Real-life knowledge learned from games

[nocturnal YL]

I have been thinking about interesting real-life knowledge I learnt from video games. As it turns out, there aren't many examples at all, but it's still worth mentioning. Here are what I could think of.

Games themed after real-life activities

This is the most obvious category. The GBC and GBA versions of Mario Golf and Mario Tennis come with a glossary feature, which details various sport-specific terms, and there are even some entries for things that aren't in the games, like the 5-Wood golf club.

There's also Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, which I haven't played yet. The creator of this game did pretty much most of the heavylifting, from game concept to design to programming to… actually planting rice to get a feel of how it's like. The farming part of the game, though simplified, is said to be pretty accurate.

Fire Emblem keeps teaching dirty words

There are quite a few occasions where the Fire Emblem games would include words that aren't quite in the vocabulary of some of the people playing. One that caught my attention was "aphrodisiac" in The Sacred Stones, seen in the support conversation between Lute and Vanessa, where Lute said she has read about the possibility of making a powerful aphrodisiac from pegasus feather.

There's also the English localisation of Awakening, where Sumia mentions her favourite book, "Ribald Tales of the Faith War". This is one of the few occasions where the localisation outshines the original in terms of colourfulness in the language.

Some writers just love giving German names to everything

It's one thing for games to introduce hard words in their own language — Golden Sun in English and Kirby in Japanese come to mind — but when it comes to new words taught by games, German words stand out quite a lot. Whether it's because the works in question are German fantasies or because they just want to make up long words, I just kept running into examples like Fire Emblem Three Houses, the Atelier series, the Castlevania series, the doujin game Rosenkreuzstilette, and non-game examples like Hellsing.

I can read a few basic German words without trying to learn. Schwarz means black. Luft means air. Adler means eagle. I know the numbers 1 to 12. All because I played a few Japanese games.

Trivia in Gust games

Atelier Firis and Atelier Lydie & Suelle have an item called kamenote in Japanese, which is a reference to real-life kamenote, also known as Japanese gooseneck barnacle. The word literally means "turtle's hand" and is named after its appearance. It can be eaten and tastes like crab meat, but is apparently not popular in Japan because it really looks like a turtle's severed paw. Anyway, the whole "it's not an actual turtle paw despite its name" thing was brought up in Atelier Firis, and I was quite surprised to learn that it's a real thing.

Atelier Rorona brings up the topic of alchemy. Despite the series' theme, discussions on real-life alchemy are very rare, but Atelier Rorona brought up the topic on how to make a homunculus, horse manure and all. Rorona's reaction from reading about this from a book is very interesting.

But the most interesting real-life trivia I've learned, and the one that inspired me to write this post, has to be the one from the later part of BLUE REFLECTION: Second Light. The cutscene goes like this:

Kokoro: Let's not get in here.
Ao: But when you put it this way, that makes me more curious.
Kokoro: Do you know about nitroglycerin?
Ao: Huh?
Kokoro: It's a very delicate medicine, and can explode from just a slight nudge.
Kokoro: Dynamite is made from it, using this property.
Kokoro: If you open the door now and make this medicine move…
Ao: Wait, this nitroglycerin thing is being made here?
Kokoro: Who knows?
Ao: Was I wrong?
Kokoro: I wonder?
Ao: What do you mean, "I wonder?"
Ao: (But, if that's true…)
Ao: …Let's head back.
Kokoro: Good.

The context is that, slight spoiler, Kokoro and others are preparing a surprise party. There's no explosive there.

This was the first time I heard about nitroglycerin, and, like the other examples here, I was surprised to see it's more or less true.

[Evie ❤✿]

There are the edutainment and Touch Generations! games/general every day life games specifically aimed at teaching real-life knowledge and skills. However, a lot of those may be seen as "software"/"reference" rather than games, like the Rakubiki Jiten DS series of dictionaries and the DSiWare title Dictionary 6-in-1 with Camera Function. I remember too there was a wave of people and parents wanting games to teach in the early 90s, so Nintendo marketed Mario Paint as helping teach art/music to children. We know there was also Sound Fantasy which in the end was cancelled and ideas transitioned to Electroplankton.

