HomeLearn JapaneseDo you consider playing games fully in Japanese is truly contributing to your overall learning progress, or is simply seeking a justification to be able to play more?
Do you consider playing games fully in Japanese is truly contributing to your overall learning progress, or is simply seeking a justification to be able to play more?
I find I remember vocabulary best when im exposed to it in many different ways. Flashcards and review are fine but being able to play a game or listen to a podcast helps drill it in better in my experience.
It took a while before I was at the level that visual novels I found enjoyable were actually easy to play without having to look up multiple words per bubble but I found it to be one of the ways I learn the most because they have audio very directly mapped onto the speech.
It made me realize that I misinterpreted the pitch accent of “癖に” all this time when reading it and it behaves more like a suffix than as an independent word.
Been playing 2-3 hours a day and so happy to use it as immersion now since for manga I struggled to read 30-60 minutes a day. It largely depends on the game (genre and language lvl) that you’re playing though. Currently playing Yo-Kai watch on the Switch and its a lot easier to get absorbed when you are enjoying yourself.
Depends, I have stuff I count “as studying” and I study 2 hours a day.
I have stuff I don’t “count” as studying and that I can do, but doesn’t contribute to my 2 hours.
If it’s studying vocab that I mined out of a game, then that counts as studying.
If it’s just playing a game, that doesn’t count (for me).
I could see some extremely text-heavy game like a VN counting, but I don’t play that type.
I don’t like playing games in Japanese. Depending on the game the dialogue is repetitive or I want to advance so I wind up missing story beats, or I get too fixated on something so I’m pulled out of the story’s world.
I think it helps not a lot but playing Zelda OoT on the 3DS at least means I read a little
I think that playing games is helpful once you know the language well enough that you don’t need to look up every other word. Japanese can of course be a bit trickier than many other languages if you can’t read some of the kanji, but I’d say that games are especially good for learning and internalizing grammar in practise.
(Source: I learned a lot of English from games and right now I’m noticing significant improvements in my Russian and French just from playing a few games)
When I started learning Japanese…and very little time had passed since I learned kana my only way of learning was through gaming…..I did nothing else but play games and e use iKanji (iOS app for kanji srs)….but I only played games with the purpose of learning Japanese….and the “fun” aspect would be second priority…..What I mean by that is I would play games I already considered fun, but I would not be afraid to not get too much gameplay because I’m a little stuck trying to decipher what what said or at least to a point where I knew kind of what was going on…and I would frequently stop to add new words to Anki. I only picked single player, text heavy games (usually jrpgs) where I would think I could complete with my current level of knowledge and still getting a sense of the overall story..while learning Japanese I never played a game in any other language….if I wanted to play it it HAD to be in Japanese…..I guess that sort of worked as a motivator to keep learning.
​
Of course, eventually I upgraded to visual novels and then light novels……but I think games really helped me get to where I am today with the language
The only game I’ve played entirely in Japanese (UI and audio) is Overwatch. I did set up some flashcards for it, but other than that initial/occasional effort, I don’t really drill it or try to use it to learn—unless it’s some kind of unique, time-sensitive note that I feel I need to understand. Then I’ll consult my flashcards to see if I have the kanji in there, adding new ones as necessary.
Despite feeling like I don’t use it as a study/learning aid, I have _slowly_ learned kanji this way. Like, probably at 1/20th the speed of studying kanji in a textbook, but it’s kind of “free”. I think it only happens because this is really the only game I play this way, and I do play it a fair amount, so I don’t think this is really scalable or practical, but since it’s something I’m playing anyway, it was a good way to multi-purpose it into some free reinforcement.
Depends on the game i guess.. things like visual novels or jrpgs; something fairly story driven will probably provide more benifits than some shooter with Japanese audio turned on.. but i would say so… reading and listening practise is always a good thing..
Man I wish it was a justification to be able to play more. I’m generally too busy to play much.
But mainly it’s doing the former. Which is why I’m still playing all the games I can in Japanese.
I tend to have to look up quite a few words still. And besides vocabulary, my only other real hurdle is natural phrasing, so it’s helping both.
