Learn Chinese With An MMO

26 Mar 2009 at 17:20:06 by Andy Alderson

A new MMO is in development which aims to help gamers learn Chinese characters.

Hanjamaru, being developed by NHN and EduFlo, is designed to help people learn Chinese characters through an audio-visual teaching system. The game combines education with “battle, which is the basic element of MMORPG.”

The developers also enlisted the help of pedagogists who study Chinese characters and education psychologists from Harvard University. The Psychology department of Seoul National University has apparently “proved” the educational benefit of the game.

A closed beta test of the game took place in January with 26,000 users participating. Testers learned approximately 13 Chinese characters per hour on average.

"It seems Hanjamaru brings interest to the users, and leads to natural education by going through repetitive routine," said Kwon Su Yeon who tried out Hanjamaru with her child.

"I hope it will be a nice teaching method for children to learn Chinese characters while having fun."

In its current state, Hanjamaru only supports Korean-based Chinese characters but a global version will be published later this year which will support Japanese-based and simplified Chinese characters.

Official Website : www.hanjamaru.com
Minimum requirements : CPU Celeron 1Ghz, Memory 512 MB, GeForce MX440
Recommended requirements : CPU Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz, Memory 1GB, GeForce 6200 or better
Published Year : 2009
Supported OS : Window XP, 2000 , Vista Supported (DirectX 9.0c or higher version)

Comment