[DoctorEldritch]

Hello Legion Gamers!

September is here, and traditionally here in Legion, this is the month when we think about learning and education, and how games can be used to help that.

After all, interactive educational games are becoming more and more widespread: you can play a game specifically designed to teach you something, a myriad of mobile apps use gamification and learning combinations, and games are even starting to make their way into the school curriculum.

But still, gamified education is a complex and relatively new field with possible new ways of how games can be used for education still underexplored. Can you think of any more?

[JokerZida]

Hmm
Games can help in education in many ways, including giving students the opportunity to experiment and see their ideas in a virtual reality without harming anyone.
Also, teaching people, for example, a game in English will force non-English speaking players to learn the language.

[Aaricia]

@JokerZida you are very right, for me it was not games, but television that helped me learn foreign languages, but it can be whatever is interesting for the person, so in this case, games can very much help too 🙂

[CandelaSynth]

@JokerZida @Aaricia

Language learning is a great use for games indeed! : )
In fact, I can think of a couple of applications for language learning that were conceived as games, like Duolingo and Memrise. Have you ever tried any of these apps/is there any language you always wanted to learn? 🤓

[Aaricia]

@CandelaSynth funny that you ask, because I wanted to learn Spanish a few years ago 😂 I even had Duolingo and learned a bit, but then I got too lazy 🙈

[DoctorEldritch]

Originally Posted by JokerZida

Also, teaching people, for example, a game in English will force non-English speaking players to learn the language.

For me, it was less about forcing and more about motivation to learn in this case. There is a specific example: long ago when I was a little kid and did not know English all that well, I was playing The Curse of Monkey Island. Back then, I was playing it in translation, not the original English. It was voiced, which was surprising, but the translation itself was bad and cringy, though I did not understand just how bad it was back then.

Still, at one point in the game, the main character is on the ship, and another character is swinging on the rope shouting "Who-hoo" while swinging on it. You can see what I mean at 3:16:18 here:

So the translation was using an auto-translate or something, but it translated the first "who" not as a shout of joy that it is, but as actual "who". Like in "who let the dogs out". As in, in my language, the character was shouting "who". In Arabic, I guess he would be swinging and shouting "من" or "مين".

It was so ridiculous that I thought to myself "I need to get better at English and play games in their original language so I would not have to suffer through something like this again".

I guess it was because of that experience that I worked as a game translate for some time when I grew up...