Aedou: A Realm of Languages; the collaborative multiplayer game for language learning on Cardano

Sustainable ADA | Apr 15, 2022

“To provide equitable access to high-quality learning materials while proving that games can be ideal learning environments.” – Educhainment

This is the mission and vision of Educhainment, founded by Mike Dietrich, and made up of a team of five.

At Educhainment they are “creating tools and game-based learning environments on the Cardano blockchain. The team is building the education systems of the future and encourages any collaborations to “enable playful education for everyone”.

The first project they are working on is an online multiplayer ‘Language Learning Game’. This enables a new gamified experience for language learning and opens the door to new opportunities on a global scale.

What is Aedou?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD6HKOkjddo

Aedou – a new way of learning languages [game teaser] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD6HKOkjddo)

Aedou – “Realm of Languages” is an engaging, social & collaborative multiplayer 3D-game for learning languages. Similarly to traveling in a foreign country, only that you’re constantly supported while exploring and progressing at your own pace.

All content is manageable, adapting to your personal proficiency. You learn through immersing yourself in your language of choice – hearing, reading, and speaking in a contextualized environment with other players, which are also possible tandems for practice. Aedou’s main mechanic is the active use of language, so in order to progress in the game and narrative, you need to get better at that.

Aedou is a free-to-play learning experience with optional blockchain features. Educhainment thinks this is essential to keep the entry barriers as low as possible and to provide sensible onboarding to Cardano.

Most blockchain games and NFTs are highly disliked in the general gamers’ community, and they raise valid points. That’s why Educhainment wants to leave the choice to use blockchain functionalities with the users.

Language Worlds

Each language has its own world, which is built, inhabited and governed by a DAO consisting of L1-speakers, language professionals and high-level players.

This is made possible through distributed & modularized creation processes. Which allows you to contribute what you love and what you are best at, and the resulting world is a collective effort.

Educhainment is building the most intuitive level editor that splits the creation process into small parts and removes most of the complexity of creating a level for the world. Enabling everyone to contribute.

This is done through ProtonGraph, an existing Free and Open-Source Software tool (FOSS) for non-destructive procedural 3D modeling, which they are extending and refactoring with a creator who is on their team.

Blockchain Features

To unlock the blockchain features, you need to join one of the DAOs which gets accredited through a verifiable credential on Atala PRISM DIDs. The member record is built through emerging trust, meaning DAO-members verify each other in a personal conversation, eliminating a need for KYC.

This protects the game against bots exploiting the play-to-earn functionalities while not relying on countries to adopt SSI and providing their own trust registry.

All revenue streams of Aedou get exchanged to ADA and redistributed to a treasury. Meaningful contribution, ranging from simply learning to building high-quality levels, is incentivized through their own Native Token, which can be burned to receive your fair share of the treasury in ADA.

In-game items can be minted into NFTs, and there is a credential system for reputation and education, so you can prove your language proficiency and progress outside the game. This enables them to give free in-game land for reputable DAO-members. Members can use it to build upon or link to their real-life products and services.

Buying land is impossible to prevent speculation, but it is possible to rent limited virtual space, providing more value to the players and Aedou.

Why did Mike start Aedou?

“I kickstarted the development of Aedou through Educhainment, a collective that is building open source tools and game-based learning applications. I was always the main driving force behind Aedou, managing the general development & funding process, creating concepts, talking to potential partners and researching game-based learning and possibilities of Plutus and PRISM. Likewise, I am mainly responsible for the music/sound of Aedou as I am a musician and cultural scientist. And as a lifelong gamer, I was always fascinated by the potential of games for learning.

It was not really a conscious decision, but there was a point where I got too deep into the project to turn around and leave it to someone else, so it was not my active wish to take this role, and actually I try to give a lot of responsibilities to the team members. But someone has to do the job, and I have the strongest intrinsic motivation to do it.” – Mike Dietrich

How Aedou got started?

“After getting into Crypto at the end of 2020, and instantly falling in love with Cardano, I wanted to tell a friend about the amazing space, and he started telling me about a dream he had where he learned a language in an open world game. It immediately clicked and thoughts around the details started sprouting out of my head, so I started to develop the basic concept together with him about 14 months ago, but he is no longer actively engaged in Aedou as he has other things to attend to in life.

After some months of thought and lurking in Catalyst, I finally applied for Catalyst Fund 6 and barely got funded on the first try in the Atala PRISM mass adoption challenge to build out an initial proof of concept. This was really lucky as 10 other projects had more votes, but also wanted more budget than what was left in that category, so we got it.

This was also made possible through the amazing Catalyst people and resources, which is unique. Where else can you apply to, no matter where you are from, and get a chance to fulfill your heart projects?” – Mike Dietrich

Challenges along the way

“There are no proven ways to successfully build on emerging technologies like blockchains. But distributed ownership & creation with inclusive access are definitely big challenges that are being tackled by Cardano.” – Mike Dietrich

Why Cardano?

“Cardano was the only thing that seriously gave me hope that we might be able to tackle humanities challenges and have positive outcomes, as most legacy systems are not inclusive, capable and adaptive enough. They do not change the problems at their own doors fast enough, and do not care too much for global problems or for so-called “developing countries”, which only means that the “developed countries” have stopped developing.

Cardano’s vision resonates deeply with me, and the vision is also strong in the huge community. Collaboration over competition!

Of course, technical advantages like the scalable modular design, eUTXO-model, and academical rigour in the protocol design decisions are very nice and important to have, AND having our own growth engine named Catalyst, so the choice was really obvious.” – Mike Dietrich

How does Aedou connect to the Sustainable Development Goals?

Educhainment and their gamified learning experience through Aedou has a strong connection to the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs. Aedou fulfills nearly all subgoals of SDG 4, Quality Education as this is their main focus. To give access to innovative, inclusive and high-quality learning materials by building a self-sustaining ecosystem of sharing and learning.

There is also a significant amount of overlapping subgoals in SDGs 5 Gender Equality, 8 Decent Work & Economic Growth, 9 Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, and 10 Reducing Inequality.

They are building distributed infrastructure for education and communication within the sharing economy that can provide an anonymous and safe space to learn, work, connect, and play with a global community.

News/Updates

The Educhainment team recently finished the Catalyst Boost Camp. Which is an accelerator and mentorship program for Project Catalyst-funded projects.

Educhainment are currently looking to scale the team and their efforts through new partnerships.

The next milestones are finishing their own playground to test levels and onboarding people into the discord. The discord will be central to the distributed development of the game’s narrative and content.

Aedou needs YOUR help to actually build Aedou!

There are lots of ways to contribute. You can help to build this game by joining the discord and contributing towards the discussion for the game in various languages!

https://discord.gg/V7AjUyZHfa

You can also email the team at: educhainment@pm.me

Multilingual Hub

Also, the Educhainment team is building a product called Mulca.

Mulca is a multilingual info hub for everything Cardano. The goal is for it to connect the fragmented Cardano space with existing projects and initiatives according to their supported languages, to strengthen communication and connection for all languages in the Cardano community.

Join the growing discord to learn more and participate in Mulca:

https://discord.gg/mywruD4E7p