4 hours ago, devharts said:

Interestingly enough Mandarin is actually what I was trying to learn with it haha. Not really sure how well the app is working for me though -- I'm still in the super early stages, but it seems like it kinda just thrusts you into memorizing words and characters in a random order, and maybe needs more structure or something if that makes sense.

What tips do you have on learning Mandarin out of curiosity?

If not learn it for exams, i don't think you should spend a lot of time in language structure, instead focusing on how to form the sense of the language will help you organize the order spontaneously and understand the structure more easily. Mandarin doesn't follow the structure in many cases so it's very time consuming and confused to figure out why we have to say so.  Also the four pronunciations of each word are very important, many foreigners can't speak fluent Mandarin because they can't make their voice sound familiar to us. I'm Chinese by the way...

Another point is to use it very often, I had been to the US for 2 years and the English I learned in the first three month is more than all I have learned in school combined. Try to find native Mandarin speakers and talk to them. 

On 3/15/2019 at 12:25 PM, 1024 said:

Sometimes you don't have to measure the knowledge. If the "educational game" is used in a school or in a course, then it makes sense to measure the knowledge. But if the "educational game" is standalone, the game itself could require you to use the knowledge to progress, without explicitly scoring you. That is more fun and causes a greater sense of learning from the players. 

I totally agree with this. I think most educational games are considered boring precisely because, instead of focusing on the game experience itself, they are focused on educating. Users are not stupid, we know when we're being tested and usually, if we want to be tested for our knowledge, we'll go for more in-depth apps that have their entire marketing built around the idea of learning (and even some studies or experts to back them up, like the Fabulous app, for example). When it comes to games, however, they should be engaging first. 

Also, what I'd like to point out as well about the subject is that learning is rarely a linear process, just like human conscience and memories aren't linear. Meaning that some very efficient learning techniques may be surprisingly indirect and vague. For example, since you guys talked about Duolingo: maybe developing a game in which there is a Mandarin speaking Hero and Spanish speaking villains can help the user learn Spanish a lot easier than an actual app that makes you remember spanish words and sentences. Just my 2 cents  

7 hours ago, OctopyGames said:

Also, what I'd like to point out as well about the subject is that learning is rarely a linear process, just like human conscience and memories aren't linear. Meaning that some very efficient learning techniques may be surprisingly indirect and vague. For example, since you guys talked about Duolingo: maybe developing a game in which there is a Mandarin speaking Hero and Spanish speaking villains can help the user learn Spanish a lot easier than an actual app that makes you remember spanish words and sentences. Just my 2 cents  

Can't agree more, I always have similar thought every time I saw language apps, they all talked about remembering words and sentences, and it's super boring. 

As for learning process, I feel that flash animation showing how the knowledge is interrelated is useful. It gets better if we also add some interactions in the right place, but I'm not sure when and where to add the interaction since I don't know generally what types of interaction make people feel fun to play.

what if it's a language learning game where people just run to you and scream stuff in %language% and you just stand there trying to understand what do they want from you and then go and complete the quest

10 hours ago, Frederica.H said:

what if it's a language learning game where people just run to you and scream stuff in %language% and you just stand there trying to understand what do they want from you and then go and complete the quest

if I'm available I'll do that, and it's in a lot people's mind, but I wonder why no developers do that game type.

On 4/9/2019 at 4:13 AM, Acharis said:

The core design goal of a "normal" game is fun. You design such game to be fun.

The core design goal of an educational game is to teach people.

Yes. the main problem I'm struggling with is that I don't know how to give player options. If they don't have control over the game then they may feel the game less fun, but if I give them options, then they gonna miss the part they do not choose. In a "normal game", it's okay as long as the player feels fun to play with, but in my game, it's not ok as player is losing the majority of knowledge embedded in the option he/she does not choose. 

Any thought to fix this? 

Maybe you can have the player do the same thing (or a similar thing) multiple times, each time with choices, but they have to pick a different option every time. This way it still feels like a choice, but they go through all options. Or you could make each situation have one option (a different each time) be better than others, and let the player min-max through all of them themselves. Players like to pick the optimum/overpowered option, and they feel good about doing it.

Edit: Another thought: "designing a game to teach people" is kind of like designing tutorials in games. Some game tutorials are fun (and some not so much), and they all have certain knowledge (game mechanics) that they have to go through. You may want to look into designing game tutorials for more ideas.