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Which natural language, other than English, will be most beneficial to an aspiring game developer? French, because of the Canadian game industry, or Japanese, maybe? Will AAA studios consider it an important plus point in an employee?

I understand that this is quite an open-ended question, but the FAQ states that it is okay to ask game industry related questions, including trends. Sincere apologies if I'm breaking any guidelines.

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Probably assembly. – Yannbane May 1 '12 at 11:42
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It totally depends on what you want to do, where you want to work. It's mostly useless anyway, since any time you invest learning a language would be better spent learning something really computer-related. And if you happen to "already know it" for other reasons, then, again, this is not an useful question since you can't pick what you "already know". – Lohoris May 1 '12 at 11:44
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Probably C++, to be honest. But, how about picking a market niche you want to explore (like German games) and learning German? A little research will help here. Like if you love anime/manga, learn Japanese and make anime-style games. Translations are always great. – ashes999 May 1 '12 at 14:21
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I edited the question to say "natural language" instead of "human language" as I believe that's more accurate for your question. – Byte56 May 1 '12 at 15:36
"Spoken language" is also a good alternative. – Azaral May 2 '12 at 0:26
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Arabic. It was the fastest growing language on twitter last year (tech users? revolution users?) and the country with the highest per capita GDP is Qatar, which speaks Arabic. So, lots of tech users and lots of money.

Chinese. Very large user base already in place with more growth expected. Fastest growing number of internet users (and already at 500 million).

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Well, languages are relevant in three cases I can think of:

  1. Communication within development team and associated parties during development.

  2. When doing localization of product.

  3. Customer service.

So, I don't know what you really want to do, but any extra languages will help in latter two. My personal view is that knowing chinese will probably get you lots of kudos.

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I want to learn a new language. The question is which will help the most. – ApoorvaJ May 1 '12 at 11:44
Well, that would depend on if you are aiming to work in certain country. Then learn that language. If not, maybe try research if translators are especially in demand for what languages. I have no real data on that. China and Russia are big countries with large market potential. – Toni May 1 '12 at 11:48
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Well the most common languages are English, Chinese, Spanish and German. If you're going to talk to someone that doesn't know at least one of these, then this person probably isn't your boss and you shouldn't bother yourself to talk to it. Your boss will know at least one of these. – Gustavo Maciel May 1 '12 at 12:24

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