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      It's not every day that I happen to be writing a term paper about video games, education and language learning, and the perfect example of all three literally falls into my lap. That game is called Lexico and it was conceived and designed by the guys at SDHawk Games.

      What's the long story here? The long story is that I am, at the time of this writing, a graduate student, who just happens to be quite interested in some things called "situated meaning" and "epistemic gaming." As it just so happens, Lexico is a perfect example of just those paradigms. Not only that, but there just happens to be a dirth of literature about using video games to learn language. Lexico is better than literature. Lexico is an actual, completed, well-developed game. What's the short and sweet version of all this graduate student talk? Lexico is a fun, well-designed game.

      Lexico begins with your hero, a nameless guy in a blue space suit, making an emergency landing. He ends up in a factory, his ship damaged beyond repair. There are a number of people lurking around the factory who speak his language, but lo and behold, the computer consoles in the factory display unknown glyphs, and neither the hero nor the inhabitants of the factory knows what they mean. It becomes your job to navigate blue spacesuit guy through the factory in the hopes of finding a way off of... well, wherever it is you've crashed.

      Graphically, Lexico is on par with other titles that you will have seen developed for Verge 3. The factory inhabitants look vaguely reminiscent of Chrono Trigger. I have the feeling I've seen them before, but I can't put my finger on it. I love the design of the factory. The music adds the right mood to the game. Tense, but not overly frenetic. This is a game where you'll be focusing a lot of concentration on tasks and won't want to be disturbed. It mixes the factory and sci-fi themes perfectly. In short, Lexico is both visually and musically appealing.

      In terms of gameplay Lexico is essentially a puzzle-solving game. You are presented with computer panels and groups of buttons covered with various symbols. The symbols will probably have almost nothing in common with what they represent. The only way to figure out what they mean is to randomly press buttons and tinker around with computers until you can discover the patterns of behavior. The game lets you assign words to glyphs very easily by right clicking on them. From the moment you apply an English word to a glyph, you can read that word by moving your mouse over it. This means that even if you forget what you wrote, you can easily access that glyph's meaning wherever it occurs again.

      As you solve puzzles and unlock access to more and more of the factory, you will discover, by talking to the factory's inhabitants, more about the world of Lexico, which gives you further incentive to keep playing. This means that Lexico is engaging on multiple levels.

      Solving the puzzles is fun, because the game lets you play around with discovering the situated meaning of glyphs without getting punished for making mistakes. "Situated meaning" is a fancy way of saying that you understand what the glyph means in the context of the game. As an example of situated mean, consider the word "elephant." Pretend you are a person who has grown up in a cave. You learned the English language from people who came into the cave as you grew up, but you've never left it. One day, someone tells you about a large gray animal with a really long nose and white tusks. They tell you that this animal is called an "elephant." Do you really understand the meaning of the word "elephant?" Sure, if someone asks you to decribe the concept of "elephant," you can list back to them the facts that you memorized, that it's gray and big, and has white tusks and any number of other things. But, certainly, if you actually went to a zoo, saw a real elephant and fed it a peanut, you would really understand the word "elephant" much better because you'd have a real experience to go along with the description. Once you've really experienced an elephant, the word "elephant" carries a new kind of a meaning. This is a situated meaning. And this is what makes Lexico fun -- discovering on your own terms the situated meaning of glyphs that, in isolation, are absolutely meaningless (Gee 2003).

      Further adding to the fun is that Lexico is an "epistemic game." When you go to school you probably have had the experience of sitting and listening to a lecture. You've probably also had the experience of taking notes. You've probably also gone home with notes and worksheets and handouts and memorized a bunch of facts so that you can pass quizzes. Does this sound like you're leaning situated meaning? It shouldn't. Schools, in their current form, are not very good (ironically enough), about promoting deep learning. Lexico is different. Lexico is better for your brain than many of the things you might do in a foreign language class, like memorize a list of words. School says, "if you want to go out to an archaeological dig and decipher the texts on five thousand year old urns, read all these books about how to do it." Epistemic gaming says something very different. Epistemic gaming says "if you want to go out to an archaeological dig and decipher ancient texts, then practice playing the role of 'decipherer' in a virtual environment that simulates the real thing". That virtual environment doesn't have to be a video game, but it might as well be. Lexico certainly fits the bill. You know what other advantages epistemic games have over traditional school? They're immensely engaging and fun. Just like Lexico (Shaffer 2006).

      Lexico is, in this author's opinion, an absolutely amazing game that everyone should play. It is traditionally a video game and also very progressive in its approach to the merger of learning and gaming. I'll bet good money that the guys at SDHawk Games didn't intend that. Well, congrats anyway. You've done one hell of a job.



References
Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shaffer, D. W. (2006). How Computer Games Help Children Learn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.