On that note, of mention are the Mario Artist series, WarioWare: D.I.Y., Game Builder Garage, however thinking about it it depends on how we define real-life knowledge. I think games that teach you how to program, paint, and compose are still a form of real-life knowledge if this is a hobby, but defining it differently you might only include knowledge from the real world. For third-party games, the popular RPG Maker series which was released not only on PC (the earliest console edition was the 1995 RPG Tsukūru Super Dante for Super Famicom).

Cooking games may also teach recipes and they can be right (but not always perfect), like in this article where someone tests the recipes in Cooking Mama. There's another cooking game like Cooking Mama I've played called Waku Waku Sweets with a number of recipes, but I haven't tested them. In this video of the rare game Yoshi no Cookie: Kuruppon Oven de Cookie, ForestLogic says they actually follow the instructions every year to make Checkerboard Cookies.

You can sometimes learn culture/folklore from video games only if a brief idea. I imagine lots of RPG/adventure games do that, for example there is this article about references to Buddhism in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. An RPG might want to make reference to an ancient culture, spirituality, etc. to incorporate into its lore, as well as popular culture. However, it isn't strictly an RPG you can learn about those things.

For a lot of people, Pokémon was their first RPG, and because RPGs are text heavy and Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow was popular with younger gamers it helped them learn English. This may have been true with Japanese and Pokémon Red/Green/Blue/Pikachu as well.

Recently, the upcoming downloadable content for Pokémon Scarlet/Violet revealed three legendary Pokémon resembling a dog, pheasant, and monkey like in the Japanese Momotaro fairy tale. For the Famicom/Famicom Disk System, we had Shin Onigashima, Yūyūki, and Time Twist. They personally teached me a little about both Japanese fairy tales and history.

Many Japan-only games use many elements exclusive to Japanese culture, so naturally anyone outside of Japan who is into them can learn more about Japanese culture though it may require studying the text. For the Japanese games in The Legendary Starfy series, I learned about the Nihonzaru (Japanese macaque) that bathe in hot springs, the Kobumaki and Kachiwari foods and the Mari ball from an anicent Japanese ball game called Kemari.

[nocturnal YL]

Your first few examples are quite different from what I have in mind, since I was thinking about personal experiences rather than making a list of serious games. I don't know if you actually learned new stuff from researching those games though, so maybe those are personal experience on your part. I also didn't consider games that introduce things I already know, like the real-life history references in the Ys series. Not that I don't find it interesting.

Your examples with Pokémon and the Famicom text adventure games are more in line with what I have in mind, although these are more of references than the games outright spelling out real-life facts. My examples on games teaching new words fall into this category too, I suppose. Nevertheless, they are useful as a stepping stone to know more about what they reference.

(Also, I didn't mentioned this, but I first heard of the word annulus from Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. It's one of Marle's spells, which are all circle references.)

I started this topic with more of a surprise factor in mind. It's not a usual sight to have a fantasy game suddenly start showing its characters talk about real-life stuff that's not directly related to their world.

[Evie ❤✿]

Yeah, I think at first I was trying to remember interesting real-life things I learned to add to your experiences (maybe not in the case of really surprising/unexpected things like in your case with the fantasy game though); but then started to think of the thread like "how games can teach you things" and in terms of how broadly that concept can actually get.

I'm sorry if the parts about those serious games, or when Nintendo wanted to promote Mario Paint deviated from the original aim of this thread.

[nocturnal YL]

May 2, 2023 10:57:25 GMT -5 Evie ❤✿ said:

I'm sorry if the parts about those serious games, or when Nintendo wanted to promote Mario Paint deviated from the original aim of this thread.

Well, It's not like you'd have known about what I was thinking. I didn't state that explicitly because I didn't expect anyone would reply. It has been months since I saw any online activity from you, and you're pretty much the only one who I anticipated would reply.

[Fryguy64]

I suppose in the most broad way, I learned that pretty much any monumental task can be completed if you're patient enough and keep practising and chipping away at it.

In the more specific sense in which you're asking, I can't think of any useful examples. I may have learned a word or two over the years?