Scrutinizing Grammatical Challenges within Indonesian-developed Mobile Game: ‘Code Atma’

The use of another language can cause barriers to transferring ideas from one language to another, such as grammatical challenges. It happens when the structures for delivering information are different within languages. Grammatical challenges can also occur for Indonesian EFL users. To combat this, various media are continuously developed to assist with language learning and give exposure to the English language in use. Games are an example of excellent learning sources that provide texts, descriptions, and stories. However, games might not be developed by natives and could potentially contain errors. Yet,

The use of another language can cause barriers to transferring ideas from one language to another, such as grammatical challenges. It happens when the structures for delivering information are different within languages. Grammatical challenges can also occur for Indonesian EFL users. To combat this, various media are continuously developed to assist with language learning and give exposure to the English language in use. Games are an example of excellent learning sources that provide texts, descriptions, and stories. However, games might not be developed by natives and could potentially contain errors. Yet, previous research rarely conducted grammatical error analysis on games. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the grammatical challenges within the Code Atma game. This study used document analysis to evaluate the grammatical accuracy of the passages in Code Atma. The findings showed that there were 630 grammatical errors, with verb errors accounting for the highest percentage and incomplete sentences for the lowest. is-selection was the type with the highest number of errors, while blends were the lowest. The implications of this study are the improvement of the game's grammatical aspect, the use of games as EFL learning sources, and the identification of grammatical errors using error analysis.

Keywords:
code atma game; error analysis; grammatical challenges; mobile game

INTRODUCTION
Grammar is essential in a language as it regulates the components of language to achieve effectiveness in communication. Different language possesses different grammar. Some grammar rules from different languages can be very similar in certain aspects, but very different in the others (Rana, Owaidh, & Harbi, 2019). This may lead to confusions and challenges in transferring the message from one language to another (Catford, 1965). Non-native speakers sometimes do literal translation to the target language, which may cause grammatical errors (Aini, 2018;Heryanti, Sucipto, & Makmur, 2017). Previous studies have revealed the influence of L1 grammatical rules on the grammatical errors in L2 through grammatical error analysis (Khumphee & Yodkamlue, 2017;Heryanti et al., 2017;Rana et al., 2019).
The study on linguistics also often covers the study on grammar use, including grammatical challenges. Khumphee and Yodkamlue (2017) argue that grammatical challenges in form of errors cannot be avoided, at least at the early stages of target language use. In Indonesian context, this case of grammatical error towards English language may be more common than other countries with English as their second language, as English is not often as often. As the Indonesian people are not used to using English, their grammatical accuracy in English may be lower than in Indonesian. It is even more challenging as the root of English language and Indonesian language are different (Aini, 2018), leading to significant grammatical differences. The English as Foreign Language (EFL) users may face difficulties and make more grammatical errors as they lack the grammatical fluency, which lets the language users to adjust their grammatical knowledge based on the context of use (Sakaguchi, Napoles, Post, & Tetreault, 2016). Therefore, transferring information to the target language can still be difficult, that even a big platform that relies heavily on the texts in English such as games can make grammatical errors.
Many types of games provide stories, whether in form of plots of the game or character introduction, to engage the players. Some game types, such as visual novels, even rely mainly on the playable stories. These types of game can be learning LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 12 No. 2 2022 sources for language learners (Hidayat, Imani, & Ma'arif, 2021), as they provide engagement and entertainment for the students. In addition, they are great sources of actual use of language examples for the students but in an attractive form (Jabali, Supriyono, & Nugraheni, 2020;Kurniawan, Jamaludin, & Heryana, 2020). As a platform that relies heavily on texts, it is crucial for the games to reduce grammatical errors in the stories and descriptions. Even if those games are not intended for language learning, reducing grammatical errors can help avoiding possible confusions for the players (Heryanti et al., 2017). Though previous studies have revealed the use of game as the source of target language and investigated the grammatical errors in texts (Amalo, Agusalim, & Murdaningtyas, 2017;Atashian & Al-Bahri, 2018;Hidayat et al., 2021;Kumala, Aimah, & Ifadah, 2018;Kusumawati, 2020;Qamariah, Sri Wahyuni, & Meliana, 2020), to the best of the researchers' knowledge, they rarely conducted grammatical error analysis on games, especially those made by non-native developers. Therefore, this study intended to conduct grammatical error analysis on an Indonesian-developed game, Code Atma. The research question for this study is "What are the common types of grammatical errors in the texts from Code Atma Game?" This study may promote the improvement of English language usages within games, whether for entertainment or language learning media and the use of games to provide actual examples of English language in use.
