Guild Wars had the feature of allowing to set a secondary language. This would translate all game text from the main language into the secondary one in real time as long as you hold the given key down. This meant that at any point, you didn't need to fetch a dictionary or translate a word, wasting time and immersion. I'm so sad I haven't found any other game with this feature.

I'm trying to play games with another language, and while sometimes it's ok, other times you really need to know the language to understand how understand mechanics that are introduced into the game. City Skylines was a super tough game to play in a learning language, but it would have been a nice learning exercise if I had the above feature.

This is really neat feature, I wish all games have such functionality (especially RPGs!)

The only reason why I speak English is because I spent my teen years flaming strangers on Slashdot, you insensitive clod.

A beowulf cluster of Natalie Portmans eating some hot grits, you say?

I always like reading about, and comments from, ESL people who learned basically Internet English.

Subtly different to UK and USA English but comprehensible by all.

Subtly different how?

I'm pretty sure even a casual observer could tell I'm not a native speaker given a sufficiently large sample of my writings. GP is right, the correct thing to do is to just embrace that I'll never be as fluent, as natural in English as I am in Italian.

Learning English at a relatively young age allowed me to talk to people literally across the ocean. This very conversation we're having right now would have been impossible otherwise.

I'm not upset in the slightest. I count my blessings.

Internet English has different "regional variety" than real life, for example I have litterally never heard "grok" in real life but I read it here fairly often.

"Grok" is not seen very much on the Internet outside of hacker/sci-fi fan circles. And it feels like using it in SF circles is very much marking you as An Old - it comes from Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land", which is not a book that has aged well.

The difference isn't all that subtle. Uk and usa english have regional differences in their english that goes beyond putting the 'u' in colour.

Emphasis on streams of thinking and constructing sentences in ways that make sense to locals, is different to the formal-ish and almost toneless communication we do online.

Internet communication flattens out cultural shortcuts and cultural deepening you can do with fellow speakers in the same nation and locale.

Everything has to be expanded out so that you can 'see all the moving parts', whereas local english can be a lot more intuitive and cultural.

I'm trying something similar with Japanese via Ghost of Tsushima (finally started playing it this month). I've lived in Japan 10+ years, only speak conversational Japanese....so far I don't think I've absorbed any linguistic improvements from using the game. I might just need more time with this style of immersion.

Totally this.

I was never stressed out in terms of English language (I'm from Poland) because I've rarely (never) switched game languages to any other language than English.

When I was ~10 years old I've played through whole Final Fantasy 8 which I was obsessed at the time thanks to my older brother with a PAPER dictionary on the desk (I was translating stuff that I didn't understand) and I think that was the most effective way and time when I've learned most of the English language in my life.

Now I'm trying to encourage slowly my kids and I switch game languages they play from time to time.

That's a neat story! I've read that there is a developmental change that happens in the brain around age 11 that has the effect of "switching off" a child's ability to simply absorb a new language. To the extent that this is true, it is so great that -- from your experience -- videos games could provide enough of an immersive experience for you to rapidly and enduringly acquire a new language. Hope your kids take to it as well!