I believe Peter commented that Lab Zero did, in fact, own this IP, but I can't for the life of me remember where.
I guess I'll get into this...
We don't own the IP outright. The deal is pretty good from the get-go, but it gets better the more we raise. There are three major IGG dollar milestones in our contract: two where the back-end revenue increases, and a third on where the IP goes to us.
I think going into the exact numbers is probably a bit much, but that's the general gist of our contract with 505: if we hit our goal and end up between the IP number, 505 owns the IP and we have right of first refusal on a developing a sequel, etc. If we go above that number, we own the IP and 505 has right of first refusal on publishing a sequel.
There are some other wrinkles that could also result in us getting the IP back even if we are funded, too, but I won't get into those.
By whom? How many other languages have those people tried to learn?
I think it was a linguisitcs class and Japanese class where the teachers told us that.
And I don't think your case is really indicative - you're coming from an advanced western country that already has a high percentage of English speakers. When I was there for Gamescom, I was surprised how pretty much everyone knew English. And there is ample access to English media. And getting to a place where English is natively spoken is much easier than, say, from anywhere in Asia. And let's definitely not forget David Hasselhoff.
So I feel like Germany is one or two steps away from immersion, just be default.
Also, English does draw a fair amount on German. So there is probably some overlap there that makes it easier for Germans and other Europeans, too.
Pronunciation does impact learning and retention, too. Japanese people tend to have a harder time learning other languages because Japanese has the fewest number of phonemes of any language in the world, tied with Spanish. Japanese students pretty much take English their entire student career and can barely string a sentence together after all of that.
Meanwhile, English is easier to pronounce than German... with the possible exception of Vs and Ws, if my HS exchange student friend was any indication.
So just imagine you're in bumfuck Japan, and have never heard English outside of hilariously dubbed anime white people. The grammar is basically 100% the opposite of how you normally think, you can barely pronounce the words, and your teacher doesn't actually know it and is just reading the katakana because they don't have access to swarthy Irish imports.
