{"id":7630,"date":"2018-08-21T18:58:32","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T22:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2018\/08\/23\/warner-career-narrative-writer-video-games\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T20:12:25","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T01:12:25","slug":"warner-career-narrative-writer-video-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/warner-career-narrative-writer-video-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Leveling Up in the Game of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you tell your professors the plan is to focus on video games now that you\u2019re in college, an enthusiastic \u201chow can we help\u201d isn\u2019t usually the response. That\u2019s exactly the reaction Noelle Warner \u201919 got from Furman’s Margaret Oakes and Kevin Treu, however, when they learned of her rather unique career aspirations.<\/p>\n

Warner wants to become one of the people creating those games, hopefully as a narrative writer, and the latest bold step she made toward reaching that goal was spending the summer in Los Angeles writing articles<\/a> as an intern with Nerdist<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s most influential voices in gaming and pop culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a really innovative new storytelling medium, and that has touched me in terms of emotional connection because when I\u2019m playing a game I\u2019m really in it as opposed to observing it,\u201d Warner said. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s the excitement of being on the cusp of an entirely new medium that we have to explore that gets me jazzed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Noelle

Noelle Warner ’19 presented \u201cVideo Games: The Future of Storytelling\u201d at TedXFurmanU in 2018.<\/p><\/div>\n

In February, Warner presented \u201cVideo Games: The Future of Storytelling\u201d<\/a>at TedXFurmanU in which she passionately explains what video games mean now and can mean in the future both for her personally and the storytelling genre. Oakes, an English professor, has been Warner\u2019s advisor since her freshman year, and she admits she had some learning to do when Warner told her how she planned to use her English degree. But the more she read and listened, the more Oakes realized this was far from a pie-in-the-sky dream.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s groundbreaking for us. I think she\u2019s groundbreaking as a female, and she\u2019s on the newer edge of how people are thinking about video games,\u201d Oakes said. \u201cShe was able to really see through talking to Kevin and me and doing a lot of her own research that this is actually a valid thing to think about professionally. The video game community is getting older, and as they get older they don\u2019t just want one-person shooting games. And there are many more women playing than used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner found the internship opportunity while reading the University of Southern California newsletter and jumped at the opportunity to travel the farthest she\u2019d ever been from home. Given \u201ccomplete creative freedom,\u201d she penned dozens of posts on an eclectic mix of topics ranging from \u201cJudging Harry Potter Wands By How Aesthetically Pleasing They Are\u201d<\/a>to \u201cThe Witcher 3 Recreated in Minecraft Is Astounding\u201d<\/a> while immersing herself in the center of America\u2019s gaming universe.<\/p>\n

Among many highlights was getting to attend the 2018 E3 expo, one of the largest trade events<\/a> in the world for the video game industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a really, really special time for me being there with the people that are making these innovations and seeing the work they\u2019ve put in to really push the medium forward,\u201d Warner said.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, Warner had barely ever played a video game until she arrived at Furman. Mary McCormick \u201819, her hallmate, had a PlayStation, and soon Warner and McCormick were forming a friendship while trying to beat \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d a horror adventure game. Its complex storyline and character development was a revelation, and Warner was transfixed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the biggest moment for me, when I actually sat down and played that game,\u201d Warner said. \u201cIt\u2019s only been about two years, but obviously it\u2019s taken over my life completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

That includes her education, though it wasn\u2019t easy at first to figure out the best way to integrate the two. Oakes helped Warner set up independent study and summer research in the English department through The Furman Advantage<\/a> that honed in on video game narrative, but perhaps the biggest boost came when Oakes and Treu convinced Warner to take on a highly unusual double major: English and computer science.<\/p>\n

English had always been an easy call for someone who spent high school in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area \u201creading, reading, reading,\u201d but computer science required a bit more poking with a stick until Treu, the department chair, convinced Warner she could become one of just two current students to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d had the benefit of having her in my data mining class. I could tell her my observations of how strong of a student she was, what a keen analytical mind she had,\u201d Treu said. \u201cIf you\u2019re able to tell a student that sincerely, then that helps students get over any kind of kind of hump they might have for undertaking your program of study.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned that I\u2019m not a great programmer, which is what a lot of computer science is, but I\u2019m going to have to hone those skills a little more if I want to do video game design,\u201d Warner said with a laugh. \u201cThat\u2019s what I love so much about the English major. It doesn\u2019t matter what industry you\u2019re in, those critical-thinking skills and being able to deep dive and analyze things, no matter what it is, are so important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner\u2019s goal after graduation is to return to Southern California either as a graduate student or employee. Oakes and Treu have a goal to make that an easier trip for future students, which could very well include a new English\/computer science dual major.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a growing field called digital humanities, which is finding that common ground and applying computing tools and algorithms to various kinds of humanities problems,\u201d Treu said. \u201cWe want to be a department for the entire university, not just for one narrow slice of people. And this is based on the idea that computer science is fundamentally interdisciplinary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you tell your professors the plan is to focus on video games now that you\u2019re in college, an enthusiastic \u201chow can we help\u201d isn\u2019t usually the response. That\u2019s exactly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":18177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,33,31,58,30,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-computer-science","category-english","category-internships","category-top-stories","category-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}