May 17, 2016 Eric Swain Game Issues

TGC Game of the Year 2015

May 17, 2016 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year, Game of the Year This is late. Way later than I ever wanted it to be. Though, giving up on the whole video game critic thing for about 4 solid months last year really cut into my being able to present anything. To my satisfaction at least. Last year, from around the middle to end of July through the end of November I just did not care to take any significant part of the video game critical community. | more

January 31, 2015 Eric Swain Game Issues

TGC Game of the Year 2014

January 31, 2015 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year, Game of the Year Before I get into what I felt were the best games of 2014, that I played, I want to talk about the concept of list itself. It may seem unnecessary. All that may seem necessary is a bare bones ten line list of the titles and be done with it. That wouldn’t be acceptable in my case. I’ve kind of painted myself into a corner regarding the issue and now have to put my money where my mouth is. | more

October 16, 2014 Eric Swain Game Issues

Virulent, Vociferous and Vocal

(Excuse this entire article. I wrote this a few weeks ago when I needed to do so. This ended up as my version of stream of consciousness writing and given how I normally write that’s saying something. But, at this point, it’s merely an exercise in style and testing a new feature on the site. I have no idea if there is anything worthwhile to be gleaned in this post. If there is, great. If not, you were warned.) I generally like to give credit to what inspired me to think along certain lines with an essay. | more

July 23, 2014 Eric Swain Game Issues

Hypothetical Moral Behaviors

Last week I concluded a series of posts on moral choice in games, the first three posts looking at the idea of making specific choices at specific moments and the last about the choices we make that result in our constant play behavior throughout. I identified two ways behavior acts as a moral attribute. Either the behavior reflects a moral being in the player character or it allows the player to choose a path based on a play style that reflects a moral standing on an issue, usually violence. | more

February 17, 2014 Eric Swain Game Issues

The Parable of The Runner

February 17, 2014 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: Critical Distance, Mirror's Edge, Preservation A few weeks back I was having a digital couch chat with Mark Filipowich. Eventually we got on to the topic of criticism preservation. We talk about how things are disappearing from the web and how depressing the 404s on the Old Games Writing Twitter account are. I begin to tell him a story. I was checking up on some old posts from 2009 or so about Mirror’s Edge. | more

January 31, 2014 Eric Swain Game Issues

TGC 2013 Game of the Year

January 31, 2014 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year, Game of the Year A running theme in my life is that I’m always behind, always late, which is why you are getting my list for my 2013 games of the year at the end of January of 2014. I wanted to give myself more time to actually play some games because my December is usually concerned with other matters. I got some played, but nowhere near as many as I would have liked. | more

January 30, 2014 Eric Swain Game Issues

Top 13 Most Talked About Games of 2013

January 30, 2014 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year In the run up to Critical Distance’s annual end of year podcast I was under instruction to shrink it by whatever means necessary. No one was in the mood for another 7-9 hours recording session and as the date came closer, I was in no mood to edit one. I cut down the events list by merging items and collectively we knocked off most of the inconsequential stuff. | more

November 1, 2013 Eric Swain Game Issues

A Cultural History of Horror

Horror stories are meant to be dark reflections of ourselves or rather more importantly a dark reflection of what we fear most as a society at the time. This isn’t true on an individual level, because what one person finds scary, bores another and what may be a broken taboo for some, is just par for the course for others. But in the aggregate, trends pop up and these are what succeeds in scaring a great majority of the populace. Thus reflect the thinking of a society as a whole. | more

January 12, 2013 Eric Swain Game Issues

TGC 2012 Game of the Year

January 12, 2013 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year, Game of the Year I wanted to get this done earlier. In fact, I like having my game of the year post before the end of the actual year. For the last two years that meant taking time out of New Years Eve celebrations for typing it up. That didn’t happen this year because of my next point. I have played more games last year from that year than I have ever done so before. | more

December 31, 2012 Eric Swain Game Issues

State of the Blog ’12

December 31, 2012 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year Holy crap on a stick. I’ve been doing this for four full years. That is gratifying in some ways and utterly depressing in others. But as many laments that I have over myself and the path that my career, or rather lack of one, I choose to spend this time over what I have accomplished than what I have failed at. It seems year over year I have posted more despite a 4-year stint of stagnation of which I can’t remember what happened at all. | more