"B, D and G—'Buh', 'Duh' and 'Guh'—are not found in the Na'vi language, and neither is 'Sh', or 'Shuh', nor 'Ch', 'Chuh'," Paul tells me. "These are not random exclusions. These are classes of sounds that are [purposefully] excluded from the language." These sounds are common in Western languages, so excluding them instantly makes the speech pattern sound foreign to audiences in relevant territories, like the US and UK.We discuss more ins-and-outs of language creation, covering phonotactic constraints, syntax, and a whole bunch of beyond-me details that I occasionally "mmhmm" at so as to make clear the Skype connection's not dropped. It's all really interesting stuff, relayed with palpable passion by Paul, but perhaps not so relevant to the specific reason I'm calling: To learn how this stuff filters into video games, and whether or not it's ever done well."Spoken language is the basic property of every human being, your inheritance. But that's not true of written language. Written language is really a product of culture." — Paul Frommer
Plenty of games do go down a more linguistically authentic route when coming up with their languages. For example, Far Cry Primal's developers brought in a pair of linguists—Andrew Byrd and his wife Brenna, who we interviewed here—to help develop a Proto-Indo-European language for their game. In that case, rather than developing a new, alien language, the linguists were tasked with recreating, to the best of their abilities, a dead language. Paul is into that concept, albeit with a caveat: "That process of trying to reconstruct a language, to go back in time is a valid one. Although to go back that far, to cave man times, you know, tens of thousands of years, that's going to be largely fanciful I think."Knowing the amount of work that goes into creating a realistic alien language for a video game (or anything else), it's no wonder that many developers choose to take the easy way out. The universal translator, the substitution cipher language or just having everyone speak English: These are much more attractive options for a studio that doesn't want to bog itself down in unnecessary minutia.But really, will the average gamer be able to tell the difference between a cheap knock off and the real McCoy when it comes to a newly constructed language?"There's always going to be a very small but ardent and vocal group of fans who will examine everything with a fine-toothed comb. Then you've really got to make something that will stand up to scrutiny." — Paul Frommer
"The problem with an English substitution cipher is that it's going to match the number of letters and the spacing of English so precisely that someone is going to say, 'That looks awfully like the English sentence.' If you want to come up with something in a written form that's going to be convincing, you have to be more imaginative than simply a letter-to-letter cipher. One thing I thought of, off the top of my head, is to simply write a sentence backwards, or maybe have the direction of writing be right to left, rather than left to right. Or to vary the order of words in an unpredictable way."Ultimately, like many aspects of game design, it's a trade-off. If you want a realistic language that stands up to scrutiny, you're going to have to put in time and money. If you want your language to be translatable, to be a game within your game, then you're going to have to sacrifice some of its authenticity.The developers Far Cry Primal chose to craft something realistic. It's worth the trade-off here, sacrificing the potential enjoyment that the player gets from solving the language puzzle to create a more believable game world. Conversely, the more arcade-y ReCore wouldn't benefit from the same treatment nearly as much. After all, it's hard to get nitpicky about a language in a world where the main character has rocket boots and some enemies are chronically weak to the color blue.Follow Ian on Twitter."You have to be more imaginative than simply a letter-to-letter cipher. Write a sentence backwards, or maybe have the direction of writing be right to left, rather than left to right." — Paul Frommer