Category: External Sources

Eric Swain External Sources

There’s a Little Killer Podcast in All of Us

I was on the Moving Pixels Podcast again. This time to talk about an older game, namely Suda 51′s magnum opus: Killer 7. It’s a weird game and a difficult one. I had a really busy week and didn’t get around to playing it until the day of the podcast and despite many hours could only get through the first two full levels. I am going to finish it, because it’s just one of those games that demands to be played. On a side note, if anyone can identify why my audio is so horrible on these podcasts, I’d be very appreciative. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

July 28th TWIVGB

Ok, despite how I closed out last week’s TWIVGB, saying that Kris would be back, I did another one. She asked me if I was available and I was actually freer to do things, because I didn’t have to play 6 games over the weekend. One thing I did notice this time around was how the style of criticism has changed since the beginning of the year. What was once popular, New Game Journalism, Personal Writing, Fractured Essays, are all genres that have waned in the intervening months. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

July 21st TWIVGB

Kris needed a break and I took the reins for TWIVGB this past weekend. It went a lot quicker than I remember it being. Maybe it’s because I read nearly all the posts ahead of time. Maybe there weren’t as many suggestions. Maybe the new categorization system just means the work goes faster. Who knows? It was a crowded weekend, what with Steam trading card farming for money and having to play 3 games, two for review and one for podcast. My phone also died over the weekend so that meant more time out of what I had to do. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Porpentine of the Twine

And my last post looking into Interactive Fiction is done. Every time I come up with some sort of theme it ends up getting so off track for one reason or another. In this case it was playing all these twine games for this post and the last one and then having to digest them all. I purposefully left Porpentine’s work out of my twine overview in the previous post for several compounding reasons. She is an author that is prolific enough, her work ranges from fairly interesting to oh my god the depth is crushing me and she has had a pretty big spotlight on her for quite a while. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Reviews For May/June

I did a number of reviews for PopMatters in the months of May and June. There are a few more waiting in the wings to be published. In published chronological order: I really like this review. I didn’t think much of The Showdown Effect, but I didn’t dislike it either. It is a textbook example of a middle of the road game. It does what it sets out to do, but isn’t really the spectacular. What really hit the right tone was starting off the review the way I did. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Many Forks in the Road of Twine

After skipping two weeks I’m back to continue this look at Interactive Fiction at PopMatters. Lesson learned: never dive into an entire subculture and expect to be finished in a week. The fact of the matter is there are tons of twine games on the internet and more being dumped into cyberspace every day. There is a lot of creativity and lot of junk being spewed out. The fact that there is so much being dumped on the net and no central hub or curatorial site to point at the noteworthy ones is a bit difficult for the so-called movement. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Two Steps Down the Interactive Fiction Road

My second post looking into Interactive Fiction is up on PopMatters. This time I look at two works that move away from the text adventure lineage and start pushing what can be done with text and a parser. This paragraph got cut from the posted version – probably rightly so – but it shows my intent behind the post just the same: I don’t have really anything sort of introduction beyond that. I’m not going to compare or contrast them. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

A Look Down the Interactive Fiction Road

Finally, I’m back to talking about games. For the first week of May I decided to critique two modern text adventures and look at the interesting things they do. Instead of jumping into the next big thing or tackling my backlog of AAA titles, and boy I have a lot to get through on that front, I wanted to go off the beaten path. I wanted to look into the weird, the experimental, the lambasted and the old. I wanted to look at the stuff that doesn’t get critiqued. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Deirdra Kiai Podcast Interview

Episode 12 of the CDC podcast went live. I know it was promised back in March, but it was delayed due to the hell that misbegotten excuse for an audio file put me through. I had to edit the thing three times. Originally, I had planned to release it last year in conjunction with Deirdra Kiai’s Indigogo for her newest game. That fell through due to editing problems which caused me to start all over again. So, I’m editing it for release in the second week of March. | more