It can help with exposure to certain vocabulary, but really, I prefer to crack open a dictionary and study kanji through that, but some people learn vocabulary better through context
As in video games? Board games? For sure it’s contributing for me.
I’ve only played one game in Japanese at this point: 電車でGO!!. But that’s sort of a cop-out response as there’s no story and the game mechanics never meaningfully change.
i just watch lets plays. havent actually played anything myself in years. great way to improve and have fun.
Yes.
OK, but on a serious note, playing VNs in Japanese did *wonders* for my reading skill. I managed to finish the reading section of JLPT N1 with half an hour to spare 😂
If it were story-, character, and/or world-based game interactions like in the 龍が如く series, or even visual novels (especially ones with branching paths) I’d say absolutely yes. I’d even argue it’s the closest I’d get to true immersion in the sense that I’m not just being completely passive, although I can pick stuff up passively the more I’m exposed to it, the way 関西弁 really clicked after hours of playing as Majima in 龍が如く０. Misunderstanding dialogues can lead to bad endings or mission fail states, so it makes me try and think about the consequences of what I make my characters say beforehand.
I mostly play JRPGs, which is a big reason I wanted to learn Japanese in the first place. They’re functionally novels and it’s absolutely helped my language learning. If you’re just playing live-service multiplayer games, maybe not as useful.
I don’t use textbooks or flashcards. At all. I basically just play games, watch anime, and read manga. The games I play usually have lots of reading, like VNs. However, I also play some action-oriented games like Rockman.
My Japanese is *definitely* getting better, and way faster than when I wasn’t doing it.
It’s only REAL learning if you’re suffering /s
For me it’s the former. I’m replaying(?) a game I only ever played in English, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life.
I remember the dialogue well enough to pick up on what’s being said when I run into unfamiliar vocabulary. And because it’s the switch remake, there’s a significant amount of differences that I can’t really take shortcuts… for example, new menus and a bulletin board with requests that weren’t present in the original.
It’s great because it’s both familiar and challenging. The game itself adopted some Stardew-like features, and you can interact with your pets a lot more than in the GC version… still, I never realized how cutscene heavy AWL was until I started playing in Japanese, lol
i play more like visual novel type games so i find playing with japanese audio actually helps me learn vocab
I’ve been playing some video games in Japanese as well as watching tons of anime/Japanese shows. As a beginner, it really helps me pick up contextual basics. For example, if I learn 5 different ways to say “yes”, hearing characters use the different forms of “yes” in context strengthens my understanding of the true “meaning” of the word.
A recent example: I heard a character use the word お願いします (onegaishimasu), and the subtitles read “thank you”. Of course ありがと (arigato) means “thank you”, so why didn’t the character say that instead? And the answer was simple in context: お願いします (onegaishimasu) is used when making a request and “thanking” someone in advanced for the favor, kind of like a “please and thankyou” in one. This character was doing exactly that, making a humble request to my character, so お願いします (onegaishimasu) makes perfect sense in this context. And now I have better understanding for when/how to use お願いします (onegaishimasu) vs ありがと (arigato).
I learned english because I surrounded myself with english language, one of them was definitely through Minecraft. Sure, if you just play one game in Japanese it won’t make you an expert, but it’s definitely a very fun (and effective in the long run) way to experience a language
Yes.
…but also, this seems like a loaded question.
There’s not enough dialogue in games to get adequate practice. You usually end up just gaming.
It’s better to watch Netflix and practice reading subtitles/hear it being spoken imo.
I’d say that games (especially JRPGs) are excellent for language learning and you shouldn’t shy away from playing them **if that’s what interests you**. Language learning is the most effective when applied to hobbies that interest and engage us. If you enjoy it, do it.
On the other hand, however, I have realized that I’m right now at a level where I feel comfortable just consuming stuff in Japanese and consistently justifying my hobbies as “I’m doing this to be productive in my learning and not because it’s a hobby” can have some downsides. It’s easy to justify wasting time by explaining it as “language learning” but it’s good to not lose track of the fact that… well, you’re playing videogames. Maybe spending your entire free time just playing videogames, no matter how useful they are for learning a language, is not healthy. But still, fuck it, just do what you enjoy! I love games.
