Hideo Kojima’s Haunting ‘P.T.’ Demo is Being Used To Help Japanese Students Learn English

Hideo Kojima’s haunting demo, P.T., for his cancelled Silent Hills game, is being used to teach English to Japanese students. According to the school’s own blog, students are being asked to provide directions and actions in English so that they can progress in the game.

The legacy of P.T., the infamous single-player horror demo created by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro, remains one of gaming’s greatest “what-ifs”. The brief demo shook the internet on launch after its surprise release on the PlayStation 4 with little to no marketing.

As players would complete the dread-inducing experience, only then would they discover that they had played a demo for an upcoming Silent Hill game starring The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus. The game would be cancelled shortly afterwards, following an explosive falling out between Hideo Kojima and gaming studio Konami, and P.T. would shortly be delisted from the PlayStation store.

Well, now the game has found a new, surprising life as a teaching tool to help elementary students in Japan learn English.

That’s right, the game with the aborted sink fetus that talks about being brutally murdered by its dad is being used as a teaching aid.

Per Automaton, the Niigata Prefecture’s Tsunan Secondary School has recently started using P.T in a fifth-year class, which would be around the tenth or eleventh year in high school here in Australia, as a tool to teach the kids English.

The teacher of the class will play through the entirety of P.T. in English, including dialogue and menu text. During certain sections, the teacher will pause the demo to ask students for directions, requiring them to answer in English with phrases like “walk around the room” or “answer the phone”. So, not only are the kids learning English, they’re also learning some solid speedrun strats at the same time.

As the school’s own translated blog would acknowledge, while the demo of the game did scare the students a few times with its jumpscares, it would argue that the class is “an atmosphere that was a mixture of tension and fun” as the students learn a new language.

While P.T.’s legacy will always remain one of missed potential, it’s great to see it live on in new and unique ways. After being delisted, it remains a massive influence on gaming and horror, with elements inspiring the likes of Layers of Fear and Resident Evil 7. Even Kojima himself can’t help but return to its potential, hinting at a similar experience with his upcoming game, OD, which is drawing many comparisons to the now-obscure demo.

Here’s hoping we’ll get to play it all the way through someday very soon.