January 5, 2016 Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Goes Around the World in ’80 Days’

And we get around to playing and talking about one of my favorite games in 2014, 80 Days. I’ve said quite a bit on this game already and I bring that preparedness to the discussion. Really, it’s an hour of the three of us valorizing this game and all the various stories it has within it. We get into what it changes from the original book, what experience it gives us as its own work and all the various social mores it upends by presenting a different view of the late 19th century. | more

February 20, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

Haywire Magazine: Games of 2014

February 20, 2015 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: 80 Days, Game of Year, Haywire Magazine, Jazzpunk, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Unrest Editor in Chief of Haywire Magazine Joe Köller put out the word some time ago that they were doing another roundup of the best games of the year by getting as many critics together to write blurbs for as many games as they could. This year I participated alongside 32 other video game critics. | more

February 3, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

’80 Days’ and the Limits of Fiction

My weekly column is up on PopMatters on inkle’s 80 Days. Don’t read it. It’s shit. Due to a miscommunication, the wrong version was posted and now there’s nothing that can be done about it. It can’t be edited and I can delete it. Below is the correct text to the post. The only change made in deference to the PopMatters’ version is the title. | more

December 21, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

Reviews for October/November/December

These are the last few reviews I published at PopMatters for 2014. I do feel I’m getting better at the practice. I really did want to like Gods Will Be Watching. Of course, what person doesn’t want to play a game they won't like. It’s more than that, though. I have a penchant for gravitating towards works of a philosophical bent. Early on we get that the game is about making hard choices in impossible situations and the sacrifices that have to be made. I soldiered through to the end. | more

December 11, 2014 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

December 10, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

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