November 27th - Studying with a Video Game

So, I'm trying something "new". In reality, I've tried this before but I think I tried it too early on my Chinese Language journey. Using video games to study Chinese! This idea popped back into my head after I started to play Fall of Light and saw in the settings that there was the Chinese language (text only) which isn't bad as I'm not ready for a full Chinese game.

Now the question is, How do you study with a video game?

So far my method is this: find a slower paced game that will give you the time to look at some Chinese characters close to your level. This is very important as before I tried to play games that were too fast paced or had way too difficult of language for me. So far Fall of Light is around my level.

Easy words that you can start with are the main menu:

选项 xuǎn xiàng "Option(s)" (noun)
画面 huà miàn "image, picture (graphics)" (noun)
声音 shēng yīn "sound, noise, voice" (noun)
控制 kòng zhì "to control, controls" (verb/noun)
确认 què rèn "to confirm" (verb)
取消 qǔ xiāo "to cancel" (verb)
栏位 lán wèi "(data) field" (noun)
游戏 yóu xì "game" (noun)

Some other words I found in the menus were:

“选择兰为创建新游戏”

 "Choose a field to create a new game"

选择 xuǎn zé "to choose, to select" (verb)
创建 chuàng jiàn "to found, to create" (verb)

"难度：普通，噩梦。噩梦模式你必须通关游戏并有可用的通关游戏存档”

"Difficulty: Normal, Hard. Hard Mode, you need to go through the game and have a completed game save file."

难度 nán dù "difficulty" (noun)
普通 pǔ tōng "normal" (adj)
噩梦 è mèng "hard, nightmare" (adj)
模式 mó shì "mode" (noun)
必须 bì xū "must, have to" (adverb)
通关 tōng guān "to go through (customs)" (verb)
并 bìng "and" (conjunction)
存档 cún dàng "save (file/game)" (noun)

持续 chí xù “to continue, to sustain" (verb)
战争 zhàn zhēng "war, warfare" (noun)

使 shǐ "to make, to use, to send, to tell sb" (verb)
dang it has a lot of meanings
 
世界 shì jiè "world" (noun)
分崩离析 fēn bēng lí xī "to fall into pieces, to fall apart" (idiom)

直至黑暗将一切纳入其中。
"Until darkness channels everything together?" maybe
 
直至 zhí zhì "until, up to" (verb?)
黑暗 hēi'àn "dark" (adj)

将 jiāng
not quite sure the meaning of this...
 
一切 yī qiè “all, everything" (pronoun)
纳入 nà rù "to bring into, to channel into, to integrate into" (verb)
其中 qí zhōng "among them" (noun)
整个  zhěng gè "whole, entire" (adj)

As you can see, just by studying the first sentence thrown at me in the game. I already have a lot of vocabulary and sentence structure to study. Now, I normally play the game for around an hour or so and will see the same characters over and over again but I took many pictures of new characters within this hour so...

Studying this way can be daunting

But, the point is that through you constantly playing and studying the game; you will get more and more familiar with the Chinese characters. Eventually, you will understand the whole game or know enough characters to understand the context of anything new that shows up.

The idea is that the longer you play and study the game, your time studying will decrease and time playing will slowly increase as your comprehension gets better and better. Obviously, having a game with Chinese audio would help too but most native Chinese games are too hard for the intermediate and beginners.

Hope this gives you an idea on how to improve your Chinese.

-Johnny

Below are more pictures from my first hour of play... I have a lot to study.