Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Studieren une langue étrangère con The Sims

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Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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Studieren une langue étrangère con The Sims

by Ian Bogost January 4, 2005

categories: Console & PC Games , Educational Games

The Journal of Language Learning and Technology has published an article in this month's issue about learning a foreign language through a modded version of The Sims, written by MIT Comparative Media masters student Ravi Purushotma. (via Slashdot)

Comments (3)

Hmmm, interesting, but it couold be balanced with a mention of Simlish and the way the unmodded game seems to try and get around language altogether in favour of iconography and emotive noise language.

Tama on January 5, 2005 2:25 AM

True enough, that is one of the best features of The Sims, and one of the reasons why Sims Online didn't work out. However, the article in the journal is clearly about something else entirely, and in that sense I think it stands on its own.

Speaking of Simglish tho, someone once pointed out to me that it sounds a bit like Dutch. It's sort of true.

Ian Bogost on January 5, 2005 2:36 AM

The BBC just ran an article on Ravi's work.

Ian Bogost on January 21, 2005 1:18 AM