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Both for me
I find I remember vocabulary best when im exposed to it in many different ways. Flashcards and review are fine but being able to play a game or listen to a podcast helps drill it in better in my experience.
It took a while before I was at the level that visual novels I found enjoyable were actually easy to play without having to look up multiple words per bubble but I found it to be one of the ways I learn the most because they have audio very directly mapped onto the speech.
It made me realize that I misinterpreted the pitch accent of “癖に” all this time when reading it and it behaves more like a suffix than as an independent word.
Been playing 2-3 hours a day and so happy to use it as immersion now since for manga I struggled to read 30-60 minutes a day. It largely depends on the game (genre and language lvl) that you’re playing though. Currently playing Yo-Kai watch on the Switch and its a lot easier to get absorbed when you are enjoying yourself.
Depends, I have stuff I count “as studying” and I study 2 hours a day.
I have stuff I don’t “count” as studying and that I can do, but doesn’t contribute to my 2 hours.
If it’s studying vocab that I mined out of a game, then that counts as studying.
If it’s just playing a game, that doesn’t count (for me).
I could see some extremely text-heavy game like a VN counting, but I don’t play that type.
I don’t like playing games in Japanese. Depending on the game the dialogue is repetitive or I want to advance so I wind up missing story beats, or I get too fixated on something so I’m pulled out of the story’s world.
I think it helps not a lot but playing Zelda OoT on the 3DS at least means I read a little
I think that playing games is helpful once you know the language well enough that you don’t need to look up every other word. Japanese can of course be a bit trickier than many other languages if you can’t read some of the kanji, but I’d say that games are especially good for learning and internalizing grammar in practise.
(Source: I learned a lot of English from games and right now I’m noticing significant improvements in my Russian and French just from playing a few games)
When I started learning Japanese…and very little time had passed since I learned kana my only way of learning was through gaming…..I did nothing else but play games and e use iKanji (iOS app for kanji srs)….but I only played games with the purpose of learning Japanese….and the “fun” aspect would be second priority…..What I mean by that is I would play games I already considered fun, but I would not be afraid to not get too much gameplay because I’m a little stuck trying to decipher what what said or at least to a point where I knew kind of what was going on…and I would frequently stop to add new words to Anki. I only picked single player, text heavy games (usually jrpgs) where I would think I could complete with my current level of knowledge and still getting a sense of the overall story..while learning Japanese I never played a game in any other language….if I wanted to play it it HAD to be in Japanese…..I guess that sort of worked as a motivator to keep learning.
​
Of course, eventually I upgraded to visual novels and then light novels……but I think games really helped me get to where I am today with the language
The only game I’ve played entirely in Japanese (UI and audio) is Overwatch. I did set up some flashcards for it, but other than that initial/occasional effort, I don’t really drill it or try to use it to learn—unless it’s some kind of unique, time-sensitive note that I feel I need to understand. Then I’ll consult my flashcards to see if I have the kanji in there, adding new ones as necessary.
Despite feeling like I don’t use it as a study/learning aid, I have _slowly_ learned kanji this way. Like, probably at 1/20th the speed of studying kanji in a textbook, but it’s kind of “free”. I think it only happens because this is really the only game I play this way, and I do play it a fair amount, so I don’t think this is really scalable or practical, but since it’s something I’m playing anyway, it was a good way to multi-purpose it into some free reinforcement.
Depends on the game i guess.. things like visual novels or jrpgs; something fairly story driven will probably provide more benifits than some shooter with Japanese audio turned on.. but i would say so… reading and listening practise is always a good thing..
Man I wish it was a justification to be able to play more. I’m generally too busy to play much.
But mainly it’s doing the former. Which is why I’m still playing all the games I can in Japanese.
I tend to have to look up quite a few words still. And besides vocabulary, my only other real hurdle is natural phrasing, so it’s helping both.
It can help with exposure to certain vocabulary, but really, I prefer to crack open a dictionary and study kanji through that, but some people learn vocabulary better through context
As in video games? Board games?
For sure it’s contributing for me.
I’ve only played one game in Japanese at this point: 電車でGO!!. But that’s sort of a cop-out response as there’s no story and the game mechanics never meaningfully change.
i just watch lets plays. havent actually played anything myself in years. great way to improve and have fun.
