Zon: the MMO that teaches you to speak Chinese
by Samuel Axon 
Jun 4th 2008 at 10:00PM
Filed under: MMO industry, New titles, News items, Browser, Education
A team of developers supported by Michigan State University and the Office of the Chinese Language Council International have spent the past few years piecing together Zon -- a browser-based virtual world wherein users can learn the Mandarin Chinese language. The game is currently in its open beta phase; you can sign up to play right now.
Users create an avatar and then find themselves in a representation of Beijing International Airport. From there, they may interact with NPCs and other world objects to learn more about Chinese language and culture, as well as communicate with other players to practice their language skills. As they progress through the system, they move up in rank from Tourist to Resident, and finally to Citizen -- at which point they may create their own content for the world.
We learned of Zon through the blog of Areae president Raph Koster, who had an interesting anecdote to add. During his stint at SOE, the company worked with college campuses to use EverQuest II for total immersion language education. So this is not a new idea -- just a really cool one!
Users create an avatar and then find themselves in a representation of Beijing International Airport. From there, they may interact with NPCs and other world objects to learn more about Chinese language and culture, as well as communicate with other players to practice their language skills. As they progress through the system, they move up in rank from Tourist to Resident, and finally to Citizen -- at which point they may create their own content for the world.
We learned of Zon through the blog of Areae president Raph Koster, who had an interesting anecdote to add. During his stint at SOE, the company worked with college campuses to use EverQuest II for total immersion language education. So this is not a new idea -- just a really cool one!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
remf said on 10:48PM 6-04-2008
As soon as they do this for Spanish, I'm all over it. I would even pay if it had some kind of medical module. It would help me at my job and I may even be able to be reimbursed for it. Imagine getting paid to game...!
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Dabizi said on 10:36AM 6-05-2008
Has anybody been able to sign up for Zon? I keep getting an error that indicates I already signed up. I tried with two email addresses.
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icarusxj said on 7:43PM 6-05-2008
Probably chinese gold farmers hijacking your email.
dirkin said on 10:39AM 6-06-2008
Check your junk folder...the Zon authentication email gets junked because they didn't add any text, just included a link...definitely something that needs to fixed for the beta!
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TuxGirl said on 12:41PM 6-06-2008
Anyone else getting just a purple box when they log in? It seems like I'm missing a plugin, but firefox isn't claiming to be missing anything.
~TuxGirl
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