Month: July 2014

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Quest for Infamy’: A Second Opinion

There was a bit of a mixup over at PopMatters. I was offered a review copy of Quest for Infamy through one of my own PR contacts and once I got some outstanding work out of the way I accepted. I received the code mere hours before fellow contributor Nick Dinicola’s review of the game went up. This is the third time this has happened to me. But I heavily disagreed with Nick’s assessment so it was decided I would do a second opinion post for my weekly column. I did not expect this to be as long as it was. | more

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

Eric Swain External Sources

Even More Mines, Maps and Madness

In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree: so, begins this episode of the Moving Pixels podcast on Kentucky Route Zero Act 3. Ever since this episode was recorded back in May (good lord, are we ahead of the curve) I’ve been anticipating this podcast’s release. I really like this game and that definitely comes across in our discussion, but after recording it I felt like we had managed to do better than our usual fare, if I may be a braggart for a moment. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Values and the Meaning of Moral Behavior in Video Games

The unintended trilogy about morality in video games became an unintended quadrilogy, this time looking not at choice, but at behavior. Given my narrow focus in looking at this subject, I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but this is not about whether the actions available in a game are moral or good or whatever. This is about games that give choices based on morals and how they reflect or more often fail to reflect in those video games. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

A Brief History of Infamy

Wey hey and up she rises, wey hey and up she rises, wey hey and up she rises early in the morning. Coming about 8 months after the game was release, we publish our podcast on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. I haven’t talked about a game this large in scope on the podcast in a long time. Trying to encompass everything about the game in a mere hour and half is a foolhardy attempt. As such we only touch on the greatest hits. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Choice and Consequence in ‘Papers, Please’

And with this PopMatters post I finish up an unexpected trilogy about morality in video games. The original post about The Wolf Among Us was supposed to be a one off and then I would go and tackle ideas about other games that had been building up during my inadvertent time off. But then I got those comments that ignored the main thrust of what I was trying to say by highlighting a single choice from that game and so I expanded. That happened with this post as well. It’s is just a hair under 3000 words. | more