The MIT Comparative Media Studies Program hosts a workshop each year, asking students to work in teams to think through what would be involved in transforming an existing media property (a book, film, television series, or comic book)
into a video or computer game and then preparing a “pitch” presentation for their game: beginning with a pre-existing property allows students to get started quickly
and more or less on equal footing given that they are able to build on a text they have in common as readers rather than one created by an individual student author; the process of identifying core properties
of the original work teaches students important skills at narrative and formal analysis while the development of an alternative version of the story in another medium emphasizes the creative expansion of the original content (Jenkins, 2005b).