Apparently, Penn State has recently decided to join us in the 21^st century. Next fall, the College of Communications will have a COMM 190 class entitled Gaming and the Interactive Media. For those without a PhD in Fancy Jargon, that means there will be a general education class centered on video games. Before you jump over to the registrar, the class isn’t about grading your headshots and has nothing to do with n00bs and spawn camping.

The class, which is pretty much guaranteed to exceed the acceptable boy/girl ratio at a college gathering, will be about “the business operations, future developments, social aspects, and career opportunities in industries that produce interactive digital media products.” I think that means “selling, making, and getting a job in video games” but then again, I didn’t major in Fancy Jargon.

The higher ups in charge of making classes (who totally have degrees in Fancy Jargon) say a lot of obvious things in the Penn State Live announcement like this statement from Richard Taylor, the Palmer chair of telecommunications studies and law:

“Video games are part of the lives of most, if not virtually all, undergraduate students and will continue to shape their lives at play, but also at work, in the military, in education, medicine, engineering and more.”

All undergraduate students? I think the man has a very optimistic view when it comes to grad students’ ability to resist becoming attached to virtual cows or Angry Birds. Regardless, this is certainly a step in the right direction. As a College of Communications student, I always did find it odd that we didn’t learn about video games but did have time for forms of media that have been replaced by Twitter, Hulu, Netflix, Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket, Tumblr, Digg, Google Books, and Onward State.