Languages have sets of rules to govern their use and delivery. Different languages often have different grammatical rules, and they sometimes are affected by different roots of the languages (Aini, 2018). Therefore, the grammar of one language may be different from the grammar for another language. The grammatical rules are the framework of a language that rule the form, meaning, and usage (Hsu, 2013). They also regulate the structures, punctuations, word choices, and spellings, among other aspects (Din & Ghani, 2019). They are important for communication, especially in order to avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding. People use grammar in spoken and writing contexts to communicate with others and it helps the users to adjust based on the messages and occasions . The use of grammar in spoken language may not be as emphasized as in writing, as in writing, people LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 12 No. 2 2022 need to carefully mind the grammar use and syntactic accuracy (Fithriani, 2020;Marzulina et al., 2019;Mukminin et al., 2019).
The differences in grammatical rules from one language to another may contribute to the challenges in mastering the grammar of the target language. For example, Bahasa Indonesia and English have different sets of sounds and spelling rules. This difference causes the users from each language to have the difficulties in pronouncing and spelling the words (Fadda, 2012). Another example, in Bahasa Indonesia, the plurality of words does not influence the forms of the verbs or predicates, unlike in English. This concord or subject-verb agreement may be another challenge for EFL learners, especially if they do not have this type of rule in their native language (Fadda, 2012). Aside from the plurality and verb form, another example related to the verb form is tenses. Some languages may not change the verb from due to the temporal influence, like Bahasa Indonesia. This may be a challenge, as the absence of temporal influence may cause confusions in distinguishing different tenses and therefore cause grammatical inaccuracy (Atashian & Al-Bahri, 2018). Not only the form and structure, the grammatical changes also influence the meaning of sounds or words, so target language users need to be wary of the word choices and use the proper vocabulary (Olsen, 1994).
Indeed, their native language may influence the use EFL users, and may be one of the factors (Watcharapunyawong & Usaha, 2013) that causes challenges in learning and applying a new language.
The challenges in transferring the grammar to one language to another may lead to grammatical errors. The error in this case is the alteration from the proper grammar (Najla & Fatimah, 2020), that shows the EFL learners' language proficiencies. Experts make distinctions between grammatical errors and mistakes, where mistakes refer to the 'slips' that are not systematic (Brown, 2000). Even native speakers can make grammatical mistakes. However, errors refer to the use of incorrect grammatical forms, meanings, and usages (Hsu, 2013), which can be systematic or repeated. The differences in the grammar from the native language can make foreign language learner to make grammatical errors (Derrick,  ignorance, incomplete rule application, and false concepts. Brown (2000) argues that there are two sources of errors, including interlingual the native language interference (interlingual error) and the lack of target language proficiencies as influenced by the difficulty of the grammar (intralingual transfer). To improve grammar use, language learners need to know the sources of their grammatical errors and evaluate their grammatical errors.
One way to identify the errors in a written or spoken text is to conduct a grammatical error analysis. An error analysis (EA) is a way that helps students or researchers in identifying, grouping, and elaborating the errors within certain sources (Corder, 1967;Khumphee & Yodkamlue, 2017;Heryanti et al., 2017). In case of grammatical error analysis. In case of grammatical error analysis, it collects the improper use of language forms and classify them (Crystal, 2018). This grammatical error analysis can be a helpful tool to show the language learners' knowledge of their target language, so they can evaluate their language learning process (Corder, 1967;Fithriani, 2020;Promsupa, Varasarin, & Brudhiprabha, 2017). For example, if the language learners have higher error in their verb use compared to their preposition use, the lesson can focus more in improving their verb use for a more effective learning process. The grammatical error analysis may focus on several language aspects, including in form of the wrong language forms, meanings, and uses (Hsu, 2013;Kumala et al., 2018;Qamariah et al., 2020).
