The first game that showed great promise was the international release of The Sims Online. We had already begun setting up language exchanges for our foreign language classes with native speakers abroad using Skype. Students enjoyed being able to apply what they'd learned in class that week while meeting interesting people from around the world. In turn, they would then help them with their English.
The Sims Online promised to take these kinds of exchanges to a new level. Not only could they converse with native speakers online, but they could do so in an environment with activities that mimicked those in the real world and encouraged social interaction. It almost seemed too good to be true.
Unfortunately, it was. The game itself was a complete flop. Sales in the U.S. were disappointing, and the game's European release was postponed several times before finally being canceled.
We never ended up using The Sims Online, but it did lead me to look into ways to set the configuration files of other games to only play in certain languages. I still hadn't thought of a way to use them in a class, but I liked the idea of students playing The Sims 2, Oblivion or Neverwinter Nights II in a foreign language in the lab. Every semester since then, we've purchased a few games and installed them along with a little script that asks the player to choose a foreign language from a list before the game launches.
The first class to use a videogame as part of the course was German 101. I had been asked to teach the course in the fall as an adjunct instructor. It was an unusual opportunity for me to showcase the use of a new technology as part of a class. I immediately began looking at the instructional potential of MMOGs.
The key benefit of an MMOG was its potential to create an immersive language experience. That meant the game had to be popular enough for the developers to host servers that were language specific.
The only game that fit the criteria was World of Warcraft. In some ways, it seemed like a bad match. German 101 has chapters on parts of the house, university life and family. I couldn't find many quests that would make very good chapter lessons.
In a more abstract sense, though, it was perfect. Every language teacher has read articles and books that extol the benefits of creating a student-centered, collaborative and task-oriented classroom. The idea was that students would be more motivated and retain more if they could apply their language skills in a meaningful way. WoW certainly matched that description, but I was far from certain it was a good idea. So I decided to let the students choose: They could either do a language exchange once a week with a student in Germany or play WoW with me on a German server.
