more languages make a better game?

[wietse]

As everbody has noticed the cantr world has now more language groups then ever.

While this seems a good thing, and I sure thought it was. The comment below made by the dutch player Pieter make me think again about my experiences as a player and the use of languages groups in the game.

Ik had zelf nog heel lang de illusie dat contact met Duits- en Spaanstaligen nieuwe uitdagingen zou geven, maar dat blijkt alleen maar voor nog meer isolement te zorgen.

Translated the comment goes like this: I had for a very long time the illusion that contact (in game) with the german and spanish language groups would lead to new challenges, but it only leads to greater isolation/alienation.

I have played mostly dutch characters myself, I tried a few english, but I felt the dutch island was more a challenge because it was so undeveloped.

In game my dutch characters met germans, spanisch, french and english. When the first foreigners appeared everybody was curious where they came from and what they were saying. But as the new thing of it wore off and notes in different languages and some word lists got common i got the feeling no one was really interested anymore.

This is probably because it is very hard to communicate if you dont speak the language as a player. I can read german, englisch and a bit french, but spanish it to much for me. So i didn't really bother to try to read those notes anymore. And i dont think i am the only one. To try to learn a new language just for a game is to much for me.

Communicating and trading in cantr is hard (and slow) enough if you speak the same language, doing it in another language makes it even harder. When I think about it, i would have preffered if the 'foreigners' spoke the same language as me. It would have increased communication and trade and made the groups mingle more. It would increase the active number of players you can 'play' with. In the Dutch villages the not 'dutch' speaking characters were mostly ignored.

As with the other aspects of the game, the game designers should ask themselves: what do the different languages groups add in terms of gameplay value when compared to having the same islands with all characters speaking the same languages?

Of course having more language groups does increase the potential number of players. If you dont speak english very well, or dont like playing a game in englisch you are happy that you can play the game in polish for example. A lot of the increase in players seems to come from making new language groups. But at the same time the number of english speaking characters is dropping...

But does this make the game any better? I think it can actually make the game worse if it means splitting the player base in more smaller groups.

An argument i can think of is that being part of a (smaller) language group makes the players feel like playing a seperate nation with an increased feeling of us against them (the funny speaking ones). If conflict was programmed correctly such feelings could lead to international treaties, trade and even war. That would be something indeed!

But could this not just as easily be archieved while speaking the same language? Already different villages have a different culture or goverment while they speak the same language. Every seed for conflict is already there.

I wrote this post as something for the developers to think on. The question: what does this aspect of the game add to the gameplay value? could be asked of a lot of other things, but i wont go into that now.

[Piscator]

I think the many languages in Cantr would be more enjoyable, if your character would be able to speak more than one language from the beginning. It's pretty annoying to "learn" a language in-game, if you already know that language. It's also quite impossible to get over the "I Tarzan, You Jane, let's dig potato" stage, there's simply not enough time to do it properly.
On the other hand, with the current setting of Cantr you can't do much about it without killing the game (or wounding it at least).
It would be much easier if Cantrians would have a history, a live before Cantr. (I could imagine some kind of Robinson Crusoe or afterlife scenario) Of course it would be not a good idea to implement it in Cantr II, the changes would be to drastic. But I would like to see something the like in Cantr III if it is ever to be made.

[Schme]

I disagree. I think it's fine. Only problem I have is the lack of attention and understanding on behalf of the moderators to the non-English areas, where cheating and breaking of the Capital Rule is rampant.

[tiddy ogg]

I must agree with the original poster. There is simply not enough time in game to learn another language. Even with the emote translations now apparently available, it would take forever, so despite my desire to communicate, with the limited encounters my chars have had with foreign language speakers, they have tended to ignore them.

[Nyaraka]

I agree -- it is incredibly difficult to learn a language through Cantr... especially because of how text-based it is. A character of mine is on a ship where nobody else speaks their language. Becuase they are outnumbered, they must learn the new language to survive... But it's becoming increasingly difficult to advance beyond the resources (which are easily given and named) and simple greetings/phrases (more difficult, but still conveyable).

Most actions (even 'trade,' 'give,' and 'receive') are nearly impossible to convey within the limits of text. Obviously, this is easier and almost achievable through emotes, but the emotes would have to be fairly advanced and detailed... and also require the other language group to know YOUR language -- likely, if your language is English, but not certain. Thus, there is one option left: drawing.

