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Eric Swain Game Essays

Following Fogg: Adapting ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ into ’80 Days’

Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days is a Victorian era adventure novel following the exploits of Phileas Fogg and his valet Jean Passepartout in their attempt to win a wager. Done as a series of episodic exploits that take place in various countries along the route, it’s easy how one could adapt the book’s structure into a video game. However, a novel written in the 1870s is not something that will work as a video game in the 2010s. Not the least of which is the book’s very imperialistic vibe. | more

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Five of the Best Mobile Games of 2014

Given how huge they have become, mobile games don’t get enough space in the critical spheres devoted to them. I decided to rectify that a bit and take a short glance at 5 games I played this year. Most of the good stuff comes out on iOS as opposed to Android. There are a bunch of technical reasons for that having to do with the non-standard implementation of Android’s open platform that sounds legitimate to my uninformed self. However, I don’t have an iOS device. I have an Android phone and tablet. | more

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TYIVGB Methodology

December 9, 2014 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Critical Distance, TYIVGB We have posted our methodology on how I do the This Year In Video Game Blogging feature over at Critical Distance. The last few years I have always done a ‘how I did it’ post here and after the fact. Transparency has always been a bit of a problem for us. Not because we aren’t transparent, but because no one ever seems to pay attention when we’re announcing how we do things. | more

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Moving Pixels Podcast Steps Over ‘The Line’

Two years after its release, we get around to discussing Spec Ops: The Line on the podcast. I hadn’t played it before we decided to finally do Spec Ops. I owned it and I knew, as a critic, it would be important to play, but there was always something keeping me from doing so. I hadn’t read Brendan’s book on it either. So in a very short amount of time, I both played the game and read Killing is Harmless in preparation of the podcast. | more

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NPC – Non Play Criticism: Elegance

It is a truism in video game circles of serious thinkers that video games are a young medium and that we are forging new territory with our criticism. That is of course bullshit in both respects. Video game critics are often cut off from other mediums. May perhaps that our medium is so new that more energy is required to get anything done as each new step is not just walking along a singular path among the fold, but having to stir and pour the concrete before a step may be taken. | more

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‘Unrest’: A Tug of War Between Player Knowledge and Character Knowledge

December 3, 2014 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Moving Pixels, PopMatters, Unrest I played and reviewed Unrest, one of the cut paragraphs from that review turned into this post about the dramatic irony Unrest creates in the space between player knowledge and character knowledge. This is an extremely simplified version of the original post. For reasons I’m not going to get into this was post was supposed to be a short replacement piece for this week. | more

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NPC – Non Play Criticism: Comic Books and Literary Criticism

It is a truism in video game circles of serious thinkers that video games are a young medium and that we are forging new territory with our criticism. That is of course bullshit in both respects. Video game critics are often cut off from other mediums. May perhaps that our medium is so new that more energy is required to get anything done as each new step is not just walking along a singular path among the fold, but having to stir and pour the concrete before a step may be taken. | more

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Choose Your Own Clementine

Finally, after months post-release we get around to concluding our podcast series on The Walking Dead Season 2. It has been interesting to see the reception of Season 2 over Season 1. I feel that it’s a little more than the fact in 2012 The Walking Dead was new and fresh to people and in 2014 it wasn’t. As we say in our wrap up Season 2 is a little bit of a mess, one way or another. It struggled to connect to its audience the same way the first season seemed to do almost instantly. | more

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A House Dividing

Despite a bit of a scheduling hiccup, our talk on episode 4 of The Walking Dead Season 2 is out. Instead of discussing the episode itself, I want to touch on something that happened concerning this episode elsewhere. About two days after recording this episode, IGN held a sit down with two of Telltale’s designers. During that talk the subject of Sarah’s death came up. It was made light of as well as the rash way a player has to behave in order for Sarah to save herself. | more

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NPC – Non Play Criticism: The End of Evangelion Caused By The Audience

November 7, 2014 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Anime, Non Play Criticism It is a truism in video game circles of serious thinkers that video games are a young medium and that we are forging new territory with our criticism. That is of course bullshit in both respects. Video game critics are often cut off from other mediums. | more