When I first signed up for this course, I was just expecting a standard Vanderbilt English course. You know, the kind of course where your teacher assigns several books or excerpts that relate in some way to the topic you are covering in class, there’s a discussion/lecture during class about the topic, and then a few essays during the year to make sure you’re understanding the material. I also expected the class to focus mostly upon film, since mediums such as video games and other digital forms are still not very accepted academically. However, when I saw the syllabus for the first time, like 40 minutes before the first class, I was pleasantly surprised.
My first thought was “Oh wow, this class actually has a focus upon games!” My second thought was, “Wait, this sounds suspiciously similar to that Coursera course I was looking at a few months ago…” Unsurprisingly, I found out that it was in fact taught by the same professor as that Coursera course and was basically an expanded version of it. However, I still had my doubts about the class, for the reasons described above. Then on the first day of class I found out that two vital parts of the class would be playing and examining the game “Lord of the Rings: Online” and then examining how it was remediated with the original Lord of the Rings and also designing a game module for NeverWinter Nights 2 based off “The Faerie Queene.” So then the class started and I fell in love with the class and all of my doubts were proven to be utterly and completely wrong.
However, I do have to say, the most fulfilling part of this class would have to be the Neverwinter Nights 2 project at the end. I have dabbled around in making little games in the past, mostly using the program RPG Maker XP. Yet, I’d never made anything quite on the scale of what the Neverwinter Nights project was. It was the first “game” I’d helped to make that had ever even been partially a complete project. But it was really quite a culmination of the class, and it really showed that the class had taught many useful skills. And no matter how cheesy this sounds, the most important one is that you can accomplish anything if you work at it. And also Google solves most of your problems
– N. Edwards
New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games 