CallUponTheAuthor

Dang. I only just got online to find this amazing AMA on the frontpage. I'm probably late to the party, but I'm going to try and ask something on the off-chance one of you is still answering. This is probably a more unorthodox question, but I'd hate to pass up on the opportunity to have it answered by such giants in the field.

I once graduated as a linguistics major, but I somehow ended up as a game developer. In my spare time, I've been developing a game named Speak, a game about conlanging and language evolution. The main goal is to make the creation of language exciting and accessible to laymen and experts alike. That's a tall order and under normal circumstances I wouldn't dream about communicating about this project in public at this very, very early stage, but the opportunity to get any input at all from the likes of is really invaluable.

I'm afraid the only thing I can show on such very short notice is this little video I made a while ago, which is already outdated again by now. As you can tell, current game functionality is limited to phonological change (and a schematic form of that), because it is easy to model and relatively simple to explain to the player as a gameplay/puzzle challenge. The game should be able to work with any language data, real, historical or fictional. (In fact, a couple of your languages briefly pop up in the video as a selectable option.)

Without further ado, here's a couple of things that would do me tremendous honor if you could shine your light on them:

• How much of a crazy idea is this? Do any of you play games? In a more finished form, do you think this could be fun to toy around in?

• Do you think it would be a valid approach to take phonological evolution as a first development stage? (E.g. grammar doesn't really exist yet, just so as to keep development managable.)

• Do you have any other pointers for me?

Thanks!

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, gameplay-wise this doesn't show much at all, which is why I wouldnt normally share footage at this stage of development. And yeah, Praiseland is the last thing I want, obviously. The intended gameplay is to be far more engaging than this.