This edition of Load Save is brought to you from Somerset, where I’ve spent a large part of the weekend, instead of from the normal location of the lofty Load Save Towers.
As such, it’s written on my phone, so there might be some errors, especially as this week’s guest subeditor is The Witch of Wookey Hole, who has no editorial background.
Duolingo, or how I learned to love the owl.
Well, more like live in total fear of the owl.
A friend of mine, Tom, recently passed the 900-day milestone on Duolingo and shared his accomplishment on his social media. I too have been cursed with the owl, and I will inevitably one day have served more time under its malignant, claw-stuffed wings than somebody found guilty of several minor crimes.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great tool for learning a new language, and perhaps even better for reinforcing one, however, its cunning, heavyhanded gamification is perhaps the strongest out there. So strong, that most of those caught within its wingspan know it, but are almost entirely helpless to resist. It capitalises on a want to travel and communicate beyond your homeland, and it then crushes any willpower and resistance against language learning by rewarding you with big numbers and bigger praise. Also, the animations are fun, it understands when you’re busy, knows it is asking you to say silly things, and has plenty of character through its guides.
The other day I was preparing some dinner for the family and I honestly thought to myself “If somebody falls into a coma, would one of these ‘Streak-based’ apps make an exception for them?” It’s an odd question, and maybe it doesn’t matter, but also… how do people on the ISS maintain these streaks when they orbit the planet 16 times a day?
I think that Duolingo has such sharp talons because of three things: World of Warcraft, Leaderboards/Community and Owls are cool a kind of hip mentor mentality.
Obviously, when I say World of Warcraft I don’t mean the game itself. I mean the phenomenon of gamification that was born out of WoW, witch was one of the first games where people outside of games took a step back and said “wait a bloody minute, what is this magic, is it hypnosis?” Of course, it turned out that it was basically hypnosis, but rather that kind of behavioural psychology hypnosis than the swinging pendulum, spinning black and white spirals on an old TV, wiggling eyebrows Svengali hypnotism.
That continual emotional boost that comes from fanfare, quest sliders filling up and background accomplishments [Travel Xkm, Use ability X Y times] is incredibly hard to walk away from. Duolingo sets premium users up with daily quests, monthly quests, and limited-time activities. Its progression system is laid out like Candy Crush Saga, with circular sub-topics that fill toward completion (or even Legendary) as you push through them. There’s more too. If you get a streak of questions right then an animation plays, obviously there’s also a whole fanfare about expanding your streak, as well as additional chances to earn currency by gambling it on those streaks. All of these blast off trumpets for you too… and that’s before we even get started on the second, stickier point.
Duolingo does Leaderboards well, and that’s a core part of ‘community’ — witch it also does terrifyingly well. It’s got camaraderie right down, with weekly challenges where it pairs you with friends (witch are often random people you’ve tracked) and a lot more; It also encourages you to ‘High Five’ others for completing milestones, witch means that you also get random back-pats from people for just doing your normal business. You can also view where these people are in their responsive language in your Candy Crush-style ladder too, but none of this compares to what they’ve managed to wrangle with leaderboards.
The leaderboards are bloody genius, because it’s a league table where you’re arbitrarily fed into a group with other people. The leagues last one week and you can be promoted through further and further layers until a ridiculous actual league-atop-a-league starts. Your XP, witch is normally pretty irrelevant, is your ranking in these leagues, and as such you’re likely going to get multiple notifications throughout the day as you’re knocked about by people around the world as they log on and do their daily revision. Knock them out with an XP gain yourself and it takes you straight to the leaderboard and shows you gracefully sliding up past anybody you’ve beaten.
The leaderboard screen is how you access the special activities — currently a kind of ascending difficulty/reward revision form, and a “Match ‘em” quickfire translation challenge — and clearly where a lot of the more dedicated spend their time.
Let me tell you, I’ve massively slowed down my learning because of these leaderboards — mainly due to focusing on using these quick reinforcement tools (and the training options) rather than advancing my language level, because the XP payout for these activites is much better than me tripping over myself with new words. It means that I can definitely ask somebody where my dog is in German, or tell them that an apartment is clean, but probably not too much else.
But, do you know what the real rub is? The leaderboards don’t even really give you anything. Aside from a few arbitrary achievements, it’s actually entirely superficial as is the streak and all the ‘Night Owl’ or early riser bonuses. You don’t need it, but it’s the biggest hook to the whole thing, and it’s what keeps the people who have long streaks coming back.
Finally, there was a third thing that I mentioned as a reason why this has all worked so well, and that’s The Hip Mentor. I think that this is definitely worth stressing, because this is genuinely one of the main perks of using this as a learning technique. Because you can talk to, listen to, type out, and ‘select the correct’ as methods of learning, it’s actually very flexible with how you learn.
Even ignoring the training section where you can pick from most of the above, there are options to opt out of listening and speaking while using the App. This is great and means that it makes a sneaky lesson feel like an achievable shortcut. I know that I can rack up 1500-2000xp in half an hour by just doing speaking lessons with various boosts, but I also know that I can maintain my streak with a 30-second blast of no-speak, no-listen. You can also simply reach the first of the three milestones in each lesson and back out in order to have it fire off a very minimal (but enough) amount of XP, enough to extend your streak.
Maybe that’s how the astronauts do it.
A retraction
I was originally going to write out a short section on the seven levels of hell of Pokémon Go players, something that is extremely relevant due to the recent conversations around Niantic’s monthly revenue, but also their business model changes. The short of it is that there are players who run multiple accounts and try to get the ultimate versions of each of the Pokèmon, and they’re hurting right now. The long of it? Well, that’s going to have to wait until next time.
Finally, Some Good Games
Beyond The Long Night (Noisy Head Games, Yogscast Games)
One for the potholers and roguelike-likers. Beyond The Long Night has you float around a dungeon, gobbing out missiles and beating up menacing creatures while (across your numerous lives) revealing the world and beings around you. I love the disconnect between the aggressive monsters and journeying beings you meet along the way, but it’s the fact that you bob around under a clutch of balloons that really sells it for me. Especially because 2D, top-down dungeon crawlers are totally a thing, but your method of traversal means that the age-old hazard of ‘Spikes’ take on a new, deadlier and actually justified level of danger.
Anger Foot (Free Lives, Devolver Digital)
I can’t remember the first time that I really enjoyed kicking something in an FPS. At some point, it emerged as an alternative to clocking people around the head with the butt of your gun or slashing at them with a knife (it’s quicker than reloading, I’m assured… that and that the melon didn’t stand a chance). It might have been Bulletstorm, it might have been before, but either way, I can’t get enough of it. Anger Foot is basically constructed around that aggressive act of putting the boot in, and it’s frantic, fast and fantastic.
I think the best way to explain it is probably as a fusion of Hotline Miami, Soldier of Fortune and, well, speedrunning. Basically, the timer is running, everything is one shot, one kill, and your kick can send people, doors and barrels flying. It feels like you can’t stand still, and that’s because if there’s an enemy around then you basically can’t… otherwise you’ll be dead and right back to the start of the level. Some of the levels are quite lengthy for this kind of adrenaline-pumped, snap-decision play, and while failing a two-minute-long level right at the final hurdle really sucks, you cannot beat the feeling of everything going just like clockwork when you pull it off.
In the eternal words of Donald Duck, that’s all folks. Thanks again to the guest subeditor — The Witch of Wookey Hole — and I hope that those of you who celebrate bank holidays in the UK really celebrated this one super well.
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The owl traps many - I am looking forward to your Pokemon Go article next.