Saluton! Mi estas Ŭierdo, kaj mi amas videoludo! (Mi bedaŭras, sed mia Esperanto ne estas tre bona...)
So yeah, the moment I've heard of Esperanto I was fascinated at the very idea of it. Universal language! For world peace! No irregular verbs! It was this close before it finally become the universal language! (Curse you, World War II.) I already speak three languages, and I'm having a hard time learning the fourth (as I proved myself with French), but for Esperanto, I think I could push myself further than I would normally do.
What I find very frustrating is, however, that there are not much entertainments in Esperanto to enjoy. From my experience, the fastest and easiest way to learn a language is by enjoying anything on that particular language. When I started learning Japanese when back in my early teenager life, I found great help from all those otaku materials I could get my hands on. (I use to say this a lot, but if you can speak English and Japanese, you're pretty much speaking Latin in geekdom.) But I find so little things, let alone entertainment materials, ever written or spoken in Esperanto. Not only this makes it harder for me to learn and use Esperanto, this also gives me less motivations for learning it, apart from my passion on it. I mean, why learn a language when you can hardly use it in real life?
That's why, ever since back in my military service life, I was thinking of a way to make something entertaining, something interesting, in Esperanto. And since I am a helpless videogame nut, I would definitely like to see a videogame in Esperanto. So here is my idea:
- I'm not a big fan of so-called "edutainment" games, since there are not many good examples that appealed to both learners (mostly younger players) and hardcore videogame fans. I was and still is a big fan of Age of Empires II, I learned half of what I know (and misunderstood, for that matter) of Medieval Ages from it, but I didn't even try to learn English from it. The point is, you don't exactly have to aim for learning languages in videogames. All you need to do is make it fun enough, then videogamers would voluntarily learn the language (or hyping for translation, but still).
- Dr. L. L. Zamenhof (also known as "D-ro Esperanto") had a clear vision when he created Esperanto: World peace through language. I greatly support his ideas, and want Esperanto to be the language that could deliver that particular message. I mean, Incubus (Inkubo) was already enough to give us false idea on Esperanto, I don't want anything like that.
- Here is an idea that I came up with when I first thought about making an Esperanto videogame. So there was this show called RESTOL Special Rescue Squad, which was otherwise your typical mecha-based anime... Except that in this show, the eponymous squad works for rescue missions, instead of typical combat missions. Now I'm not a big fan of mecha genre in general, but I was fascinated at the idea that uses rescue missions and keep things entertaining. The message was nicely delivered, and I thought it would make an awesome feat with Esperanto's vision. I made a quick brainstorming via Google Docs here, so if you're interested in my idea, please check it out.
Apparently I wasn't alone with this idea: I found more than enough articles that share the similar, and even the very same, thought with myself. A Kinja article that suggests Esperanto as the official language for videogame, a Reddit post that suggests videogame in Esperanto, and even a videogame developer that supports Esperanto. I hope, as a new Esperantisto (pun intended), that this dream comes true. End transmission.
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