New York University rocks out with Guitar Hero-themed course

Who knew all those hours put in on various Guitar Hero games could someday be a critical component of an education at a top university? New York University professor Gary Marcus is teaching a freshman seminar called “Guitar Heroes (and Heroines): Music, Video Games and the Nature of Human Cognition.”

No, really.

Not surprisingly, Marcus said there is a waiting list for the seminar which capped at 16 spots. I’m betting there was also a waiting list of parents wanting to know why they’re paying $50,000 a year for video game courses. Marcus knows people are talking and that some of them aren’t saying the nicest things about the course.

“Video games are an understudied area,” Marcus told the New York Post. “People dismiss them unfairly, but ‘Guitar Hero’ is a good tool for teaching and I’m interested in the nature of learning.” The course will also try to figure out why people get “sucked in” to games. Sucked in is NYU’s terminology, not ours. In addition to the Guitar Hero offering, NYU has a course called “The Poetics of Television.” Students will select much of the “text” for this course, that is to say they’ll select some of the shows that will be discussed in class.

I’m pretty sure I went to college about 13 years too early.

Read [New York Post] Also Read [Destructoid]