Year: 2010

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

TGC 2010 Game of the Year

So, I'm leaving this to last possible moment this year...again. But I have a better excuse than last time of not being able to decide. This time it's because my time has been filled with other projects, the most notable, or at least the one that has been revealed was the rebirth of the Critical Distance podcast. Suffice to say I also haven't played all that many games from this year. I missed out on most if not all of the major releases and most of the secondary releases. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

State of the Blog ’10

It's been a little over two year since I started The Game Critique. In the past year I wrote fewer posts than before, (only 24 this year) but they definitely have gone up in quality and length. Looking at the posts that I have planned and those that are half finished I find that I may be entering a phase of long form essays. I think and hope I finally may have found my niche and expertise in the critical community that I've long been searching in the dark for. This year was also the year I finally graduated college. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

CDC Podcast Episode 6 is Up

A little over a week and a half ago I asked TWIVGB compatriots Ben Abraham and Ian Miles Cheong if they wanted to join me in restarting the CDC podcast series. I've wanted to do another ever since I last appeared on episode 3. I love talking to intelligent people, intelligently about... well anything really, but the subject here is video games. Given the time of year, I figured it was only fitting that we discuss the year in a retrospective of events, stories and games. I knew the three of us wouldn't be enough. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Indie Game Spotlight – One Chance

(Indie Game Spotlight is an irregular feature, trying to be a regular feature that I haven't done for almost a year and finally got back to. I highlight and talk about an indie game as opposed to the AAA titles that usually dominate the critical conversation.) One Chance is a flash game over at Newgrounds that you must play, but a note before you do. The title is more than that; it is a warning of what you are about to play. You have only one chance to play this game. There are no restarts or replays. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

Transparency for Critical Distance

Last week I was asked to take over the TWIVGB feature at Critical Distance by Ben Abraham. It was my sixth time. During the week I collected the links and pasted them into a word document for later aggregation as I always do and I began thinking about the way things are done with TWIVGB. I realized I had quite a lot of power over the content of each issue, even the ones I don't write. That thought scared me slightly. If there is one thing I've learned, is having someone looking over your shoulder and calling you out is the best option. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

Resonance or Dissonance in Gears of War

My last post generated the most comments of anything I've written (so far). At the end of the comments Dagda had this to say on the Gears of War franchise: "It's why the "rah-rah kill them" mentality of the Cogs is somewhat undermined by the fact they cower behind chest high walls at every opportunity despite wearing refrigerators." That strikes me as ludonarrative resonance; undermining the tough-guy images the characters present is Gears of War's central narrative theme. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

The Counter-Arguments to Why Video Game Are Bad

This is not an essay by me. I'm sorry if you got that impression and clicked your way here. There are a few posts I've read recently that articulate the debate very well. As with most posts like this it's really for me to have them at my fingertips should I ever need the link. However, with the Supreme Court case coming up soon deciding whether or not video games are protected speech under the first amendment they are good articles to pass around. If you haven't read them before, I thoroughly endorse them, if that means anything. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

In Defense of Ludonarrative Dissonance

First off, no this is not a retraction of my opinion (which I was apparently the sole defender of) that Ludonarrative Dissonance is a bad thing for a game to have. Instead, this is a response to the growing antagonism towards the term itself. There is plenty of it about, most recently from a post of Corvus Elrod's over at Semionaut’s Notebook. I wanted to write this right away after reading it, but other commitments kept me from doing so at the time. | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

I’m Done and Now I’m Back

I've been only lightly using the internet and got pretty much away from the site due to my summer class. The last class I needed to graduate. Well, I passed it this week and minus all the bureaucratic nonsense it will take to transfer the credits to Boston University I am a college graduate. Hurray for me. Anyway that means I'm getting back to reading my backlog, playing my backlog and back to writing. If I have my way I'll be start posting again next week. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

So How Did I Do on TWIVGB

Well Ben Abraham was away from the internet last week, something to do with spelunking I think, and asked me to step in as writer of the This Week In Video Game Blogging feature again. I don't know what it is, but every time I take up the task the internet decides that this is the week to get super prolific. So, we I ended up writing what I believe to be the second longest TWIVGB...so far. It didn't help that my list of links doubled about an hour before I should have written the damn thing. | more