This forum already has the Monthly Game Club; a wonderful initiative and a very great yes – but the thing is, I primarily play Japanese-only games as of late. So here I’m thinking, is this town big enough for the both of us? Would anyone but me be interested in a Japanese-language video game “book club”?
Here’s how it’d shake out:
The games are in Japanese, but we discuss them in English.
If there are any lines someone’s having trouble interpreting, why not post a screenshot in the thread and we can collectively help each other? It could be a way to dive into Japanese games without having to go it alone.
It could be helpful to coordinate it partly over Discord – perhaps it’d be more convenient for people to be able to get fast answers to questions? I don’t want to take away from the forum experience, though, and I think Discord might decrease the likelihood that one would bother to write a forum post. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.
Since there’s already a monthly game club, this one could be semi-monthly if there turns out to be significant overlap as to who is interested in joining. If the target audience turns out to be mostly separate, perhaps there’s space for another monthly club!
Of course, there’d be no expectation that everyone finishes the game.
Now, I only know of a couple of people beyond myself on the forum who have a fluent grasp of Japanese, but tossing in language learners, perhaps there’s enough of an audience?
Consider this thread a way to sign up – and I shall make it happen should the interest be there! Show thineselves!
I’d be interested in theory but I can’t even find the time to play the monthly game clubs’ games these days… I’ll probably cheer from the sidelines.
I am definitely interested in this. I’m currently at level 21 in Wanikani and have an okay time at recognizing kanji and basic phrases but I am awful with general reading. I keep starting different games to see if something will click and find the dialogue tough to parse without stopping to look things up.
I would love a reason to stick with one of these and make the best of my reading abilities while learning more on the way.
I could always use more excuses to practice! Though I don’t think I can reliably carve any chunks out of my current schedule for another club, I’ll dabble here and there when I can.
I definitely need to broaden my input of japanese if I realistically want to learn the language. The bite-sized manga-reading sessions I do are better than nothing but I really need to make the jump sooner rather than later. So, count me in!
The mods (@Tom@captain@antillese) can perhaps speak to this better, but doesn’t Discourse have an at least live-ish group chat functionality? This might be the sort of thing it would be ideal for.
I’d love to get in on something like this. Count me firmly on the side of “language learners,” though — I’m only about to reach my 2nd consecutive month of daily practice, so I’m not expecting to contribute tons, but hey the more exposure the better!
Right, huh… Apparently that’s an “official plugin”, and it looks like the way to solve that would be to create a channel for the club within the “clubs” category (since Discourse chats are tied to categories). I think that might be perfect…?
Given the number of language learners who are interested, I’m thinking it could be particularly useful to play games with both Japanese speech and Japanese subtitles – that combination was a real cheat code for me when I was getting to grips with the language.
Yeah, discourse has a ton of ways to extend functionality including live chat.
The mod and admin teams have discussed this in the past and it’s not the direction that we want to have for the community. The team and @exodus wants the forum to be a slower-paced non-live text based public forum.
Group and semi-private PMs are only available to the moderators by policy.
You’re welcome to organize a club here publicly though and use another tool like Discord or whatever you want for your needs.
Currently we’re at 5 “sure”s, 1 “maybe”, and 2 “probably not”s! Might not be quite enough to be sure that the club’ll be active and bustling. If anyone else is interested, keep the posts coming!
fwiw, I’m also still a student so my summer semester will be busy (Intermediate Japanese I + work) but I’d love to have something like this going, even if it’s at a relaxed pace.
Oh hey, fancy seeing you here! I love my Hudson Caravan tee that I purchased from your very good online store. And I don’t know if you recall, but I submitted a few entries to Moai Games a while back, hahah. Fun to run into you!
I’ll mark you down as a “maybe”. No need to join in for games one isn’t interested in, of course.
You know, I’ve been wanting to play something where text is more vital to the gameplay like a RPG or adventure game for a while now, and this club is a great reason to do so. I’d absolutely love to play together with everyone!
