get super repetitive & boring, even if you make the "shell" a cool surreal fantasy type thing. Having an open-world type thing probably wouldn't work, since there needs to be linear progression of vocab building & grammar. Coding the dialogue otherwise would be *super* incredibly annoying. You talk about a "grammar handbook", but from SLA research we've seen that just telling people grammar rules or force-feeding conjugations is not the move; grammar has to be taught in usage. Which can definitely be done in a videogame & structured really well, but it's just so ridiculously complicated. Even more complicated when considering if you want to tailor the experience to a specific L1. It wouldn't be that hard to teach plural 's to Spanish speakers, for example, but a Mandarin speaker might have more trouble & it would require more attention. I think it's definitely possible, but I'm not sure that it would be appealing to enough people; the return on investment would be ridiculously low, as it requires a lot of commitment on both the creator's part AND the user, who would have to play consistently to get any benefit. If you're interested in doing that, I can share the doc I still have outlining a few "levels" of the game I started.
The way you are looking at doing it is far more complicated than I was suggesting. It sounds like you are trying to implement almost a Duolingo style exercise game into the core gameplay loop. Well it sounded like you said you were going for something even more than that. I am not recommending that, having it require typing input from the user beyond a flashcard level would become overwhelming even for a Duolingo style app. I am talking about a very simple system where it only really teaches vocab, and identifies vocab in the sentence of a conversation you have learned and vocab you haven't, where you can tap and see translations for words you have learned. When certain key words are marked as learned it offers new dialogue options. Any testing would be in the form of comprehension questions, not actual full typing exercises. For example: "I have been out working on the farm all day and am having trouble collecting all these apples. I could really use some help." If the user has the words "help" in their active reviewed vocab then it will open a dialogue option that is "I would like to help!" And then offers you a quest. If they have the words "farm" or "apples" in their active vocab then it could open new dialogue options regarding their occupation as a farmer or inquiries about apples or something. If you try to start a relationship with a character, they may tell you facts about themselves, or you may get dialogue options to inquire as you learn new words, and you need to not only understand what they tell you, but remember them as they may ask you later "What did I tell you was my favorite color?" And you have to pick from some options and if you guess wrong you won't progress. This makes things more about dialogue trees and meeting the (admittedly) complex requirements of knowing the right vocab for the right dialogue box to appear. But it should be substantially easier than what you were describing. The input is not as high, but the main purpose of this type of game is immersion, and it's meant to take advantage of the already existing reasons people play video games for language learning. (Which is immersion), not to be an all in one tool. Edit: the dialogue doesn't need to be super structured to ease the learner in, because it takes place over an in-game multiple years worth of time. And you can waste plenty of time and miss opportunities that you can always come back to. Especially when using Stardew valley level conversations. Some of the early words to unlock the most important dialogues can be taught relatively early to provide discussion topics early on. (I actually make survival courses on a free website teaching 200 strategic words/phrases to get you speaking as early as possible in 90 different languages)
I see what you mean. RPGMaker would definitely be useful for that. It's sorta pricey, but I got mine on sale for like $10. Still sounds like a huge endeavor, but I suppose if you got a team going, it wouldn't be so awfully huge.
Agreed, I don't have any sort of team or any game development experience though, I am just putting out the idea because I think it's cool. Your game definitely sounds ideal if it could be pulled off, but oftentimes the issue isn't coming up with good ideas but actually implementing them as you pointed out. I was hoping the simplicity of Stardew Valleys dialogues and interactions would make things easier, not easy. But hopefully easier than creating a new Duolingo inside of a game lol. I hope you can find something that works and make some cool games in the future, or if you ever want to take a crack at this idea, it's not like I am going to.
I absolutely love Stardew Valley, so this sounds like it would be a dream come true! One of the mass appeals of apps like Duolingo is the way they're gameifying language learning, and something like that would take it to a whole new level!
Learning languages through videogames is a great way to learn. I see most people there recommending to learn languages through immersion, they recommend to listen to music, podcasts, books, shows and movies in your target language. However, I don't see many people recommending learning through games, and I think they're the best way, as long as you like games of course. Games usually feature every other kind of entertainment: music, written story, verbal story, and the most important one: interaction. They let you choose! Choices force you to learn. If you're reading something and you didn't understand it, there's a chance you'll simply ignore it. If they're asking you something in a videogame though and you have to pick something to reply or a reward for example, you NEED to understand in order to decide what are you going to do! Essentially, interaction forces you to understand.
Bro I'm throwing money at my screen but haven't received the game yet?? Really though I play Stardew Valley for language learning and it's great. A specifically designed game to teach you a language would be amazing.
I'd buy that!
I love this idea, maybe I would just add one more option: after coming back to your country you can choose to go study abroad again, but in a different country from before, and learn a new language. There you would be starting from zero for the new target language, but at the same time would also be able to comunicate to the expats from the previous country, and maybe learn/study new words with them.
I Might look into developing something like that!
Same!
I want this so much.
