What Was Viglo?... the First 4 Times

When I worked in the Philippines, I was learning the local Cebuano language exponentially faster than I learned a foreign language in government schools. I did so by simply writing down words and phrases on a notepad, then trying them in the streets with the natives (who couldn't have been kinder when helping me). Eventually I thought, "Why not recreate that language learning experience with a computer program?"

This became the first incarnation of Viglo, an open world game (like Grand Theft Auto, without the murder and robbery) where you could talk to other players by translating what you wanted to say, then speaking those messages to others. You could even interact with the environment by talking to it (for instance, you would say, "Open the door" in the language you're learning, and the door would open). About three years went into developing this badass idea, and when we finally got to playing it.... I was bored out of my mind!

What a brutal way to learn that I need to test my product with customers. I would love to get those years back!

The Original Viglo

On the Left: "Language Battle." One the right: One of the mini games Viglo had

So we scrapped the project entirely (oof!) and tried a second idea. Viglo became a one on one combat game where you use your language skills to fight your opponent. I tested the game with my then-girlfriend, and she hated it so much that she literally began crying when she saw it! For anyone starting a business, that's a pretty strong indicator that your product isn't going to be well received. So the second attempt at Viglo was abandoned very quickly.

We still wanted to stick with gaming, and so we began developing mini games for language learning. These were actually kinda fun, but coming up with ideas, developing them, testing them, then implementing the changes, made for a development process that was just too damn slow. So Viglo #3 was chucked in the trash can.

I wanted to give Viglo one last attempt (just like I'm saying again right now, haha), and so we decided to go with a video chat service. I won't get into all the variations of video chatting we tried, but we settled with a style where below the live video, you could choose various pictures of environments (maybe the clothing store, an office, rooms in a house, etc...) that would help you role play situations. With this iteration, we started to finally make some sales. But unfortunately not enough, and Viglo finally came to an end after 7 years (though I continued to use it myself to help with my Spanish for almost two years).

In the next post, I'll share the idea that makes me confident enough to end the slumber and try Viglo for the fifth damn time.

The role playing version of Viglo