Yes.
OK, but on a serious note, playing VNs in Japanese did *wonders* for my reading skill. I managed to finish the reading section of JLPT N1 with half an hour to spare 😂
If it were story-, character, and/or world-based game interactions like in the 龍が如く series, or even visual novels (especially ones with branching paths) I’d say absolutely yes. I’d even argue it’s the closest I’d get to true immersion in the sense that I’m not just being completely passive, although I can pick stuff up passively the more I’m exposed to it, the way 関西弁 really clicked after hours of playing as Majima in 龍が如く０. Misunderstanding dialogues can lead to bad endings or mission fail states, so it makes me try and think about the consequences of what I make my characters say beforehand.
I mostly play JRPGs, which is a big reason I wanted to learn Japanese in the first place. They’re functionally novels and it’s absolutely helped my language learning. If you’re just playing live-service multiplayer games, maybe not as useful.
I don’t use textbooks or flashcards. At all. I basically just play games, watch anime, and read manga. The games I play usually have lots of reading, like VNs. However, I also play some action-oriented games like Rockman.
My Japanese is *definitely* getting better, and way faster than when I wasn’t doing it.
It’s only REAL learning if you’re suffering /s
For me it’s the former. I’m replaying(?) a game I only ever played in English, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life.
I remember the dialogue well enough to pick up on what’s being said when I run into unfamiliar vocabulary. And because it’s the switch remake, there’s a significant amount of differences that I can’t really take shortcuts… for example, new menus and a bulletin board with requests that weren’t present in the original.
It’s great because it’s both familiar and challenging. The game itself adopted some Stardew-like features, and you can interact with your pets a lot more than in the GC version… still, I never realized how cutscene heavy AWL was until I started playing in Japanese, lol
i play more like visual novel type games so i find playing with japanese audio actually helps me learn vocab
I’ve been playing some video games in Japanese as well as watching tons of anime/Japanese shows. As a beginner, it really helps me pick up contextual basics. For example, if I learn 5 different ways to say “yes”, hearing characters use the different forms of “yes” in context strengthens my understanding of the true “meaning” of the word.
A recent example: I heard a character use the word お願いします (onegaishimasu), and the subtitles read “thank you”. Of course ありがと (arigato) means “thank you”, so why didn’t the character say that instead? And the answer was simple in context: お願いします (onegaishimasu) is used when making a request and “thanking” someone in advanced for the favor, kind of like a “please and thankyou” in one. This character was doing exactly that, making a humble request to my character, so お願いします (onegaishimasu) makes perfect sense in this context. And now I have better understanding for when/how to use お願いします (onegaishimasu) vs ありがと (arigato).
I learned english because I surrounded myself with english language, one of them was definitely through Minecraft. Sure, if you just play one game in Japanese it won’t make you an expert, but it’s definitely a very fun (and effective in the long run) way to experience a language
Yes.
…but also, this seems like a loaded question.
There’s not enough dialogue in games to get adequate practice. You usually end up just gaming.
It’s better to watch Netflix and practice reading subtitles/hear it being spoken imo.
As someone who [spends way too much time playing videogames](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/zzhrjq/my_japanese_immersion_report_of_2022_2022_in/) (700+ hours in 2022 alone and [I might end up beating that in 2023 if I keep this pace](https://i.imgur.com/4Psv4qQ.png)) in Japanese both because I enjoy them and because it’s my primary Japanese learning excuse (although I do plenty of manga reading, anime watching, and book reading)…
I’d say that games (especially JRPGs) are excellent for language learning and you shouldn’t shy away from playing them **if that’s what interests you**. Language learning is the most effective when applied to hobbies that interest and engage us. If you enjoy it, do it.
On the other hand, however, I have realized that I’m right now at a level where I feel comfortable just consuming stuff in Japanese and consistently justifying my hobbies as “I’m doing this to be productive in my learning and not because it’s a hobby” can have some downsides. It’s easy to justify wasting time by explaining it as “language learning” but it’s good to not lose track of the fact that… well, you’re playing videogames. Maybe spending your entire free time just playing videogames, no matter how useful they are for learning a language, is not healthy. But still, fuck it, just do what you enjoy! I love games.