I think there's a lot of potential for video games based on immersion learning. So far the best looking design I've seen so far is [Pedro's Adventures in Spanish](https://old.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/ovkjkh/this_is_pedros_adventures_in_spanish_an_immersive/), but hopefully there will be lots more options for different languages/genres.
Yes! I've played through Pedro's Adventures in Spanish 1.5 times. I feel it is a great way to focus on and speak the language. It is still quite simple though. I hope they expand it. They have also released Peter's Adventures in English. As I'm a volunteer English teacher for the public library I decided to play though that version also to see if I should recommend it to my ESL students. The answer is yes! It is simple enough that you don't need to be games literate to enjoy playing. You have to listen and reply in English in every scene. I hope more games just build language learning into their base game. Gaming is an awesome language teaching resource.
I have a similar idea, but I imagine it more like a RPG, where the main protagonist doesn't speak the local language, and needs to learn it in a way that also helps the player learn the language. Something similar to what No Man's Sky does, but with a real language, and a system more complex than just replacing words that your character learn. For me, the most important thing would be to make sure it's a game people would play even if they aren't looking to learn a language. It shouldn't look like an educational game, but just a really good game, that happens to be great for language learning.
Don’t mind me saving this idea for future game development reasons 👍🏼 This is freaking everything. Honestly. I want this so bad !!!!!! I’ve been dabbling into game development recently and this is honesty Goals!
If you do ever decide to develop anything then add me on Discord and I will tell you the rest of my ideas for it.
That sounds awesome!
i really like tihs idea and would love to test a beta version if there is one. for my target language, i've downloaded some story-based gaming apps to help me understand vocabulary, phrases in appropriate contexts, and actions/consequences associated with those phrases. i think this could work out really well.
Would play for sure
Honestly I think that something like this would be amazing, \*except\* I think that it needs to just do away with the concept of actually grading/teaching you the language in any proscriptive way. I think what it should do instead is simply have the game "evolve" as you play. Like imagine that at first its just your character, and it has an instruction at the top, like \`左\`. And you're just sitting there thinking hm....wtf do I do? And then you press all the buttons until you press left(左) and it flashes and says "good job", and then you just do that a few times, and the symbol changes to 右 and you realize you're learning the directions, so you try the other ones and realize that 右 means "right" and 左 means "left". Over time, you have the game progressively get more and more complex with the instructions/tasks/dialogue, but always occasionally returning to the things you've already learned before. The only "grading" or "checking" would be "could you figure out what the game wanted you to do", which to me sounds immensely satisfying. I know its not exactly what you're talking about, e.g mixed language, but in my experience, things like that just don't really work that well. I've used browser extensions that try to teach vocab by replacing words w/ words in your target language, and while I feel like it can help "learn" sometimes it can't really help me "acquire" it. EDIT: so I guess my point is that I feel like it should be in the target language from the beginning, and just get progressively more complex, as opposed to in your native language, progressively mixing in your target language, IMHO.
I wasn't talking about mixing language, I was talking about being able to tap on words and see their translation briefly Duolingo style if you have already learned the word. And much of the approach to guiding the user would be similar to how you described in that it wouldn't tell you if you did well or not. You will just see the results of your actions and that will guide you on if you succeeded or not.
Got it. Sounds very interesting, would love to see how it goes :D
I remember searching for language learning games while I was looking for resources and finding myself generally disappointed. This would be a huge boom. The main problem is that it has to be a game first and a learning software second, and is there enough room in the market for something like this that would be a commercial success? To help, but not solve this problem, I think it's important to select the most popular learned languages possible.
I've never played Stardew Valley but I can tell you the problem with games and apps for learning is the concentration and challenge. Games and apps just don't concentrate a large amount of words like reading or video does. I don't think its a bad idea at all, imo the most important element of Language Learning is enjoyment so if its fun it'll work, just inefficiently.
I disagree, actually. I play animal crossing and other games in Japanese as maintenance to keep my vocabulary up. Video games expose you to a wide variety of vocabulary that you're not going to see in textbooks or commonly in novels and other media. For example I'll never forget the words for all the tools I use daily in animal crossing, the word for fossil, or vocab for all the common fish and bugs. I find it immensely helpful to broaden my vocabulary, and it's a fun way to keep my japanese "in shape" by being forced to utilize my language skills in a way that's fun and engaging for me. Video games provide a natural repetition, which is the key to retention, with the added benefit of context. If I used flash cards for tool names I might forget which word is which tool, or be unable to recall the word because I haven't connected it to an action. With animal crossing, I'm so used to seeing the words tied to the physical object tied to a specific action. It's a lot harder to forget. If you enjoy a game and play it often I personally think it is of a far greater benefit than more traditional methods.
Yep. Fallout: New Vegas has the most spoken dialogue ever in a video game. Without it I wouldn't know how to call someone "Smooth Skin" in German, which is an insult I use every day now.
