Do you play video games? Are video games good for immersion?

Personally, I do not find video games interesting or engaging, and as such, I never play them. However, I used to play them as a teenager, until I grew frustrated with the limitations of Windows and proprietary software. Since switching to GNU+Linux, I have stopped playing video games altogether. Most games are proprietary, and I refuse to run proprietary software.

From an efficiency standpoint, most video games offer low-quality immersion due to their low language density. While reading books or listening to podcasts offer a continuous immersion experience, video games only allow for occasional interaction with language, with most of the playtime being action-oriented. However, visual novels are an exception as they offer a similar experience to reading a book, but with added visuals.

Unfortunately, most visual novels and games in general are proprietary, which means that playing them comes at the cost of losing one's freedom. Furthermore, video games are bad for immersion because they're difficult to mine sentences from. There are hardly any tools available to automate the process of extracting text, pictures, and audio from games.

In conclusion, while video games may offer entertainment value, they are bad for language learning due to their low language density and lack of tools for sentence mining. Additionally, the proprietary nature of most games goes against the principles of freedom.

Tags: faq