Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has opened a new undergraduate class dealing with the game design of the Fire Emblem series. Yes, Fire Emblem. At the University. And that’s where we thought ‘Film Studies’ sounded great.
‘Fire Emblem Design and Analysis‘ will begin at Carnegie Mellon in the fall semester of this year and promises to help students “gain a deeper understanding of the game design, mechanics, and writing of the Fire Emblem series.” To do this, the class will examine topics such as the evolution of game mechanics (endurance and weapon triangle get kudos), unit archetypes, and series lore before being assessed through quizzes and in-class projects.
In the summary of the course (he drew our attention on Twitter @lucky_lunatrick), our eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to the awesome-sounding chapter titles like ‘Chapter Design, Fog of War,’ ‘The Armoury: Classes, Skills, Weapons, Economics and Merlinus-Maxxing’ and ‘Transition to Writing : Conspiracies and war crimes’. We’d be tempted to assume that this is the most relaxed kind of homework — unless you’re playing with permadeath, in which case, good luck.
To be clear, this is a student-led and taught course by the side university degrees rather than being part of them. That’s what he said, according to CMU websiteundergraduate courses count towards final degrees, so even though you wouldn’t be able to main in Fire Emblem Studios, ratings could help you increase your rating – then consider it a support unit.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Nintendo games take the spotlight in an educational setting. Just last year, the University of Maryland began using The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to teach students about machine design, and Zelda-themed animated projects have led to top marks for others in the past.
Whatever happened to ‘put that console down and do your homework’, eh?
