Teaching Classic Lit Helps Game Designers Make Better Stories

"The language I've invented is pronounced with the same phonetics as Latin," explained Justin Harlan, my 21-year-old student. He was doing a presentation on his video game Ordenai, which was so outstanding that it left my boisterous class speechless. This was in the fall of 2019, my first semester teaching Creative Writing for Video Gamers at Lawrence Technological University (LTU) in Southfield, Michigan. This was a class I created, with the help of other faculty, and a prerequisite for those majoring in video game design. Awestruck at the scope of Harlan's game, I noticed several elements readily found in classic literature that were intimately woven into his story.