Korean video games? 🇰🇷

As I have been building Daily Tokki and pondering a bunch of things around language learning, I’ve stumbled across a gap in language learning that I think could be interesting to explore.

To start with, I am thinking about all the other language learning resources out there and they are all tackling language learning academically or from a “gamified” perspective. Which is fine and totally cool.

Duolingo is the classic, but there are other ones that pop up.

The top standard that always pops up is a reference to Anki, which is not gamified, but definitely feels like a grind to do it. And for someone like me, I do it for about a week and I taper off.

The gold standard is immersion. Everyone always says immersion is the best you can do. And I don’t disagree. So, then why aren’t there better things to mimic immersion or make language learning something that comes through the act of doing something?

Games are a great way, but they all seem to come down to being a language learning game wrapped in a story rather than the other way around. Or they are simply a translated version of a game that would be too high-level for a beginner or intermediate learner.

The story and gameplay should be so compelling that, even if you were not learning the language, would still find it intriguing to follow and play.

So, what if there were a Korean game? A game that takes place in Korea and can get you to your first 1,000 words just by playing. Just by being going through the motions of the game. 1,000+ words is a hell of a jumping off point for many people and the path to conversations.

There are really two prongs to this:

1. There are not that many Korean games out there and with the prevalence of K-culture (Kpop Demon Hunters leading the charge at the moment), it seems like a no-brainer that a similar thing can enter the zeitgeist of the world.
2. Language learning games put the language learning first and the story seems to fall flat — this should change

I’m rather excited about this idea and think that a cozy aesthetic game that takes place in Korea and lets you learn the language over the course of the game would be a compelling thing.

I’ve never built a game before. Nor do I play games all that regularly, but I am consumed by the idea of something like this.

Also, moving to Korea, especially Jeju, would provide an incredible amount of inspiration and context for me to build such a game.

Will continue to noodle on it in the meantime and get the story sketched out and start to learn how to make games.