Interactive language learning is already fear-inducing enough when you have Duolingo’s Duo breathing down your neck, but an assistant language teacher in Niigata Prefecture’s Tsunan Secondary School recently decided to take this sense of dread to the next level – by using Hideo Kojima’s P.T. demo as teaching material. As written on the school’s official blog, students were prompted to play and progress through the Silent Hills interactive teaser entirely in English.
By pausing the demo at certain sections, the teacher would ask a class of fifth-year students (roughly high school sophomores) which course of action to take. Everyday phrases such as “walk around the room,” “take a stroll,” and “answer the phone” were used, whereupon the students would verbally dictate what the player would do next.
According to the school’s blog, several students were “startled by the sudden ringing of the in-game telephone.”-If you ask me, the jumpscares seem to be part of the learning process, as P.T.’s penchant for scaring the pants off of people would ingrain the phrases into the students’ minds and incentivize picking the correct phrases.
Though Silent Hills never came to fruition, it’s nice to see that P.T. continues to be an important cornerstone of the horror game genre. Bayonetta and Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya even went so far as to say that the demo was an innovation in the horror genre and basically a pioneer of the “Exit 8-like” sub-genre of games that succeeded it. Given that the only way to play P.T. nowadays is to own a PlayStation 4 with the demo installed, these kids are extremely lucky to learn a language while also witnessing a piece of game history.
