Playing games in Chinese - a good way to study?

To be honest, studying Chinese is possibly the only way I could justify playing something like this.

The short answer is yes. But how good it is depends on the game.

Having played a variety of RPGs throughout the last weeks, from Chrono Trigger, Sword of Xuanyuan and Planescape: Torment in Chinese, I've come to the conclusion that games are a favorable alternative to books in building reading comprehension skills. In the Japanese-learning community, being able to play games that haven't been translated to English has always been a big motivational factor, but for some reason this doesn't seem to have catched on with people who are learning Chinese. One reason may be the relative dearth of natively produced quality titles, but Chinese learners in general seem less interested in pop culture and more into political or historical material. They may be doing themselves a disservice.

Games have several things going for them that should be interesting for anyone who is seriously learning Chinese:

Brevity

Dialogue in RPGs usually consists of short and concise bits of text delivered in sequence. Older games tend to have more descriptions and exposition, less than a novel but more than a comic would have. The brevity stops you from feeling overwhelmed and lets you focus on dissecting one or two sentences at a time. There is also a certain feeling of accomplishment that comes with figuring out a short bit of text you have been struggling with. 

Repetition

Games inevitably contain a large amount of repetition, whether it's in descriptions or dialogue. This is actually a very good thing, since seeing something repeatedly strengthens your memory imprint of it in your mental lexicon. 

Interactivity

Black Isle, a division of Interplay that went bust back in 2003, produced a string of fantastic CRPGs from 1997 until 2001 that combined pre-rendered isometric graphics with strong plots and gameplay. These games were different from linear console titles like Final Fantasy; in these games saying the wrong thing could get you killed and a high intelligence allowed you to talk your way out of almost anything. It's exactly this quality that makes these games perfect for learning a foreign language. The possibility of angering the person you are talking to and the presence of clues inside the dialog forces you to pay more attention to it.

Though the degree of interactivity varies from game to game, there is always a quality inherent in games where you are making active choices using the language as a tool, as opposed to just passively absorbing. That is a huge step up from reading a book.

Immersion

Games have an audio-visual component to them that creates strong associations and helps you remember words and phrases. In Planescape: Torment, you start out in the Mortuary, a place for disposal of dead bodies where reanimated corpses are used as slave labor. The design is striking; cold gray metal set against moss, rust and crimson red, bodies lying on stone slabs everywhere while lifeless corpses shuffle through the rooms, performing their programmed duties. Through examining your surroundings, you learn the language of death, with its rotting flesh, creaking joints and the bitter smell of chemicals burning through your nostrils. The alien sound of unidentifiable wind instruments drones in the background, pausing only to give way to the clanking of hammers and whispered voices.

This is a feeling that books or comics cannot recreate, an audio-visual experience that ties up with the words and leaves you with a lasting impression of not only the semantic meaning but also the visceral reality of the word's sphere of existence.

What games do you recommend?

I have made a small selection below, sorted after difficulty level from easiest to hardest:

Chrono Trigger (時空之旅)

Level: lower intermediate

Characters: simplified

One-line summary: Back to the Future meets Secret of Mana.

Where to get it:  here. Go down to where it says "下載地址", and make sure you are using IE because otherwise the links won't work. You'll need Winrar to unpack the file, the password for the archive is "www.58840.com". Finally use ZSNES or another SNES emulator to open the .smc file. 

Chrono Trigger is a classic RPG for the SNES that still holds up pretty well today. It is admittedly a game made for 12-year-olds but if you read at the level of a 12-year-old that shouldn't be a problem for you. As the name might suggest, Chrono Trigger features travel through various time periods, which also means that it covers a wide variety of different vocabulary items from guilloutines to hover cars. This is the game I would recommend to people if I were to choose just one, the sheer breadth of the game ensures that there's something in there for everyone regardless of level.

The only catch is that the people who did the fan translation for this have left much of the game untranslated (presumably because of technical issues): menus and names are all in hiragana/katakana. It shouldn't affect your ability to play the game but it might lead to some confusion in the beginning. 

Planescape: Torment (異域鎮魂曲)

Level: advanced intermediate

Characters: traditional

One-line summary: Descartes with battle-axes. 

Where to get it: VeryCD. You will need eMule to download it and it takes a few days. Be patient: it's worth it.

This is a cult CRPG based on the old AD&D rules. It was released back in 1999 to little fanfare and disappointing sales numbers. Later it started attracting a large following on the internet for its dark and pseudo-philosophical storyline. Unlike Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, which focus more on combat, PST is all about detailed descriptions and conversations that can stretch to 10-15 minutes, and sometimes contain some fairly deep (for a game) insights into the nature of life and the universe. 

Good or bad, the translation by the team responsible for the Chinese localization takes few liberties with the original material and mostly follows the English original line by line. The dialog is complex but written in a relatively simple style, which makes the enormous volume of text in the game easier to handle.

Sword of Xuanyuan 5: Clouds of Han (軒轅劍5代 - 外傳：漢之雲)

Level: upper advanced

Characters: traditional

One-line summary: basically a remake of Final Fantasy X set in Ancient China

Where to get it: here (you will need Bittorrent). 

This game is part of a long-running RPG-series produced by Taiwanese company Softstar. All titles in the Sword of Xuanyuan series draw inspiration from Chinese history and mythology, and the story in this installment takes place during the Three Kingdoms period. You play Yan Feng, leader of a band of elite soldiers working for Zhuge Liang during the fourth and last of his failed Northern Expeditions. 

Clouds of Han is not for beginners; the dialogue is written exclusively in an ornate, semi-literary style full of idioms and complex constructions. You will need at least a basic foundation in Classical Chinese and Chinese history to get anything out of this. If you have the necessary chops though, the game is a decent Final Fantasy clone with some beautifully designed locations and menus.