Fun Club Random: Carnegie Melon University has a Fire Emblem course

[Lugia667]

yes this is real

to be clear, it's a student-led course taught alongside the university's official degrees. However student-led courses still count towards graduation

 

[9-Volt]

The series has FOUR unlocalized entries but somehow has a college course outside of Japan? That's crazy.

 

[Earthbounder]

Which member of Famiboards is responsible for this absurdity?

Also, will there be online classes so I can sign up?

 

[ohlawd]

I'd sign up

I'm also gonna watch people drop the course and complain this wasn't focused on Three Houses

 

[Sin & Punishment]

People pay for this?

 

[Forks]

"Is Seth really the most broken unit in the series?"

I'd probably throw Sigurd up there too. Maaaaaybe Birthright Ryoma but he isn't cavalry. Birthright is already a sorry joke but Ryoma alone makes the game complete autopilot.

 

[Metroid]

I'd do so well in that class

 

[Tab]

The teacher of it posted about it on the FE subreddit. It's a type of student-taught seminar that the university lets students create.

 

[Metroid]

The teacher of it posted about it on the FE subreddit. It's a type of student-taught seminar that the university lets students create.

This makes sense. I attended a similar course about superhero comics.

 

[Ometeotl]

I would expect that Camilla would have a big presence in an FE class at Melon University

 

[HockeyBird]

If you get an F on any of the exams, you get booted from the class permanently. PermaF is what they call it.

 

[Linkstrikesback]

The exact kind of thing I just knew would have course notes written in LaTeX before even opening the thread because there was zero chance this wasn't by some kind of math/physics/engineering nerd

 

[Brock Reiher]

I’m old enough to remember when Pitt offered Advance Wars 101…

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

the fact that "Edelgard discourse" is mentioned in the very first sentence sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
imagine attending a highly prestigious university only to spend several months stuck on that one single subject.

 

[ermitron2]

Students should ideally have some level of prior exposure to Fire Emblem other than “have played Marth in Smash”

That's a good filter

 

[SirArthur]

The teacher of it posted about it on the FE subreddit. It's a type of student-taught seminar that the university lets students create.

Yup. In my grad school we had a couple of student-lead courses we would plan them way ahead, but we stuck to the core subjects if I knew I had some wiggle room I would have push for something similar

 

[Hailinel]

This isn't any weirder than the year my university offered a philosophy course based on The Matrix. (This was before any sequels released.)

 

[Zedark]

This sounds fun and stuff, but did those evil bastards actually plan the final presentations during a holiday week? That is the evilest thing I can imagine...

 

[Revolsin]

what's really interesting is there is actually a ton of value towards game design with this study especially towards growth rates, unit value and how people play these games and how it affects those players.

FE has a very strange and unique hardcore base that has taken 'optimizing fun' to its logical limit.

where taking on fun growth units is 'illogical'
when you can simply use the more effective early powerhouses and the like to blow through the game

where the high and brutal difficulty is the standard and everything below is supposedly braindead and not worth playing

where playing a map and the actual game the least amount possible and skipping it is actually considered the best way to play. i.e effectively making its own argument that not playing the game is better than playing it.

it's an utterly fascinating look of what the optimization and difficulty mentality can do to a player when taken to its logical extreme. a real sign for designers of what can happen with players and what exploitations of that mentality exist if they ever design their own RPG.