Author: Eric Swain

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

The First Step to Better Video Game Storytelling

I feel like all I'm about to do is state the obvious. A thought came to me as I finished up Heavenly Sword as my mind turned to stories in video games. Video games need stories crafted specifically for the medium. Every medium that tells stories has their own way of crafting a story. Length is one way to look at it, but detail, pacing, depth all contribute for a successful story in any medium. The measures of each is very different for each medium and transitions of a work from one medium to another takes effort in learning what to cut, shift or otherwise edit. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

March’s ’09 Round Table Entry – Fumito Ueda

About the Author: This month's topic turns the literary focus from the medium, to the author. If you submitted a post to either the January or February topics, feel free to write about the process you underwent in converting literary themes into gameplay. Did you struggle with anything in particular? Are you satisfied that your game design(s) communicated what you intended? Have subsequent comments or idea made you wish you could go back and start he process over? | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

How Sonic Ruined Other Platformers for Me

Having played the 4 key Sonic games from the Genesis era recently thanks to the Ultimate Genesis Collection I have come to a realization. These platformers are very different than every other platformer ever made before and after it. There are other platformers on the collection as well and using them as a bench mark I notice a sharp difference not only in the game, but also in my mindset in playing. The original Sonic games to me are Sonic 1, 2, 3 and Sonic and Knuckles. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

L.B. Jeffries on Video Game Critics

I love L.B. Jeffries' writing. To me he is one of the most eloquent and hardest working in our field. And to my knowledge does it all for free. He has also described himself as the angry young man of game criticism. Last year he turned his critical eye towards the idea of the video game critic. He explored critics from other mediums and then looked back at what we as game critics could learn from them. Personally I've tried to take some of these ideas as base point to work from, but even then I don't think anyone has gotten a methodology that works to encompass the player's input. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

The Noby Noby Boy Review Analysis

Let me reiterate the opportunity. Two reviews, using the same game, within 4 days of each other, using the same scoring method and same scoring scale gave two vastly different scores. The scores are not always alike, in fact, they very, very rarely are, but the difference is usually like a 7.6 to an 8.1. The scores are close if not even closer. The meanings are usually between really good to borderline great or whatever the specific scores might be for a game. But from 'Passable' to 'Outstanding' is a very different matter. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

N’Gai Croal moves on and other thoughts on Game Journalism

For those of you who haven't heard N'Gai Croal is leaving Newsweek effective the end of the week and becoming a consultant for the games' industry. You can read his final post and farewell here. For those of you now asking "who is he or why should I care," then I responded "why are you reading this site?" And for those of you legitimately ignorant, but would like to educate themselves I'm sure there are better places to understand him. This podcast comes to mind. | more

Eric Swain Game Essays, Recent Posts

Problems with Prince of Persia One Last Time

Why oh why do I do this to myself? I said that the last one would be the last one, but no. I go out to buy some chips late and I find myself thinking about concepts of the game design. My mind turns to something being debated now around Flower, most prominently over at Sexyvideogameland. The concept of the designer manipulating the player emotions, which in turn led me to a previous debate of the designer manipulating you into caring about a character. The dog from Fable II comes up a lot in this discussion. | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

What is Video Game Completion?

In the gamer scheme of things I am a freak of nature. I finish nearly every game I buy. Weird right? The fact of the matter is that most narrative based games are not completed. It was considered an enormous success by the developers of Bioshock that 50% of those who played it reached the end. Even the Half-Life 2 episodes, which are only about 6 hours long and have extremely friendly level design aren't finished more that that. | more