8D World aims to teach English language through gaming
Mass High Tech, May 29, 2009
Woburn-based gaming startup 8D World Inc. had them all fooled.
With Ensemble Studios founder Rick Goodman on the management team, and a website displaying fantastical scenes and Chinese-language characters, stealthy 8D World last year looked like Age of Empires for the Asian market. Turns out, they’re teaching English as a foreign language — with a beta product launched this month.
“We’re deceptive, shall we say,” quipped founder Alex Wang, who conceived the idea while heading up sales in the Asia Pacific region for Burlington-based Emptoris Inc.
The 8D World product is a fantastical online virtual world called Wiz World, designed to let players interact in spoken English with computer-generated characters that correct their word choice and pronunciation. With Wiz World, Wang hopes to find a market in Asia for a product developed using Boston’s unique mix of expertise in gaming, artificial intelligence and education.
Wiz World’s “language robots” are backed with language recognition and pronunciation assessment technologies developed by Daben Liu, formerly a senior scientist on translation projects at BBN Technologies. The company’s creative content director, Jodie Waldesbuhl, is a former Brookline Public Schools teacher who has consulted on English language acquisition projects on both sides of the Pacific
