Day two, and I don’t want to freak anybody out, but I’m thinking about a game that teaches a foreign language. French, to be specific. This game idea is dedicated to my wife who is quite keen for me to learn.

“Hold on there,” you interject, “Poindexter! You didn’t say anything about serious games. I want a refund!”

While it’s no secret that the serious games folks* have been trying their hand at teaching Arabic, there is no game there. I’m of the opinion that this is a frequent shortcoming of edu-gaming, or as it is sometimes called, “Can I play something else?”

So none of that. I’m proposing an honest-to-goodness game, of the variety that people play, that as an element of gameplay, teaches you a basic foreign language vocabulary. But I’m totally happy to grab all that taxpayer financed work into speech recognition and language evaluation that the folks at USC have developed…};^)

[Edit: The game incorporates a microphone, the player speaks phrases in the new language, and the computer evaluates the pronunciation. I don’t think that was clear.]

Approach One: Full immersion. The game played in the first person. It is a mission-based action game.

We immediately run into trouble, because part of the audience is going to want a Bourne Identity style espionage thriller, while another segment of the demographic might prefer more of a leisurely Before Sunrise walk-the-streets-of-Paris-talking-to-a- stranger-you-met-on-the-train experience. Obviously, what’s called for is a walking the streets of Paris with a double agent you met on a train, and now that problem’s solved.

But rather than Paris, a small provincial village where very few people speak English. The locals are deeply offended when an outsider speaks to them in English. Each mission requires you to expand your vocabulary to influence key people to do your bidding. And though I think it’s just barely possible that the market for WWII games has been saturated, an American agent trying to help organize the local French resistance is a hard idea to dismiss. The use of the hidden radio becomes a big element, and the necessity to learn cultural cues to help influence people. Plus stealth, shooting and blowing stuff up. Yay!

Approach Two: This one is tougher. An online roleplaying game (MMO: Minorly Multiplayer Online) that attempts to teach two languages, say French and English. French speakers take up residence in one land, the English in a nearby land. Within each land, only the native language can be spoken. There is a buffer zone between the lands, a freehold where both languages are allowed.

There is some competition between the lands, but it is overshadowed by a greater threat, A Great Evil™ that only a cooperative force can hold back. Traders play an important role, as there are some raw materials and some types of tradecraft that are unique to each land.

A Tale in the Desert is close to the flavor of interaction I’m imagining, but with some combat, though it would be great if instead of personal hack-and-slash, the combat against the Great Evil™ revolved around military units created through trade and cooperation, and controlled more abstractly, almost RTS-style (like the Commander interface in Battlefield 2), so that the focus is more on communication, and less on twitch.

It is left as an exercise for the reader to imagine adding more and more languages, more unique trade routes, and an ever rowdier Interzone.

* Is there a flip side to this in other industries? Is there a Frivolous Accounting Software Conference? A Just-Kidding-Around Weapons Development Movement?