Are RTSes an effective way to learn a foreign language?

Hallo zusammen, for anyone who found this randomly, I’m a language learner using video games to learn a foreign language (German, in my case) and I’ve been blogging about it to keep me on it. This week I played two excellent real time strategy games: Age of Mythology: Extended Edition and Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition and as a special surprise, my partner even joined in on the fun, as he attempted to play Age of Mythology in Italian. Neither of us learned that much, however.

Usually I would go into great detail about all the feelings I felt playing these games, but I feel succinct today and there’s really only one major factor here:

While interesting text abounds in both games, the game’s pacing is built around rapid-fire responses, which is not conducive to native or foreign language engagement.

Truly the text is interesting (but I didn’t read it).

My earliest understanding of Greco-Roman mythology came from Age of Mythology, which I crushed (using cheats + almost always on easy) as a kid. Every object in the game, from common crocodiles to the heroic Hippolyta has a text-description, and it’s easy to take a break from wall-building and gold-gathering to pull up AoM’s description of Hunting Dogs or Arrow Ship Cladding.

I believe I read most of these descriptions in English when I was a younger human and I hoped returning to this game of my youth would get me excited to reread them again, but I barely even opened the text descriptions, much less read them. As a child, this text was a magical introduction to the fantasy world of human mythology, but as a jaded adult, I understand that I can probably get a more updated and inclusive description of everything from Chiron to Flood Control, from Wikipedia, which would even let me google words I don’t know. [Now did I open up German Wikipedia after I finished AoM? No…]

The campaign is, also, extremely compelling (but this blog is not about cinematics)

I love Age of Mythology’s campaigns, specifically Fall of the Trident and The New Atlantis. The campaign’s funny and sincere writing really motivates the time put into building siege weapons and armadas and the characters are extremely enduring, so much so, that rewatching the scenes played out in German was a little discombobulating.

[To hear for yourself just scroll to whatever language you’re interested in.]

My brain had memorized each line of dialogue from the first ten or so levels (the Trojan War Saga) and so I could genuinely follow everything, but I knew that was a result of my Age of Mythology experience, not my German experience. It also left me in a weird space rating-wise, because I value voice acting in my ratings so highly, but these cinematics don’t exactly reward the player for paying attention to them. They’re comedic character building moments with funny payoffs, sure, but also kind respites for brains over-stimulated on micro.

In my experience, my brain just turns off during foreign language cinematics, since it’s exhausting itself learning a language and playing a game at the same time and will take any break it can find. This is, of course, a “skill issue” but one tragically I think would apply to many language learners, in large part, because…

Real-time-strategy games are all about reaction time, and reading anything slows that down.

What makes Age of Mythology and Age of Empires II so challenging to review is that these games offer unique and interesting language and excellent voice-acting, but high-level AoM or AoE gameplay only rewards speed and organization and reading any text at all threatens both of those things. On challenging difficulty levels, there is simply no time to even read the tooltips for the build icons, much less text boxes in the text descriptions and while you can pause single-player games or play on an easier difficulty level, it’s hard to forget that the game was built to played with hotkeys and muscle memory.

It took me significant effort to slow down enough to even pick up the basic words like villager or lumber camp. This wasn’t a problem as a kid, because I was naturally curious about gods and monsters and fully agnostic of the fact that I was playing the game inefficiently, but as an adult, I was always cognizant that engaging with any text meant distracting myself from my economy management and that feeling sucked.

As a child, I got so much out of Age of Mythology, but I also played it for maybe 1000 hours. I’m sure if I played it a 1000 hours more in German, my German would improve, but I just know there has to be a better game.

I wondered if a new-to-me RTS was all I needed, so I downloaded Age of Empires II, and found the same results: interesting writing, that my brain could not focus on.

To be fair, I didn’t beat either game, since these aren’t the types of games I feel that I need to finish to review, but I completed the tutorial and a few scenarios and acknowledged that these games are good “edutainment” for young, curious readers, but don’t reward reading enough to make them equally good for language learners.

A tragedy, surely, since these games are very fun.

My rankings:

• A1: Ein Stern (ü)

  • You need to play these games in your native language to understand the mechanics enough to play these games in a second language and even after all that, you probably won’t get much out of the experience.

• A2 & B1: Zwei Sterne (ü ü)

  • Those familiar with the games will default to icons and muscle memory to play the games; those unfamiliar will need to complete the tutorial in their native language before playing. There will be some, passive learning, but not much.

• B2: Drei Sterne (ü ü ü)

• C1 & C2: Zwei Sterne (ü ü)

  • Because the game is fun, and covers uncommon verbiage, I do mildly recommend these games to advanced language learners. If a player has never played an RTS, then I think they might be most equipped to improve their language skills, since they will be depending on the game to teach them how to win.

Oh, and for my husband’s experience with Age of Mythology? He got stuck super early on because he didn’t know how to advance his society past the Archaic Age and he refused to use any myth units because, and I quote, “they were no myth units in Age of Empires”. Well good thing I didn’t keep playing it, huh?

Tschüss,

Boudicca