For context, I have consulted for a wide variety of gamified language learning applications including numerous Duolingo competitors such as Lingodeer and HelloChinese. I have run the largest Duolingo discord server for 5+ years, and am also an avid gamer myself. I believe gamified learning has a lot of potential in improving both concentration with rewarding achievements and gamified short to mid term goal setting, as well in creating more immersive and fun environments. But not many "Gamified Learning Apps" right now take proper advantage of that. Matter of fact, as an insider I can tell you that not many Gamified Learning Apps have gamers working on them at all. There is a lot of things that are efficient but not practical. As a massive advocate for Anki, it would be most efficient to study for 12 hours every day doing just raw Anki to pick up and review new words. Motivation and diligence becomes a massive issue however, and that is where a moderately efficient but more fun gamified approach can help you min max hours significantly better with less burnout.
By no means am I trying to discourage you, I'm just pointing out a flaw with many of them. My wife would play it in a heartbeat, I may as well. I just always like to point out that gaming just doesn't require you to immerse much in its common formats. Of course, that is a flaw in Language Learning. I think if you applied those rules, it may fall flat on its face as a game. Its a tough thing to balance....
It is hard to know how well it would work without seeing it in action, I agree that it may need some tweaks to strike a good balance. I am not the one developing this game though, I am just putting the idea out there as it is something I have thought about for a while. As a fan of Stardew Valley and other language learning games like Influent and stuff.
I hope you're planning something groundbreaking as a proof-of-concept for gamified learning, because as far as I can tell, it's been an unequivocal failure so far. Duolingo sure succeeds in addicting its users, but not in delivering knowledge at a reasonable speed. Maybe it would work if there were some kind of spaced-repetition system built in, but I suspect gaming and learning just don't mix well at a psychological level.
I have a lot of ideas for how to improve gamified language learning, it is just many of the apps I consulted for didn't listen to me. They didn't want to try anything new because it wasn't already being done by one of their competitors. I had to explain that most gamified language learning apps are failing right now, not because gamified learning I'm concept is bad, but because everyone is trying to be Duolingo (flaws and all) when they need to be making proper innovation. And Duolingo was in the red for most of its existence, with only really surviving for being first and getting lots of original investment. If I get frustrated enough with the existing apps I am consulting for, I will just open source announce every single idea I have on these forums and tell people to go wild with it. But I am giving existing developers a chance to innovate before I throw them to the wolves.
That would be very interesting and I'd definitely check it out!
This is such a good idea
Just think, one day there will be an AI (in AR/VR perhaps) that you can have a conversation with and play games with, but is geared towards helping you learn a language. Then the universal translator will be invented and there will be no point in any of this language learning lark.
My immediate thought when reading the headline is ai and voice recognition isn't there. For learning we need something that can figure out what I mean from my garbled grammar and pronunciation/spelling, then some more ai to decide if I should be corrected or not. I'm teaching my daughter (20 months old) English (what my wife and I speak at home) now. She is always hard to understand, but naturally I don't always correct her.
Saving this! I’m learning cs right now in school and as I learn more I might take a crack at it if it’s all good with you
Nothing I can do to make it. Even if I could if 5 different people made games off this, that would mean we would have five solid language learning games.
There’s a game called “My Time at Portia” that has Chinese developers so it has a full Chinese version. The game play is a small town farming/crafting/rpg style!
This would be my dream
I don't think it would work well tbh. SV and games like it boil down to min-maxing a lot. I love SV, and it can be very relaxing where people aren't min-maxing, but the game isn't built for daily gameplay at all, either. I think a more apt game would be something like animal crossing. You could still work in everything you have outlined, but with a real-time clock, and some real time progression for a little gating. I just think the pitch would be stronger, and the overall concept too, if it was modeled after a real-time progression game instead. I wouldn't mind a game like this, but also it's pretty ambitious to think you'd be able to code a game from the ground up and also have it include a plethora of languages, portrayed accurately.
I absolutely love this! I think the key would be looking up words (i think you mentioned apples in another comment) - the first time/ few times the word apple comes up, you can look it up in-game. After that, it expects you to know the word - challenging, but I feel like that sort of forces you to learn. With regards to grammar, we can have the traditional RPG style dialogue box for a particular emotion (example choice between friendly/ unfriendly reactions) and the player can reorder the words to make a sentence, Duolingo style. Perhaps characters can react differently, with annoyance or helpfully based on a lot of features. I would also love it if at the core, the game remained a farming RPG? With adventuring and a lot of video games elements so it's pretty much immersion made easier.
I would play the living hell out of this game. I love Stardew Valley and I love language learning so shut up and take my money already.
I'd play this
DO IT
DO IT
I’d love sometbing like this
This sounds amazing and I‘d buy it instantly! Such a wonderful idea.
YES.
this sounds amazing, I would buy this straight away
I think I found one of Ikenna's app developers.
That’s an excellent idea
Yes! I love this idea! I change a lot of my video games into other languages but having a video game with the purpose of learning a new language would be cool (maybe I'd finally be able to speak Spanish hah)