There are several perspectives regarding the target aspects of grammatical error analysis. For instance, James (1998)  grammatical errors, including tenses, concords, apostrophes, adverbs, passive voice, pronouns, and punctuations. Taşçi and Aksu Ataç (2018) shared the errors regarding the incorrect use of parts of speech. Others argued more error components, including 11 (Qamariah et al., 2020), 12 (Heryanti et al., 2017), 26 (Khumphee & Yodkamlue, 2017), to 32 (Promsupa et al., 2017) components of grammatical errors for English language. They revolve in similar categories, including the use of parts of speech, punctuations, proper words to convey certain meanings, tenses, inclusion or omission or certain morphemes or verbs, concord, and noun plurality among many other varieties.
Previous studies have conducted grammatical error analysis to reveal and evaluate the use or English as foreign language (EFL). Fithriani (2020) shared the grammatical error analysis conducted on social study and mathematics and natural science students' writing, and showed that MNS students created more errors than SS students, and that omission was the highest type of error done by the students. similarly, Kumala et al. (2018) revealed the results of grammatical error analysis and found that omission was the highest type of grammatical error. Khumphee and Yodkamlue (2017) found 4.909 errors and shared 26 found types of grammatical errors, with punctuation as the overall highest type of error found and noun plurality as the highest type of grammatical error caused by L1 influence.
Similarly, Promsupa et al. (2017) found 32 sub-types of grammatical errors under morphological and syntactical error types and found that noun plurality was the highest sub-type of grammatical error. To improve grammar accuracy, a game can be an engaging media to provide exposure for English grammar in use. Amalo et al. (2017) shared that games, especially visual novel games can be used to enhance language knowledge and even developed the game for English learners. Kusumawati (2020) shared that a game could help the students' understanding on provided stories within the game, but found that subtitles were ineffective in improving their vocabulary. Games can be an effective tool to introduce language use of the target language while engaging them; however, the grammatical error analysis on games had not been greatly explored yet, perhaps as they were expected

METHOD
This research employed qualitative research with document analysis. Document analysis allowed the use texts as the data source (Creswell, 2012;Reger & Kincaid, 2021). The data were gathered from the passages within Code Atma game. Code Atma is a turn-based RPG game that provides stories as the context while the players progressing in the game. In this research, the passages are limited to: the chapter stories, the compendium (Atma/character) stories, the skill descriptions, the lore, and the announcements. Therefore, this study used purposive sampling to gather the data (Ary, Jacobs, Sorensen, & Razavieh, 2010) to select the sources from those categories. There were seven chapters, two compendium stories, Atma lore and skill descriptions from 27 Atma, and 22 announcement and notice texts used in this study. The study was conducted on January to February 2022.
This research used a structured observation sheet as the instrument to gather the data. The instrument was based on the theories by Fithriani (2020) resulting in 11 items, including: parts of speech, incomplete sentence, and punctuation, and 5 types of error, including omission, over inclusion, missselection, miss-ordering, and blends. To analyze the data, the researcher first read through the story chapters, compendiums, skill descriptions, and announcements.
During reading the texts, the researcher reviewed the sentences to assess the grammatical accuracy for each sentence and the components based on the instrument. As the texts were still in form of digital corpus within the game, the researcher transcribed the passages and highlighted the found grammatical errors to code them and record the grammatical inaccuracies into the instrument. Then, the researcher used the items in the instrument (rubric) to group the data into their respective grammatical error categories. To provide further validity, the researcher LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 12 No. 2 2022 used Grammarly application and assigned a proof-reader. The results then were presented in groups based on the categories using percentages.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
This study tried to evaluate the grammatical challenges experienced by an Indonesian-made RPG mobile game: Code Atma. The grammatical challenges might occur within its stories, instructions, descriptions, and announcements.  (Table 1). The number of errors might seem to be gradually larger, but the lengths of the text from each category also got longer.
