The game fills a hole for this type of instruction; There are not many programs that teach basic failures. “Many products that were on the market were addressed to someone who already knew the failures, and we have really seen the opportunity to bring them more to the masses,” explains Edwin Bodge, group product manager in the Duolingo chess team.
Another attraction for the creation of the chess program is that failures take a long time to master, which benefits people from Duolingo who build a long -term business but also the user, who works on a long -term objective that takes patience and thought.
A few steps
To create the game, Duolingo hired people with a range of experiences to work on the format. For example, when Bodge joined the team, he said he knew how the pieces moved and that’s it. The company also has someone in the staff who takes their son to chess tournaments every weekend.
The program is also suitable for individuals at an intermediate level. “If you have previous chess experience, you can test in a later part of the course,” he said. “But for the most part, we really left after making the failures much more accessible to people who do not know or barely.”
Fishman agrees. Although the Duolingo application “is ideal for arouse interest and integrate the fundamental principles of failures, it does not replace structured learning or the richness of learning by a teacher,” he said. “An application can highlight simple rules and tactics, but it does not have personalized comments and motivation that come from a coach.”
Although I would like to consider becoming more serious about failures in the future, for the moment the application has played chess to me every day. I first play a few lessons and I am surprised at the speed with which I go through the levels. Then I play a few games. It’s a nice break in scrolling social media, and it takes care of my mind when I am in a car collection line while waiting for children. Unlike linguistic learning modules, I don’t have to read or write. I can just focus on the parts.
Oscar is a painful loser when I take his queen, and it’s fun to watch him frustrate. It is clearly scheduled to be a good competitor, and it never lets me win. The program knows my familiarity with the game and how to challenge me without overwhelming me.
“When you start for the first time, Oscar will go easily for you,” explains Sammi Siegel, software engineer for the Duolingo chess team. “At the beginning, you need an easier experience and more indications. As you win, the program will reduce you in difficulty, so you will get slightly more difficult and more difficult robots, and then, if you lose, we are writing you to be easier.”
In addition to maintaining my Duolingo sequence and working through chess levels, my personal goal is to increase my Elo score, a global classification system used to compare chess players. It helps me to understand where I am in relation to the more experienced players or if I decide to play on another online platform or in real life.
“The program tries to calibrate where you are and push yourself to a higher Elo note once you are ready for this,” says Siegel. A level of 1,500 is considered intermediary, and this is where the Duolingo game ends. I hang around 600 years old, but I gain ground every day.
My children also started playing chess on the application, and we have fun sending screenshots of the Elo scores on the other. The only drawback is that the program does not have the possibility of playing in the application against my children or a friend; I can only play Oscar. Bodge acknowledges that the option of competing with other players or friends is a common request and says it is on the team’s radar.
For the moment, I play as much as possible and I learn new strategies every day. This little girl from the 80s who has never found a way to pick up failures is proud that she finally has the range. I want to show my children that you can always learn a new skill, even when life is busy. I would also like to beat them in a few games.
