There have been a bunch of games made to learn a language over the years, none of them ever really did that well. Making a game is hard and teaching a language is hard and doing them at the same time is much, much harder.
There's no 'likely to gain traction' when it comes to game concepts. Big ideas are utterly worthless in game development. What makes a game good or bad aren't a couple paragraphs someone can come up with as a suggestion, it's all the work and effort that actually goes into them. It's not whether there's an immersive language to learn in the game but how it manifests, how a game handles bringing in new vocabulary, balancing reinforcing that with the progression a player needs in a game, so on and so forth.
There's a reason game studios don't take ideas and publishers don't fund them. If you think an idea is cool visit /r/gamedev/wiki/getting_started and learn to make it yourself.
idea itself would sound amazing. Having a game simulate the organic need of the language at appropriate levels could definitely be very beneficial for the learning process.
About the complexity, that would be quite insane. Even if the game would be made to support just one language, crafting a working language learning experience alone would be a massive challenge. Building a game along it would multiply the required efforts.
And that's with just one language. Which cuts the potential player base into just those speaking language X and wanting to learn language Y.
The required effort is just way too massive compared to the very limited potential player base.
Rosetta stone already did this a long time ago. there is no need to make it into an immersive game, that doesn't fit the way that people will use it. You would end up making a very expensive version of something that already exist which doesn't add anything the users wanted for.
I would never play it as someone who wants to relax while playing games and not deal with a study session. Especially because there are more efficient ways to learn if your goal is just to learn something and not play a game.
If it's free, then yes - I could see it doing well as a tool/game. If they have to pay for it, no. There are plenty of better language learning tools available that don't cost money.
I mean, isn't the best way to learn a language to just immerse in it?
You can play every game you already love in Spanish (with some outside grammar/vocabulary learning ofc) instead of needing games for the sole purpose of learning Spanish.
If I were to speak for myself, browsing the internet taught me English, not teachers.
There have been a bunch of games made to learn a language over the years, none of them ever really did that well. Making a game is hard and teaching a language is hard and doing them at the same time is much, much harder. There's no 'likely to gain traction' when it comes to game concepts. Big ideas are utterly worthless in game development. What makes a game good or bad aren't a couple paragraphs someone can come up with as a suggestion, it's all the work and effort that actually goes into them. It's not whether there's an immersive language to learn in the game but how it manifests, how a game handles bringing in new vocabulary, balancing reinforcing that with the progression a player needs in a game, so on and so forth. There's a reason game studios don't take ideas and publishers don't fund them. If you think an idea is cool visit /r/gamedev/wiki/getting_started and learn to make it yourself.
Thanks for your comment! Good insights.
You can do it yourself if you choose the genre of text adventure with illustrations. Without any 2d/3d there. https://instead.itch.io/mansion
idea itself would sound amazing. Having a game simulate the organic need of the language at appropriate levels could definitely be very beneficial for the learning process. About the complexity, that would be quite insane. Even if the game would be made to support just one language, crafting a working language learning experience alone would be a massive challenge. Building a game along it would multiply the required efforts. And that's with just one language. Which cuts the potential player base into just those speaking language X and wanting to learn language Y. The required effort is just way too massive compared to the very limited potential player base.
You're right - this is probably an overkill. Thanks!
Rosetta stone already did this a long time ago. there is no need to make it into an immersive game, that doesn't fit the way that people will use it. You would end up making a very expensive version of something that already exist which doesn't add anything the users wanted for.
I would never play it as someone who wants to relax while playing games and not deal with a study session. Especially because there are more efficient ways to learn if your goal is just to learn something and not play a game.
Most people use duolingo as a fun passive way of learning a language. This could be such a game too?
If it's free, then yes - I could see it doing well as a tool/game. If they have to pay for it, no. There are plenty of better language learning tools available that don't cost money.
I mean, isn't the best way to learn a language to just immerse in it? You can play every game you already love in Spanish (with some outside grammar/vocabulary learning ofc) instead of needing games for the sole purpose of learning Spanish. If I were to speak for myself, browsing the internet taught me English, not teachers.