Vanderbilt University - Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative
- Offered byCoursera
Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative at Coursera Overview
Duration | 21 hours |
Total fee | Free |
Mode of learning | Online |
Difficulty level | Beginner |
Official Website | Explore Free Course  |
Credential | Certificate |
Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative at Coursera Highlights
- Shareable Certificate Earn a Certificate upon completion
- 100% online Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.
- Flexible deadlines Reset deadlines in accordance to your schedule.
- Beginner Level
- Approx. 21 hours to complete
- English Subtitles: French, Portuguese (European), Russian, English, Spanish, Romanian
Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative at Coursera Course details
- Intended for both newcomers who are curious about video games and experienced gamers who want to reflect on their passion, this course will explore what happens to stories, paintings, and films when they become the basis of massively multiplayer online games. The Lord of the Rings trilogy?the novels, films, and video game?are our central example of how ?remediation? transforms familiar stories as they move across media.
- The course is designed as a university-level English literature class?a multi-genre, multimedia tour of how literature, film, and games engage in the basic human activity of storytelling. Our journey will enable us to learn something about narrative theory, introduce us to some key topics in media studies and cover some of the history and theory of video games. It will also take us to some landmarks of romance literature, the neverending story that lies behind most fantasy games: J.R.R. Tolkien?s The Fellowship of the Ring, a bit of Edmund Spenser?s Faerie Queene, and poems by Keats, Tennyson, Browning, and others.
- Drawing on centuries of romance narrative conventions, the twenty-first century gaming industry has become a creative and economic powerhouse. It engages the talents of some of our brightest writers, artists, composers, computer engineers, game theorists, video producers, and marketing professionals, and in 2012, it generated an estimated $64 billion in revenue. Anyone interested in today?s culture needs to be conversant with the ways this new medium is altering our understanding of stories. Join me as we set out on an intellectual adventure, the quest to discover the cultural heritage of online games.
Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative at Coursera Curriculum
Game on! The History and Theory of MMOs
Course Introduction
Games as Culture
LOTRO Gameplay: Epic Quest Line, Book 1
Remediation
Types of Video and Computer Games
A Brief History of Games
Juul: Emergence and Progression
Juul: Rules and Fiction
Cavafy's "Ithaca"
Course Overview
Week 1 Standard Quiz (All students complete this quiz)
Week 1 Honors Quiz (Honors students complete the Week 1 Standard Quiz and this quiz)
LOTRO and Tolkien
Modes of Storytelling
LOTRO Gameplay: Frodo and the Prancing Pony
Tolkien's Life and Works
Tolkien's Popularity
Themes in Tolkien's Writing
Quests as Structural Elements of Games
The Quester and the Quest
Part 1: Roland's Psyche
Part 2: Elements of the Quest Romance
Part 3: The Poem's Lyric Nature
Week 2 Standard Quiz (All students complete this quiz)
Week 2 Honors Quiz (Honors students complete the Week 2 Standard Quiz, this quiz, and the Week 2 Peer Review)
Romance and Realism
Gameplay: The Chamber of Mazarbul
Genres of Romance
The Romance Circle
Allegory Defined
Tolkien on Allegory
Genre and Plot Forms
Lost in an Episodic Plot
Wandering and Doubling in Romance
Issues of Theme and Content
Flat vs. Round Characters
Daemonic Characters and Romance Character Systems
Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" I
Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" II
Week 3 Standard Quiz (All students complete this quiz)
Week 3 Honors Quiz (Honors students complete the Week 3 Standard Quiz and this quiz)
Space and Time in Three Media
Mental Models and Cognitive Mapping in Narrative
Storyworlds
Spatial Issues in Film
Gameplay: Spatial Issues in Immersive Games (Stone Trolls)
Point of View in Novels and Films
Point of View in Games
Temporal Order I: Introduction
Temporal Order II: Film
Temporal Order III: Painting
Temporal Order IV: Gaming
Week 4 Standard Quiz (All students complete this quiz)
Week 4 Honors Quiz (Honors students complete the Week 4 Standard Quiz, this quiz, and the Week 4 Peer Review)
Pwning Spenser?s Faerie Queene
Introduction to Spenser
Spenser, the Man and the Poet
The Faerie Queene, Book III, Canto 1, Stanzas 1-7
The Faerie Queene, Book III, Canto 1, Stanzas 8-19
The Faerie Queene, Book III, Canto 1, Stanzas 20-40
The Faerie Queene, Book III, Canto 1, Stanzas 41-67
Gameplay: Faerie Queene Online
Week 5 Standard Quiz (All students complete this quiz)
Week 5 Honors Quiz (Honors students complete the Week 5 Standard Quiz and this quiz)
The Holy Grail: A Good End Game
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends I
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends II
Fellowship's End
The Many Ends of The Lord of the Rings I
The Many Ends of The Lord of the Rings II
Gameplay: Helm's Deep and the Breaking of Isengard
Quest's End: Tennyson's "Ulysses" I
Quest's End: Tennyson's "Ulysses" II
Optional: Valedictory Video
Week 6 Standard Quiz (All students complete this quiz)
Week 6 Honors Quiz (Honors students complete the Week 6 Standard Quiz, this quiz, and the Week 6 Peer Review)
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