Learning a language? Come share your progress here!

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Started by Legend, Dec 20, 2016, 06:31 AM

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the-pi-guy

Jan 08, 2017, 11:53 PM Last Edit: Jan 09, 2017, 12:03 AM by the-pi-guy
With your skyrim example I think it'd work well with different cities speaking different languages. IE the closer you get to the capital city, the more common the new language is. Then have the game's quests align with this so that progression is always moving players closer and closer to the capital. Maybe have undercover missions where you're posing as people and if you can't respond correctly in their language, you're found out and forced into a fight. Also could have people talking in the language with you eavesdropping. If you understand what they said, it could lead you to a quest or save you from future danger.
I really like that idea.  Would really fit the language into the lore and stuff, and has some very awesome gameplay possibilities.  But I do feel the player would have to be somewhat constrained.  Throwing basically native language too soon at a player, because they get too close or something, would probably frustrated.  A lot of difficulty with setting the curve appropriately and open world gameplay would likely have to be constrained. 
But ridiculously awesome idea to think about. 

Alternatively we could have invaders, and as the player completes grammar lessons, the invaders would be more common.  Could even have the natives that were already there start learning the language.  Eventually the invaders and the natives are all speaking the same language.  That way the player could still be free to do whatever and basically set their own learning curve, and also keep the language as part of the lore without it being inconsistent.   

Games in general have a crazy amount of untapped potential and I'm shocked no one seems to be working on it. In the past I've posted about how great games can be for education by letting people learn through experience, but Life is Strange made me realise games can even reprogram the way we think.

After a long session of Life is Strange I had a very amusing feeling for about an hour where it still felt like I was mentally in the game. People asked me to do something for example and my brain jumped at the opportunity to increase my standing with them. I also made a joke that no one cared about and instinctively went to rewind time.

It's kinda like a few years ago when I played Sleeping Dogs. I remember driving after that game and for a few miles feeling a strong desire to drive in the left lane since that's how it worked in the game.

This video talks about the brain rewiring itself in general:




To some extent I think we experience things like this with all games, but imagine the potential here. It could be something simple like overwriting an addiction or it could be advanced inception like things that change our values as a person.
Yeah, I really like that video.  The brain fascinates me to no end.  It's so weird.  We take our memories for granted, but we forget things, our brains sometimes completely make things up. 
We take even common sense for granted, but it's probably not so different.  Our experiences make up way more of what we interpret of things and events than most people give them credit for.