Category: Recent Posts

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Two More Critical Distance Roundups

In the past couple of weeks I took over TWIVGB from Kris Ligman as she went to E3 and needed a break. Kris hand it off more, there are 5 people who can pick up the reins. I don’t want you burning out. First one was for E3 week and I couldn’t help myself making my own little commentary with how I presented that week’s material. As an old timey snake oil salesmen barker. It’s not like there was a convention filled with foul tasting, somewhat sketchily presented hype to products that may or may not be any good around that time, right? | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

‘This Generation is Over’ Takedown

I didn’t want to write this. Up until now I have written three takedowns all on pieces I fervently disagreed with and I stand by them wholeheartedly. I constantly threaten to do takedown of particularly egregious pieces on twitter every so often and almost never do. Why? Well, I have over time set down rules for myself. They’re not written down, they’re just thing that naturally grew out of my sense of fairness, kindness and respect towards great thinkers and the need to point out when they’re off their rocker and have no fucking clue what they’re talking about. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

A Clarification of Genre: Conclusion

Please read A Clarification of Genre: Introduction because this post will be finishing the foundation concepts put forth there. That post also contains some clarifications for how I will be writing this series. You can read the previous entries of the series: Action, Adventure, RPG, Strategy and Immiscible Games. What was the point? Outside of very limited set of application that all mostly resides in broad based introductions to the material either in a storefront or in explaining what it is, genre is not a useful concept. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

A Clarification of Genre: Immiscible Games

Please read A Clarification of Genre: Introduction because this post will be building off of the foundation concepts put forth there. That post also contains some clarifications for how I will be writing this series. You can read the previous entries of the miscible genres: Action, Adventure, RPG and Strategy. Miscible and Immiscible The descriptions of the super-genres up to this point have all been under the assumption that a game has a single focus throughout its play. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

A Clarification of Genre: Strategy

Please read A Clarification of Genre: Introduction because this post will be building off of the foundation concepts put forth there. That post also contains some clarifications for how I will be writing this series. You can read the previous entries: Action, Adventure and RPG. Strategy I’m going to frank and upfront about this. I know very little about the Strategy Super-genre. My experience with this type of game is limited to a handful of titles and has nowhere near the depth and understanding the complexity others do. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

A Clarification of Genre: RPG

Please read A Clarification of Genre: Introduction because this post will be building off of the foundation concepts put forth there. That post also contains some clarifications for how I will be writing this series. You can read the previous entries: Action and Adventure. Now comes the big enchilada. The one I’m sure to get the most arguments/hate mail about. RPG I’m going to break up the formula of the posts for this one and instead of starting off with the definition of the Super-genre, I’m going to work up to it via the thought process by which it came about. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

A Clarification of Genre: Adventure

Please read the Introduction entry as this post will be building off of the foundation stones and concepts put forth there. That post also contains some clarifications for how I will be writing this series. You can read the previous entry on Action here. Adventure Adventure games are a little more difficult to talk about than Action games. There is a mentality that sticks with them because Adventure games were always understood as this very narrow brand of games. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

A Clarification of Genre: Action

Please read the previous entry – Introduction – as this post will be building off of the foundation stones and concepts put forth there. That post also contains some clarifications for how I will be writing this series. And now to the first Super-genre on the list. Action The key to understanding the Action Super-genre is understanding the commonalities between so many genres that we think of as Action games. Where does the platformer intersect with the shooter with the racer and so on? | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

A Clarification of Genre: Introduction

Several months ago, I tried to explain some of the problems I saw with the discussions of video game genres. These conversations around what are Adventure game and RPGs keep popping up every couple of days in posts and all over twitter and I wanted to address some concerns with what I saw taking place in these conversations. I didn’t convey my ideas well at the time. Also, spawning off of this post I realized that while people debate genre there is a lot of annoyance at these debates at the perceived uselessness of the idea of genres. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Never Break the Flow: Interface Design in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

Again, I write about Driver: San Francisco and again it’s at PopMatters. Instead of going the more esoteric route with the game, this time I went for straight design analysis simplicity. It only occurred to me afterwords that I probably should have started from this angle and worked my way up. I’m actually a little disheartened that nobody else has taken up the torch for this game and got to writing. It was largely forgotten once it was released and didn’t have that much hype industry wide, despite IGN’s best efforts to pump people up for it. | more