Games for Learning Old and Special Alphabets – The Case Study of Gamifying Mrežnik
Authors: Josip Mihaljević (Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, 2019)
Topic: Learner Corpora and Language Acquisition

Abstract
This paper presents many different custom made web games which are created for learning the Glagolitic script, the sign language, and the Braille alphabet. These games were created within The Croatian Web Dictionary Project – Mrežnik where the author works on gamifying dictionary content. The games for learning the Glagolitic script, sign language, and Braille alphabet will be connected to the entries glagoljica (the Glagolitic script), brajica (Braille alphabet), and the subentry znakovni jezik (sign language) of the entry jezik (language) in Mrežnik. In the paper, each of these games will be presented by stating the game type, mechanics, and gamification elements such as scoring, leaderboards, levels, and badges, etc. The position of these games in the structure of Mrežnik will be shown and the reception of the published games through Facebook likes and shares will be presented. For Glagolitic games, a statistical analysis will also be given to show how many players have completed the game, submitted their results, and replayed the game. At the end of the paper technology used for creating, testing, and publishing these games will also be analyzed.

Introduction
Games have evolved as a new media and are being more and more used in everyday life. What makes a game more engaging than other media is its interactivity with the player. In a game, content is constantly changing based on players reactions in the physical world. With dynamic content and unlimited ability to do different things in the vir-tual world, games can be used as a powerful tool for educational purposes (Gros, 2007). Some contents in which educational games occur are military schools, driving schools, and hospitals which are using virtual simulation to simulate real-life situations. There are also a lot of websites and aplications for learning foreign languages such as Duolingo and Memrise. Online dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster and The Free Dictionary have some games for learning definitions, grammar, spelling, etc. The popularity of games for educational purposes in all fields can be attributed to new trends such as e-learning, gamification and game-based learning (Strmečki et al., 2015). The purpose of e-learning methods and techniques is to improve the quality of the class, communication between teachers, instructors, students, and other participants in the learning process, and to allow easier exchange and access to learning material (SRCE, 2016). There is no unique definition of gamification. One of the most quoted papers on gamification (Deterding et al., 2011) From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining Gamification defines gamification as a process which uses the existing game elements in situations which are not considered as a game. Gamification elements, which include scoring, ranking, levels, rewards, ect., are abstracted from many different games. Research has been conducted on the use of gamification mostly in the field of computer science (Ortiz et al., 2016). A study conducted by professor of management Traci Sitzmann (2011) at Colorado Denver Business School demonstrates that staff which completed their training with the help of video games learned more facts and accomplished more skills and long-term knowledge than staff that was trained in a less interactive environment. However, there were many critical points about using gamification elements such as leaderboards because some students don’t do well when they are compared against others they know and scoring can sometimes be misused, misinterpreted or not implemented correctly. Sometimes assignments are not scored correctly or the games or systems automatically give scores to meaningless actions such as clicking the answers without reading the text (Armando et al., 2018). Gamification can also be used in combination with crowdsourcing where the community can play a certain game in which they solve or offer a solution for certain tasks. This type of gamification used through virtual games is called GWAP (Game with a Purpose) where the player is rewarded with entertainment rather than money (Venhuizen et al., 2013). GWAPs challenge players to score high on specifically designed tasks, thereby contributing their knowledge. GWAPs were successfully pioneered in NLP by initiatives such as ‘Phrase Detectives’ for anaphora resolution (Chamberlain et al., 2008) and ‘JeuxDeMots’ for term relation (Artignan et al., 2009). Venhuizen et al. (2013) have created a gaming platform Wardrobe (wordrobe.org) in which players answer multiple choice questions in which they guess if a certain word in a sentence is a noun or a verb or in another game, they must identify correct senses of a word. Players are through their virtual profile awarded with points and virtual achievements to keep them motivated. Player's answers are used for annotating the text. The amount of points the player gets depends on the agreement with fellow players. The working assumption is that the right sense of a word can be determined by the answers given by the players. The answer which has more selection or is selected by a more experienced player in a game is usually considered to be the correct one. However, that doesn't mean that this system of annotion is good because people tend to have wrong assumptions and make mistakes so in the end the overall data is checked by expert annotators. However, if most of the words are annotated correctly by non-expert annotators it makes the job of checking annotation much quicker for expert annotator (Venhuizen et al., 2013). This is one of the examples of using gamification in NLP.

Conclusion
Game design is constantly evolving so we can expect more educational games in the area of language learning and lexicography. In the paper, some examples of games for learning special alphabets are presented and it is shown how they are incorporated within a dictionary project and received by users. These types of games could be applied for other special alphabets of other languages. The compilation of games for Mrežnik is still in progres and many different games for learning grammar, definitions, spelling, etc. are being developed. By gamifying the Croatian dictionary and grammar we can interest children and teenagers but also help foreigners learn Croatian language and culture and popularise language contents. Research on the influence of gamified content on non-native speakers learning Croatian is still in progress within the Mrežnik project.