Category: Critical Responses

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

October’s ’09 Round Table Entry – Denouement: The Gameplay Slowdown

Designer Denouements How can the denouement be incorporated into gameplay? In literary forms, it is most often the events that take place after the plot’s climax that form your lasting opinion of the story. A well-constructed denouement acts almost as a payoff, where protagonists and antagonists alike realize and adjust to the consequences of their actions. Serial media often ignored the denouement in favor of the cliffhanger, in order to entice viewers to return. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

September’s ’09 Round Table Entry – What Do Spatial Relationships Mean to Us

Isn't That Spatial? Every video game has certain benefits and constraints in the way it represents space. Interaction fiction, arcade titles, 2D side-scrollers, isometric RPGs, and first person shooters all have advantages and disadvantages to how they deal with space-some technical in nature, some design-based. This month's topic invites you to explore the ways games have represented the spatial nature of their storyworlds and what this does for the audience experience. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

May’s ’09 Round Table Entry – The Great Wave off Kanagawa

A Game Is Worth a Thousand Words: What would one of your favorite pieces of non-interactive art look like if it had been created as a game first? May's topic challenges you to imagine that the artist had been a game designer and supersede the source artwork-whether it be a painting, a sculpture, an installation, or any other piece that can be appreciated in a primarily visual way-to imagine a game that might have tried to communicate the same themes, the same message, to its audience. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

April’s ’09 Round Table Entry – Torture

Taking Games Seriously, Making Game Seriously: This month's Round Table challenges you to design a game that deals with a social issue that personally troubles you. The recent months have seen controversy sweep through the video game industry. Whether people are objecting to the use of imagery widely considered to evoke racial stereotypes, or to the gameplay based on violent sexual crimes, or to the fact that anyone would complain about either topic-the discussion has been fierce. | 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 Critical Responses, Recent Posts

January’s ’09 Round Table Entry – Sister Carrie

Putting the Game Before the Book: What would your favorite piece of literature look like if it had been created as a game first? ...rather than challenge you to imagine the conversion of your favorite literature into games, I challenge you to supersede the source literature and imagine a game that might have tried to communicate the same themes, the same message, to its audience. Better late than never. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

The Gaming Critique Symposium

For those of you not in the know, discussion on the nature of video game reviews has been taking place lately. So much so that Shawn Elliott has started a symposium to discuss the matter between about a dozen video game journalist, who I would more accurately describe as video game critics. He gathered a veritable who's who of gaming critics, that I'm sure most outside of this interest have never heard of, to embark on the project. | more