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Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Never Break the Flow: Interface Design in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

Again, I write about Driver: San Francisco and again it’s at PopMatters. Instead of going the more esoteric route with the game, this time I went for straight design analysis simplicity. It only occurred to me afterwords that I probably should have started from this angle and worked my way up. I’m actually a little disheartened that nobody else has taken up the torch for this game and got to writing. It was largely forgotten once it was released and didn’t have that much hype industry wide, despite IGN’s best efforts to pump people up for it. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

‘Driver: San Francisco’ and ‘Drive’

In my campaign to single handedly push Driver: San Francisco into the critical consciousness I have written yet another piece for PopMatters on the game. That makes 3 total so far. I amaze myself that I’m still able to write about the game from fresh angles after all this time. I knew I was going to write about Driver and how it relates to Drive before I had even the seen the movie. I felt like there could have been a connection, but then I saw it and it’s a phenomenal movie and has absolutely no connection to what Driver is about despite the similar titles. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

TWIVGB on a tight schedule

Last weekend I did another TWIVGB for Critical Distance. Kris Ligman hasn’t been feeling all that well and I suggested she hand it off to Katie for a week to relieve some stress and get better. Well, I ended up being the only non-busy person this weekend and now Kris is bleeding from her face. But I’m not going to talk about that here. Just wish her better and move on to something that occurred to me during last week's curation. Due to one thing and another I didn’t get all the suggestions from the week dumped on me until Saturday evening. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

PopMatters Top 20 Games of 2011

Well, PopMatters put up their list of top 20 games of 2011. I was a proud participant in their first ever end of year list for games. Back in December G. Christopher Williams put out an email that we were doing this and despite it only coming out recently all the decisions and blurb writing was completed obstinately before the new year. It was done by having all of us listing our favorite games of the year in order and our editor did some voodoo math to come out with this list. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Atmosphere is enough: Why Flower succeeded where Limbo failed

This was a piece that spawned from the end of last year’s debate on Limbo. I figured I might try to be more positive and provide an example that actual does the atmospheric storytelling well instead of ragging on Limbo all the time. I really did want to like that game. If only it wasn’t avant-garde just to catch attention and could follow through.  After a little time thinking of a few titles, I figured Flower was the best one to make my point. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

The Intersection of Mechanics and Aesthetics in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

My second post on Driver: San Francisco is up on PopMatters. I’m surprised the title made it through at all. Hell, I’m surprised I wasn’t told to write something else. I mentioned on twitter I was playing fast and loose with terminology and was told that is how you know you made it. This piece spawned from the simple thought of how the game got around the problem of breaking my immersion by taking innocent civilians in their cars and smashing them into oncoming traffic. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Episode 9 of the CDC Podcast

Yeah so another podcast episode came out this week. I know, there must be something in the water. Well it’s the missing episode 9 that was recorded back in August in an attempt to release it for the third anniversary of Braid’s release on the XBLA. Rather foolish as I spent three weeks trying to get a panel together and ended up doing an open call for people on twitter 10 minutes before recording. I may just do all future Critical Compilation Companions like that. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

It’s all in the presentation: Why I let Driver: San Francisco get away with poor driving

And because I submitted my PopMatters post a bit late for a Tuesday release it got pushed back to Thursday, so I ended up giving everyone a double dose of Driver: San Francisco love. My Nightmare Mode post though focuses more on the ongoing narrative I seem to be building about racing/driving games across my posts. I realize how damn lucky I got that the first driving game I tried was Burnout: Paradise with all junk I’ve been going through since. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Magical Realism as a Game Mechanic in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

My second post is up at PopMatters, this time looking at an actual game. Thanks to the scheduling of the hiatus on the Moving Pixels Blog at the end of last year meant that my second post would be pushed back to the new year. Driver: San Francisco is a game that is so much better than its advertising gives it any right to be. This is another case of the developers and PR not knowing how to sell their own game. Driver: San Francisco is a slow burn of a game. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

Words Have Meaning Dammit

I just read this post, a pretty well written one, talking about the trash lady from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He contends that the character in question is not racism. His is only correct on a technicality, but his reasoning has me boiling. See, he argues that racism requires intentionality. [These sentences have been removed until they can be corrected properly.] Then he goes too far. Several times he gives examples that show words have no meaning without intention, but he removes all context so that there could be no intention. | more