Among those text sources, the verb form had the highest number of errors.
The number of errors might seem to be gradually larger, but the lengths of the text from each category also got longer. Though, it is worth to note that the errors in the main stories were significantly lower than in Compendium stories, with exception in main story's Chapter 7. Among those text sources, the verb form was the element with the highest number of errors, with more than half number of errors (>50%) from each text category. This is in line with Fithriani (2020), Heryanti et al. regarding the noun is in accordance with Fithriani (2020), Khumphee and Yodkamlue (2017), and Promsupa et al. (2017), that noun errors occur quite several times. The results regarding conjunction errors are in line with Fithriani (2020), but in contrast to Khumphee and Yodkamlue (2017). Other elements had very low errors (<10%) and some elements, such as pronoun, preposition, adjective, adverb, word choice, and dependent clause, did not even have any error in several text sources.
The dependent clause category (incomplete sentence) even only occurred once. The results regarding the low occurrences of preposition and word choice are in contrast to Heryanti et al. (2017), Promsupa et al. (2017), and Rana et al. (2019), while the findings regarding the low occurrences of pronoun and adverb are in contrast to (Atashian and Al-Bahri (2018). The low adjective and incomplete sentence errors are in line with Khumphee and Yodkamlue (2017).  The results in Table 1 show the grammatical challenges within the passages found in Code Atma game. The errors within the found eleven elements could be categorized into five types of errors, in accordance to Hikmah (2020), James (1998), and Kumala et al. (2018). Those types are: omission, over-inclusion, blend, incorrect selection, and inaccurate placement. The 630 errors were categorized into those five categories, as presented in Table 2. When the researcher identified the errors in the text, the researcher also recorded in what way the grammatical errors were considered inaccurate. The errors then were grouped into five categories, as presented in Table 2 (2020) and Kumala et al. (2018) that share over-inclusion appeared quite often. However, the low appearances of mis-ordering and blends are in line with Fithriani (2020).

Figure 1. Noun and Verb Errors (announcement)
In most cases, the errors occurred within one sentence. In Figure 1, the errors regarding the concord in one sentence occurred, and it included the errors for verb and noun elements. The determiner every is followed by a singular form of noun (Azar & Hagen, 2016), so the floors that follows it is wrong. The error occurred from the extra 's' that indicated plural, so the error was categorized into over-  However, in Figure 2., in the noun phrase Drona heart, it lacks possessive pronoun ('s) that indicates the heart belongs to Drona. As the error is caused by the lack of pronoun, it is categorized into omission (Kumala et al., 2018). All determiner errors in Code Atma game fell into omission category. An example for determiner error is presented in Figure 3. To indicate singular noun, article a/an is often precedes the phrase (Heryanti et al., 2017;Qamariah et al., 2020;Rana et al., 2019).  sentence has an error due to the lack of conjunction and to connect the noun phrases (Fithriani, 2020). There should be a conjunction after the comma and before the pitch black eyes phrase. In addition, the pre-modifier for eyes, pitch black needs a hyphen to connect 'pitch' and 'black' (Azar & Hagen, 2016). As this sentence lacks conjunction and and a hyphen, the errors are included in omission category, in accordance to Kumala et al. (2018).

