UC Berkeley Offers Starcraft Class

It's true - not a hoax! University of California at Berkeley is now offering a semester-long course about Starcraft. I'd imagine one would be throughly tired of the game by the time the course is over

Original article: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3172515

 

Wow, I've never been into Starcraft but if I get in as a Junior transfer (will know April 30th) I may have to take this class.

 

I am a student at Berkeley. Ask me anything.

 

Can you tell the admissions people to let me in? Haha

 

are you enrolled in that class?

 

meh no wonder they dropped from being top 10 university in the U.S. to the top 20 university in the U.S. :\

 

Still much higher than my school, mine is like 32nd or 34th this year.

 

there is like a seminar kind of class offered in University of Washington talking about video games and social issues, i tried to take it but it was filled in like 0.0001 sec after the registration was opened lol

 

Wow, this is something I'd expect from Korea, but not the States... unless *gasp* Berkeley is sponsored by Blizzard!

 

Don't you worry, they'll be plenty of Korean students that try to enroll in this.

 

That is ridiculous.

 

^^^ agreed.

What a waste of a course. Next thing you know kids will be going to Uni/College to learn about their Fav video games instead of getting a proper education. Something that can help them provide for a family in the future, or buy that nice car they've been drooling over. But whatever, its their tuition money, not mine(isn't tuition in the states like SUPER expensive?). I just hope I don't have to feed these people with my tax dollars.

 

lol good point

 

where do you go to?

 

hey im sure they are still getting a better education than you did... those kids work to hard anyway... they need a break.

 

I got into berkeley, can i take this class as a freshie?

 

Hey man, I like Starcraft as much as the next guy, but when you start to imply that an education in starcraft is a better education than the one I am getting; you would be sorely mistaken, as I seriously doubt it could even come close to Engineering at the 3rd best /engineering University in N America and 5th in the world.

*facepalm*

 

I think their would be a big difference between taking a course ( 1 class) about Starcraft or getting a bachelor's degree in Starcraft. While I think its rather dumb to offer a course such as this, I also don't see how it has anything to do with getting a degree in Engineering,etc. Has no one ever taken an elective course, I took beginning -Advanced golf classes for my general electives.

 

yeah, I've taken one or two questionable electives because I needed the average. (Introduction to Computers comes to mind =D)

 

This isn't really a formal class. Berkley has a system where certain classes can be designed and taught by students. It only counts as an elective credit as I believe so you can't really try to use this course to count for your major or anything.

As regarding the course material, it involves some pretty high level math. IIRC, it was heavily recommended to know higher level Calculus, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra as prequisites for it. I believe they are mainly going to look at lots of optimization stuff such as pathing algorithms and the such. It may involve the comparison of various builds which can easily result in highly complex math equations.

Just trying to calculate the number of probes needed to block with a miner (manner?) pylon in order to break even requires a ton of math to crunch out...

 

I dunno... if this course gets filled by Koreans it'd be pretty depressing to come in at close to bottom of a class on starcraft.

 

Actually guys, if anyone wants to take a look of the class, "lectures" 1, 3, 4 have been posted on youtube. (I couldn't find the second one, but it should be around there)

Lecture 1

Lecture 3

Lecture 4

 

I've never been very good at RTS games and have alot of friends that are into them, I wouldn't mind taking this as an elective, sounds fun and alot more applicable to myself personally then something like golfing. I wonder how ROTC looks at this class?

 

nothing wrong with the class its like trying a new approach to math or histroy ...

trying to teach better i guess? i personally wouldn't take it i'd rather learn the old fashion way

 

i can't imagine what the final is gonna be on

 

i dont see what the big deal is, its an elective or gen ed it wont rele effect the outcome of what your taking.

stupid though, aha

 

I guess if I wasn't taking out loans to pay for the class it would be fine. Otherwise....

 

To add to this, the Starcraft course is part of DeCal, or democratic education at Cal. The course itself cannot satisfy requirements toward any degree except counting as units toward the graduation requirements. Students tend to take at least 1 or 2 DeCal classes during their undergrad. Other classes include one of Simpsons Philosophy, Italian Cooking, Poker strategies, and Rubik's cube. They're just fun courses to take. You're crazy if you think these classes could fulfill requirements or whatever.

 

nice class

 

We're missing the best part of this...

"hey, what are you doing?"

"uh... homework! Yeah, lots of homework to do, sorry, very busy!"

Sheesh - and to think I had to call my computer-game-playing "goofing off" when i was in school...