“Influent” is a language learning game developed by University of Tsukuba’s Entertainment Computing Laboratory. It focuses on helping players acquire vocabulary and practice pronunciation in a non-directed manner. In the game, players are introduced to a narrative: the main character’s prototype of his invention SanjigenJiten (a smart device that scans objects and provides their names in any language) has been stolen, and his friend has sent an intelligent drone to help him retrieve the prototype by live-streaming his language-learning process to fundraise legal fees. Players can then operate either the main character or drone, and acquire vocab by exploring the in-game world and learning the foreign word for each item. By introducing the story of the stolen prototype and pushing users to explore new vocab and complete in-game challenges, the game allows users to experience fantasy, discovery and challenge as the primary types of fun.
The game mechanics include operating the drone, operating the character, tapping on items to discover its name, adding words to a vocab list, and completing star challenges, which direct you to demonstrate your expertise on vocab words by finding the corresponding item and/or seeking and destroying the item with a shooter drone.
The primary dynamic in the game is that streaming viewers give the player one dollar for every “mastered” word. The player is also rewarded for “streaming time”, or the amount of time spent exploring in the game.
The aesthetic goals of the game include fantasy, discovery, challenge, and occasionally sensation and fellowship. The fantasy aspect comes from the narrative set-up of the game, where you are introduced to the life of an inventor who has been wronged. However, this fantasy serves mostly as a backdrop to the story; since the game itself is contained to the “livestreaming”/learning part of the character’s life, it is not super immersive. Discovery and challenge are more prominent, as players are free to 1) roam around a space and discover the words for each item in a non-directed way, and 2) complete challenges to memorize the new vocabulary. Finally, sensation comes into play in the shooter version of the star challenge, where you use a shooter drone to destroy items corresponding to the vocab word displayed on screen. The game has an optional connection to Discord where you can converse with fellow players, which may foster fellowship, but it may be argued that this is outside of the game itself.
Finally, the outcome of the game is gain of information (namely new vocabulary in a foreign language) and gain of explicit skills (which is competency in a new language).