Figure 5. Preposition Error (main story-Chapter 7)
The occurrences of preposition error were rather low in all text sources. Figure 5 shows an example of preposition error from the main story. The chunk they're still prison does not make sense, as it lacks a preposition in to indicate location (Azar & Hagen, 2016), so it becomes 'they're still in prison'. As the sentence lacks the preposition, the error is categorized as omission (James, 1998). Figure 6. Adjective Error (skill description) Figure 6 shows another error found in Code Atma game, specifically the adjective element. The phrase the foe targeted is supposed to be a noun phrase, in accordance to Wright and Hope (1996). However, the placement of the adjective targeted is mis-located, as it needs to precede the noun foe (Andriani, Noviani Bram, 2021). Therefore, that phrase is considered as an error and the type of error is mis-location (Fithriani, 2020) due to the misplacement of the adjective. Over-inclusion was one of the types of error with low appearances in most of the text sources, along with mis-location. One example of over-inclusion is an adverb error, as shown in Figure 7. In this case, the adverb back followed the verb come, and it was a proper placement (Azar & Hagen, 2016). However, the adverb back was repeated, which was abundant (Heryanti et al., 2017). Therefore, it was classified as an error, and it went to over-inclusion category (James, 1998), as the adverb was repeated. The next error is regarding the word choices. This error only occurred less than ten times in the observed text sources. Figure 8 is an example of word choice error. In this case, the word yonders is an error, as its placement and meaning in the sentence do not link with the rest of the words in the sentence. According to Oxford Learner's Dictionaries, the word yonder is defined as 'over there' (www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com, accessed in February 2022). It is grammatically and semantically inaccurate to be placed in this sentence after the subject to replace the predicate. The writer might want to use the word wanders, which could make sense. Therefore, this sentence has a word choice error (Heryanti et al., 2017), and the error belongs to the mis-selection category (Fithriani, 2020) The last error is dependent clause or incomplete sentence error. This type of error occurred once in the game. As presented in Figure 9, the clause 'just when she was finally feeling free and happy' is not a complete sentence, yet, because the conjunction just when is a subordinating conjunction that requires an independent clause to complete it, in line with Khumphee and Yodkamlue (2017). As this sentence lacks an independent clause, the error is categorized as omission error, as stated by James (1998).
The researcher evaluated the grammatical challenges within an Indonesiandeveloped game, Code Atma. This game is an excellent example for promoting Indonesian culture and folklore into an entertaining format using English language, which allows broader target users. The researcher found 630 grammatical errors within the game text sources, including the announcements, Lore, skill descriptions, Compendium, and main stories. The errors mostly were in form of verb errors, along with other errors in a smaller number of occurrences regarding the noun, conjunction, adverb, punctuation, determiner, pronoun, preposition, adjective, word choice, and dependent clause (Heryanti et al., 2017;Khumphee & Yodkamlue, 2017;Promsupa et al., 2017;Rana et al., 2019). Those errors were categorized into omission and mis-selection, as the types with the most errors, along with misodering, over-inclusion, and blend (Fithriani, 2020;James, 1998;Kumala et al., 2018). Though the game might have quite some errors, it is a good start to take revolutionize Indonesian tales and stories into an entertaining platform with English language, which can be enjoyed by international users. In addition, it can also be a fun learning media for English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners to be exposed with English language from which they can learn (Amalo et al., 2017;Hidayat et al., 2021;Kusumawati, 2020).
LET: Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching Journal Vol. 12 No. 2 2022

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
This study investigated the grammatical challenges within an Indonesiandeveloped idle game, Code Atma. 630 grammatical errors were found within the text sources in the game, including in the announcement, Lore, skill description, Compendium, and main story texts. The verb errors occurred the most, more than half of the number of errors, and followed by the errors regarding the noun, conjunction, adverb, punctuation, determiner, pronoun, preposition, adjective, word choice, and incomplete sentence. Those errors were categorized into five types of errors, with omission and mis-selection as the types with the most errors, along with mis-odering, over-inclusion, and blend with the least number of errors. This game is an excellent example for promoting Indonesian culture into an entertaining game using English language, which can be enjoyed by international users. The implications of this study are for the improvements of the game's grammatical aspect in their texts, for the EFL students and teachers to utilize games, such as Code Atma, as a learning media to get English language in use exposure from which they can learn, and for them to observe and identify the grammatical errors using error analysis. This study is still limited from the data source and validity perspectives.
Further researchers are suggested to find more convincing ways to validate the results and expand the data sources.