The University of California, Berkeley will open in fall semester an elective course on exploring Chinese history and culture through playing the Chinese online game Legends of the Three Kingdoms, reports Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily.
The game, originally a desktop card game similar to Bang, was designed by four students from a university in China. It proved so popular that it became an online game in 2009.
The course will invite students on a journey into Chinese history and culture focusing on the Three Kingdoms period (220-280 CE) and read the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, written by the 14th century author Luo Guangzhong. Playing the online game will be a requirement of the course to help students understand the historical characters and students will even be quizzed on contemporary Chinese pop culture. (WantChinaTimes)
I figure this sounds much more fun than it really is. This course undoubtedly includes the same sort of reading list that would be required with any China history/culture class, so it’s not like the kids are going to escape the real work.
Additionally, as with any online game, it can become dull and tedious as one grinds away, hour after hour, going on missions, looking for gold, killing things and breaking shit (or blowing things up, depending on the game). After a while, it just seems like work. To be honest, after about two or three hours of most games, for me it’s a toss-up between soldiering on and ditching the game for a good book.
I wonder if the Berkeley class will require a certain number of game hours played, in-game achievements, etc.? If you get to a certain level, maybe you can earn extra credit, but let’s hope that the game in question isn’t one of those where you can simply buy your way to better weapons and higher levels — that wouldn’t exactly be fair, would it?
Anyway, the idea itself is cool in terms of educational creativity, although it does sort of discriminate against the older students. Imagine going back to school after 20 years to get a college degree and your professor, who is probably younger than you are, tells you that you have to learn how to play a MMORPG to graduate. I assume your reaction would be “What the &$^@ is an MMORPG, and can I pick one up at the bookstore?”
If this Berkeley class is a hit, I’m going to try and find a game for my class. What would be the most appropriate for a foreign investment law class?
© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. |
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