Turning academic papers into a 2D dating game, dude, you're really a genius.

Academic papers are a truly amazing existence.

Before you open one, you're a graduate student. After you open it, you feel like an illiterate. You know every single word, but when they're put together, it seems like Chinese is no longer your native language.

What's even worse is that there's no way to slack off on this.

When your supervisor says you'll present this paper at the group meeting next week, you have to grit your teeth and plow through those twenty-plus pages of PDF.

By the third page, you start to doubt your own brain. By the eighth page, you start to doubt your supervisor's humanity. By the fifteenth page, you start to question the necessity of this discipline's existence.

Some of my friends say, isn't there AI summarization these days?

Indeed.

But all AI summarization does is compress a pile of boring stuff into a smaller pile of boring stuff. The boredom itself remains unchanged, and you still can't bring yourself to read it.

Recently, I discovered a really cool website for reading papers called Paper2Galgame.

It can turn academic papers into Galgames, those dating simulation games featuring cute 2D girls.

As long as you upload a paper, the cute girls will explain the key points in plain language and then give you multiple-choice questions to test your understanding.

If you answer correctly, the girls will praise you for being smart. If you answer wrong, they'll pout in anger. Anyway, through their interactions and feedback, you'll gradually finish reading the paper.

You know what? This thing actually has something going for it.

I tested it with a paper recently published in a Nature sub - journal.

This paper is about a study called the "Batman Effect": Italian researchers sent a man in a Batman suit into the Milan subway and then observed whether passengers would be more willing to offer their seats to pregnant women.

The result was that with Batman present, the seat - offering rate soared from 37% to 67%.

What kind of crazy experiment is this...

Originally, I wanted to see if this could be a good topic. But the original paper is in English and full of statistical jargon.

So I threw the PDF into Paper2Galgame to see what would happen.

Before long, the system automatically translated the paper into Chinese. Then a 2D girl (I chose Ayachi Nene) started chatting with me:

Senpai~ Today we're going to learn a really interesting study! It's about "Unexpected Events and Pro - social Behavior: The Batman Effect"!

Yeah, she calls you Senpai.

When explaining what "pro - social behavior" is, instead of copying the definition from the paper, she explained it in her own way and tone: "It refers to those voluntary behaviors aimed at helping others, like sharing, cooperating, helping, or comforting others. It's really important for social life!"

When talking about the experiment, she'd first build up the suspense. Sometimes she'd also give you questions with three options to choose from.

If you answer correctly, she'll say "Bingo! Senpai is so great!" If you answer wrong, she'll show a little angry face and then explain it to you.

After going through the whole process, I noticed something:

A paper that I'd usually want to close after just a few seconds, I actually clicked through to the end.

After all, Paper2Galgame breaks a paper into dozens of small chunks, with just a few sentences in each chunk. Those repetitive and boring words are told to you in a cute voice by the girls.

After you finish, the system will generate a summary telling you what the paper is all about. If you want to review, you can export the whole dialogue script as a JSON file and review it again the next time you upload it.

Besides Ayachi Nene, the website also pre - sets several classic characters like Tachibana Shirley, Murasame, Aitori, and Kaguya Ruka.

But the best part is that it also supports custom characters. You can set the character, personality, and speaking style yourself.

Alright, so you can create custom mods, huh?

Then what else is there to say? I'll just go for it! Let Bing Xin Yujie explain the same paper to me.

Remember Yujie's criticism well

Wow, now the opening line becomes "Come on! Let's get into something hardcore today!" If you answer the question correctly, she'll say "You've got a good grasp, kid. You're absolutely right." If you answer wrong, she'll just say "That's nonsense."

After Nene explains the paper, you'll feel like falling in love. After Yujie explains it, you'll feel like doing farm work. That's the power of language. It depends on your preference, buddy.

If you guys think it's not authentic enough, you can fine - tune the prompt words. I used AI to generate a set for convenience.

The author of Paper2Galgame is a junior at Foshan University. His reason for creating this project is straightforward:

His supervisor assigned the task of reading papers, but he couldn't understand a lot of it. So he thought of a relaxed way to read them. Coincidentally, he had previously worked on an open - source project related to Galgames, so he combined these two unrelated things to see if there would be a wonderful reaction.

Currently, this project is free, and the author doesn't plan to commercialize it. It's more like a toy.

In a media interview, he was also very honest: Currently, the paper analysis effect is indeed not good enough, and complex charts are not supported for now. But his idea is that as long as users can understand 60% of the core logic of the paper in a relaxed atmosphere and finish reading it, the mission of this product is accomplished.

I also think what Paper2Galgame does is quite simple.

It uses 2D girlfriends to lure you into the world of papers, uses praise and gamified positive feedback to get you to finish reading the paper. Then you'll suddenly realize - Holy cow, I finished reading it?

The principle is not complicated, but it really works - at least it makes you willing to read. A good tool doesn't make people smarter; it makes people willing to start.

The only drawback of this tool is that some people can secretly outperform others.

Roommate: You didn't study all day, did you?

Over - achiever: No way. I played Galgame all day.

The experience website is below. Guys, don't get the wrong one. There are already fakes out there.

https://www.paper2gal.top/?ref=watcha.cn

This article is from the WeChat official account "ChaPingX.PIN", author: Hedgehog, editors: Mangshan Pit Viper and Mianxian. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.