Drawing can convey a great deal of ideas if presented correctly, but here we run into two more problems:

1) Not all characters are artistic. (Not all players are, either.) If a very untalented character tries to draw an idea/message/action, though, very few (if any) will understand what they're trying to express. So you are forced to make your character artistic (provided you have the ability as a player) -- something that most serious roleplayers hesitate to do.

2) It's pretty easy to misinterpret a drawing. I could draw a pile of carrots, and many various guesses would spring up: Carrots? Food? Pile? Lots? Many? Bunch?


So for now, my character is limited to the most basic of basics (which are not often used by the three characters around them), and the occasional sketch. It would probably take 10~20 ingame years for my character to understand the language enough to make simple sentences... Frightening.

(And I'm also somewhat irritated that I understand parts of this language because of their similarities to my native language -- which isn't the langauge my character speaks -- and can't use that knowledge. Very, very frustrating, but I'm trying. *sigh*)

[wietse]

I can see this discussion going somewhere i didnt intend it to go, but i guess a lot of discussions end in the what you know and what you dont know capital rule discussion, or how to try to fix a problem with more additions (like emotes) that dont add anything to the gameplay itself.

I asked what does having of multiple language groups add to the gameplay value except for maybe recruiting potentially more players (which cant communicate with each other....)?

This capital rule thingy and the slowness of the game make multiple languages even more tricky....

[wichita]

One thing I have noticed is that there are actually different cultural elements creeping up with the mixture of language groups that are not quite as lively within individual language groups (at least the English). The Swedes and Turks have had (are having) an intense war that seems to have been motivated by a combination of resources and a sense of nationalism. The Portugeuse / Lithuanian boundary is similarly entrenched in conflict along apparently ethnic motivations.

Contrast this with the German and Spanish populations who seem to be getting along and integrating quite peacefully with one another. There is a difference to me in attitudes between the Spanish / Dutch characters and the Germans around them - without going into too much detail right now... Point is, I feel a difference that is directly related to the fact that the characters natively speak different languages. If we didn't have that, we would be much more difficult to distinguish from each other.

The English-Polish interactions are also becoming more and more entertaining. There is a very critical difference between the interaction with characters from the Polish lands and the interactions with character from other English islands. English characters come in and are automatically accepted as equals (within certain limits), whereas the Polish characters are inherently different.


Do we treat them as equals? Do we push them back to their homeland? Do we kill them outright?

Do we learn their language? Do we teach them our language? Do we just ignore them and hope they go away?


I think the advantages outweigh the difficulties. Is it demanding on the players? Yes, of course. It is demanding in real life as well. Those of us who are more multilingual have an interesting opportunity to step in and fulfill a crucial real life role....translators. You don't speak Polish in real life? Well, let your English character struggle with it and rely on somebody else to help take up the slack. It is building a society.



And one last point for clarification. If it is readily apparent that multiple languages are spoken around a newspawn (e.g. you see notes in German, Dutch, and Spanish and all three languages are being spoken around you) I believe that it is fine for your character to have a certain level of fluency in all of those languages that are present in their spawnplace. It is junk for a character living in a language isolated location to miracously begin speaking in tongues the second the new explorers hit shore.

This is a very simple rule of thumb that - as with every other rule of thumb/common courtesy - is complicated by the presence of pigheaded individuals that are sniffing for loophole truffles trying to make their lives a bit easier.


But that's my opinion - I'm probably wrong.

[Nyaraka]

Sorry, I have a huge tendency for forgetting what my original intent for posting was, and getting off-topic.

But at this point, there's really not much for me to comment on, since Wichita's pretty much covered it all. It really is pretty rewarding and entertaining, though really frustrating.

[Phalynx]

I'm not sure if this was exactly what was being hinted at, but there are many different ways, in the suggestions area (eg hair colour, skin colour, other forms of labour -even the style of weapons) of creating divisions, and therefore conflict/trade/cooperation/intrigue without having to resort to the hassle of a new language, and lets face it its not fun to learn a new language through cantr!

Trouble is me might all have to learn Polish to play then!

[T-shirt]

Language groups in the same area can not work together, unless players know the language spoken in their characters' settlements.
In real life I will learn the language of a country I migrate to, or at least my children will know the language when I have settled there.
In Cantr you can 'force' Polish characters to know English when spawned in a town with 'an English government', because you can't expect that from Polish players.
Polish characters will spawn in the same town with Spanish or Greek characters at the age of twenty, but will have not learned a single word from their other language friends.
That's the problem of languages in Cantr.

