I can't really list any games that relate exactly to the topic too much (though the UK does resemble Fallout 3's Megaton with Tenpenny Tower being London) but on the topic of lived experiences being reflected in games, I want to take a left-of-field option here and say that No Man's Sky is probably the best video game interpretation of learning a language I've ever seen.
The aliens you encounter don't vomit out absolute jibberish, their languages have suffixes, sentence structure and their own grammar but as you learn more words these are replaced with ones in your own chosen game language until finally, you are just reading normal sentences but in a different coloured font. I found this to be a pretty accurate depiction of my experience learning the Cyrillic alphabet and Russian; I don't see a different alphabet anymore, only the sounds each letter represents, it almost doesn't register anymore to me, as if it's just writing in a different colour.
That’s so intriguing that it might get me to break my 10-year streak of putting off No Man’s Sky. I had a similar experience learning the Hebrew alphabet a number of years ago, and it’s hard to beat the satisfaction of cracking a totally different script. Great example of using a real-world reference point to serve a gameplay-thematic purpose.
The most social realism I ever got in a game, both in terms of being social, and being real, was playing Facade, saying something I thought was fine, having everyone else in the room stare at me for a few seconds as they parsed it, and then being told I needed to leave.
First time I played, I got too enthusiastic with the mouse controls. Got invited in by Trip, embraced his wife, then kissed her on the cheek all by accident. She tried to defuse the awkwardness by remarking about how European it was. Didn’t work. I’m still trying to live it down.
Reminds me of when I played The You Testament: The 2D Coming. After meeting Christ, he gave me a short embrace, and when I tried to return it, I accidentally started doing a wrestling grapple on him, which a passing centurion immediately de-escalated by slicing my head off.
I can't really list any games that relate exactly to the topic too much (though the UK does resemble Fallout 3's Megaton with Tenpenny Tower being London) but on the topic of lived experiences being reflected in games, I want to take a left-of-field option here and say that No Man's Sky is probably the best video game interpretation of learning a language I've ever seen.
The aliens you encounter don't vomit out absolute jibberish, their languages have suffixes, sentence structure and their own grammar but as you learn more words these are replaced with ones in your own chosen game language until finally, you are just reading normal sentences but in a different coloured font. I found this to be a pretty accurate depiction of my experience learning the Cyrillic alphabet and Russian; I don't see a different alphabet anymore, only the sounds each letter represents, it almost doesn't register anymore to me, as if it's just writing in a different colour.
That’s so intriguing that it might get me to break my 10-year streak of putting off No Man’s Sky. I had a similar experience learning the Hebrew alphabet a number of years ago, and it’s hard to beat the satisfaction of cracking a totally different script. Great example of using a real-world reference point to serve a gameplay-thematic purpose.
The most social realism I ever got in a game, both in terms of being social, and being real, was playing Facade, saying something I thought was fine, having everyone else in the room stare at me for a few seconds as they parsed it, and then being told I needed to leave.
First time I played, I got too enthusiastic with the mouse controls. Got invited in by Trip, embraced his wife, then kissed her on the cheek all by accident. She tried to defuse the awkwardness by remarking about how European it was. Didn’t work. I’m still trying to live it down.
Reminds me of when I played The You Testament: The 2D Coming. After meeting Christ, he gave me a short embrace, and when I tried to return it, I accidentally started doing a wrestling grapple on him, which a passing centurion immediately de-escalated by slicing my head off.