Category: Thoughts

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

Games are Structure

(Forget it, this is going up as is. - Eric Swain) My last post was really only the first half of a longer first draft I wrote on paper. When transcribing it I realized it started to meander and connect too many points, so I cut it down and resettled everything else into another post where it would hopefully make more sense. I wrote about how my exposure to Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition at PAX East sparked that tabletop creative part of me and I started a new campaign. | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

4th Edition and Cooperative Storytelling

After PAX East sparked my interest in DnD and my players wanted to get back to it, I decided to give it a try. I liked the 4th edition simplification and streamlining of the rules. So I got the core books and read through them in anticipation of trying a new campaign. What I want to talk about came about at the end of our character creation session.  Using the suggestions in the Player's Handbook #2 the players use the possible background bullet points to create their character's pasts. | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

PAX East in 67,719 Words

I got to Boston around 3 pm on Thursday. Plenty of time for the pre-PAX meet up and Justin's birthday. I spent some time at the Copley mall before heading up to the Cambridge Brewing Company. I got there really early, so early in fact that I sat around doing nothing and that usually leads to worrying thoughts, like: am I at the right place? Do I have the wrong time? How in the hell would I recognized them? How in the hell would they recognize me, given that there is no known picture of me on the internet because I spent a good deal of effort to accomplish that? | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

SLRC – So Long Righteous Comrade

SLRC is dead Long Live SLRC So reads the title of the ever-changing acronym SLRC blog. Ben Abraham if not the most prolific internet critic is definitely one of the most important. Besides his own blog he was the creator of Critical Distance, an effort to bring all the best of game criticism under one URL after the game has had time to be digested. Probably the most ambitious project in the ludodidecahedron. Ben is the reason Far Cry 2 is recognized as much and taken as seriously as it is. | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

Nostradamus Check Up ’09

Last year I said I called it to a number of predictions I had made. Then in February I made several predictions about the coming year. Let's see how I did. 1- On Resident Evil 5 I said that it would be an end to the series being about horror mostly because of co-op as an effect of its focus on action. I also said that it wouldn't be as well regarded as Resident Evil 4. I nailed this one. Other than the discussion on race that the game spawned and some discussion on co-op this game was largely forgotten a month later. | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

Apologies and Clean Up

For those of you following me on twitter, which I suppose is all of you given my repeat audience, you will know of my present troubles. Two weeks ago I had midterms, which took up a lot of my time. The week after that I got a horrible case of the flu that my only condolence was that it happened after midterms. The unfortunate downside being that I missed a good deal of classes and did not write the essays that were due due to the fact my brain could not function properly. | more

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 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 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