Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has launched a new student-taught class that delves into the game design of the Fire Emblem series. Correct, Emblem of fire. At the University. And there we were thinking ‘Cinema Studies’ sounded good.
‘Fire symbol design and analysis‘ will be conducted at Carnegie Mellon during this year’s fall semester and promises to help students “deepen their 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 (durability and weapon triangles are both noted), unit archetypes, and the lore of the series before being graded. points through quizzes and in-class projects.
In the course summary (brought to our attention on Twitter by @lucky_lunatrick), our eyes can’t help but be drawn to the brilliant-sounding chapter names like ‘Chapter Design, Fog of War’, ‘Weaponry: Classes, Skills, Weapons, Economy, and Merlinus -Maxxing’ and ‘Moving to Writing: Plot and War Crimes’. We’d be tempted to assume this is the most comfortable homework assignment – unless you’re playing with permadeath, in which case, good luck.
To be clear, this is a student-led and taught course next to university degrees rather than being a part of them. That said, according to CMU websiteStudent courses will count towards the final degree, so even though you can’t great In Fire Emblem studies, points can help boost your score – so think of it as a buff.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Nintendo games attract attention in an educational setting. Just last year the University of Maryland began using it The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom ARRIVE Teaching students about machine design and Zelda-themed animation projects there leading to the highest score to others in the past.
What happened to ‘put that console down and do your homework’, huh?
