Learn Languages Through Games on Steam

If you like playing PC games, and want to learn a language at the same time, try this. Set your Steam language to the foreign language you’re trying to learn, and you can play most of your library in that language. It’s under Preferences > Interface then choose your preferred language from the first drop-down.

Sometimes Steam will need to re-download the data to get the localised content, but once that’s all done, you should be able to play without any trouble. For example, both Portal games, Civilisation, Team Fortress 2 and Skyrim all work in French. Check the languages section of Steam store page for that game for what languages are available.

Available languages are listed on the right-hand side of the game's details page

The only problem with learning from games is you might learn a lot of weird vocabulary. Just think of it as gaming with a bonus, rather than actual language practice.

Tonnes of Studio Ghibli films recreated in Minecraft. Amazing.

My Recommended iPhone Games

This is apropos of nothing but I was organising my stuff and made this list:

  • Helsing’s Fire
  • Horror Vacui
  • Giant Metal Robot
  • Fieldrunners
  • Strategery
  • The Incident
  • Enviro-Bear
  • Zen Bound
  • Mobigame’s Edge
  • Brave Man
  • King of Tennis
  • Sweep Man
  • Critter Crunch
  • Eliss
  • Trainyard
  • Colorbind

I’d recommend any and all of these.

What are other people’s favourites?

I really hope that I’ve somehow missed the point of this video, but she spends 20 minutes talking about how a form of entertainment (World of Warcraft) has “productivity” and “meaning”. Sure it’s fun to play it to blow off steam, but let’s not pretend that it serves any more purpose than watching TV or drinking beer.

I agree that it’d be nice if people got the same kind of buzz out of real-world achievement as the in-game kind, and indeed it’s something I’ve wanted to get for most of my life until recently. Over the last few months games have lost their appeal, and no matter how shiny the graphics they ultimately seem pointless, and I’d rather be “levelling up” my real-world skills that last longer than the 0-5 year lifespan of a game world.