A solution might be to have fixed spawn locations again. That way you can meet other languages by travelling there yourself or meeting a foreign traveller, but it will prevent language groups who can't interact normally within the same spawn place.

[Jos Elkink]

I really somewhat fail to see the problems. I totally agree with Wichita's post. Who says you need to learn a foreign language? You need to learn to deal with someone speaking a different one - that's quite something different. You can ignore them, only talk about very specific trades, kill them, etc. There are many solutions other than learning a foreign language ...

Imagine you're Columbus and reach the American coast where people have strange habits and speak a weird language - it's a fairly similar situation. Do you think he immediately worried about learning their language?

[saztronic]

I have to disagree with wichita on this one, but only because my personal anecdotal experience was quite different.

I created one char in the Russian area, because I'm not bad in that language -- not fluent, but not bad. There were so few players around, though, that roleplaying was extremely difficult. I don't mind being alone, I had another char who was alone for decades, but this was different somehow -- probably because of an OOC desire to play, and roleplay, in Russian, the point of creating that char in the first place. Anyway, after a few years a bunch of English traders showed up and took over the place. The one or two Russian chars in the area miraculously developed the ability to speak English, and that was the end of Russian as lingua franca in that area.

In another instance I had an English explorer who went all through the Polish lands. I started developing a comprehensive English-Polish word and phrase dictionary in-game, and tried my best to learn what I could. Made easier by the fact that Russian and Polish have some similarities. However, I couldn't type in Polish accurately -- there were several characters I'd only have been able to access by setting up the character set on my machine, which would have meant re-learning typing basically. As a previous poster mentioned, grammar and and syntax were almost non-starters. I even had a very patient, very great Polish guy join up with me to go exploring, but somehow the effort to teach other how to communicate effectively seemed so overwhelming we never could really make it work.

So it's interesting to me that there are some ongiong conflicts out there between language groups, while others seem to coexist peacefully. But are these the only options? I.e., war, which requires no real communication, or complete tolerance, which may also require no real communication, or basic barter, which also requires no real communication? True friendships, complex relationships -- personal or professional -- multicultural trade or cooperation, all of these seem to be off the table.

So to bring this back around to topic, I believe the question is, does multilingual interaction enhance roleplay? While we can see that it does open up a limited range of otherwise unavailable roleplaying options, I think on the whole it narrows the total range of roleplaying options between those who don't speak the same language by a very significant margin. IMO the former does not balance the latter.

My 32 cents.

[wichita]

and lets face it its not fun to learn a new language through cantr!

I wholeheartedly disagree. There are many days where the challenge of picking up some new phrases or vocabulary with my foreign language characters is the only thing that keeps me interested in Cantr. And I am not the only one who thinks so. It is one of the elements of the game that was advertised when I started, one of the reasons that I joined, and very much in the spirit of the game. If it isn't fun for a particular individual, then they can exercise the option to not participate in that element of the game.

[saztronic]

I really somewhat fail to see the problems. I totally agree with Wichita's post. Who says you need to learn a foreign language? You need to learn to deal with someone speaking a different one - that's quite something different. You can ignore them, only talk about very specific trades, kill them, etc. There are many solutions other than learning a foreign language ...

Imagine you're Columbus and reach the American coast where people have strange habits and speak a weird language - it's a fairly similar situation. Do you think he immediately worried about learning their language?

I take your point, but again we come back to Cantr being 100% text-based. Worlds of information are communicated by gesture, facial expression, the use of a huge range of tools and items -- this just can't be duplicated in the world of Cantr. I'm sure Columbus didn't worry about learning the language of the natives in the new world -- but I'm equally certain that he understood them better -- more thoroughly, more deeply, more clearly -- after one day than would his Cantr counterpart after a solid month of trying.

[saztronic]

and lets face it its not fun to learn a new language through cantr!

I wholeheartedly disagree. There are many days where the challenge of picking up some new phrases or vocabulary with my foreign language characters is the only thing that keeps me interested in Cantr. And I am not the only one who thinks so. It is one of the elements of the game that was advertised when I started, one of the reasons that I joined, and very much in the spirit of the game. If it isn't fun for a particular individual, then they can exercise the option to not participate in that element of the game.

There's some cross-posting going on at the moment.

Anyway, wichita -- and I say this with the greatest possible respect for your chosen area of expertise -- but we're not all linguists! Some people have a hard time learning new languages. What surprised me in Cantr, is that even though I have a relatively easy time learning languages, it was just incredibly difficult in-game. And I don't get real excited just from learning a new Polish cognate or dipthong or whatever