Year: 2014

Eric Swain External Sources

Nearly Happily Ever After

So, after the whole game is out, we finally got around to releasing our discussion on episode 4 of The Wolf Among Us. It’s strange to go back and listen to it given that I now know how it all turns out. The Wolf Among Us has turned out to be a rather polarizing game and there’s a lot of reasons why. Episode 4 itself feels like a plot necessary segment of the story to get the last few things in place and a few threads wrapped up, but it does feel like it’s the game spinning its wheels a bit. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – A Critic By His Window

I didn’t know it at the time, but my first ever encounter with the wider world of video game criticism was through a post by L.B. Jefferies. That post led me to the Brainygamer, Mitch Krpata and the rest is history. In those early days, the scene was a small one. Small enough that ‘Mapping the Brainysphere‘ didn’t seem like an ironic or ludicrous title for a post. I didn’t quite realize it at the time of trying to reorient the CDC podcast along with the then new direction of the site what I was doing in my choice of guests. | more

Eric Swain Game Essays

Minor Moments: Quest for Infamy

Sometimes there are moments in games that stick in my mind but aren’t big enough or otherwise important enough to warrant inclusion as a part of a larger discussion. Sometimes there isn’t room in a piece to include mentioning it or there is no simple way to crowbar it in while talking about the game. But they still stick in my mind and I think are somewhat worth mentioning. This is an occasional series to just that. (*Spoilers for Quest for Infamy*) There are two moments I want to mention in Quest for Infamy. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Dictators and Dead Guys

Continuing on with our episodic Telltale series we talk about The Walking Dead season 2 episode 3 on PopMatter’s Moving Pixels podcast. Last night we just recorded the podcast episode on The Walking Dead episode 4, so listening to this, its kind of surprising to hear some of the comments we made and our opinion on how the season was progressing. Due to the publishing schedule these tend to get recorded far in advance and we quite remember what we’ve said previously. | more

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