I want to upvote this a dozen more times. I've always thought MMOs could "hack" the brain into doing all sorts of cool, productive things.
Somebody needs to create an MMO for language learning. Instead of "go kill 12 dragons" the questgiver would say "matar a 12 dragones" or "matar a 12 dragones verdes" or "matar al dragón en la cima de la montaña". The immersion and addiction would have hardcore players speaking 10 languages, I guarantee it.
And I think this could be extended to quantifiable human-necessary tasks, too. Like a mechanical turk, but fun.
Somebody needs to create an MMO for language learning. Instead of "go kill 12 dragons" the questgiver would say "matar a 12 dragones" or "matar a 12 dragones verdes" or "matar al dragón en la cima de la montaña". The immersion and addiction would have hardcore players speaking 10 languages, I guarantee it.
And I think this could be extended to quantifiable human-necessary tasks, too. Like a mechanical turk, but fun.