Tag: Critique

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

In Which I Respond to A Blunt Critique of Game Criticism

(Quick history: About a year and half ago I took issue with another of Danc’s posts, the Three False Constraints. It was the longest post I ever wrote. Then his latest post came out and I wrote a 13-page response in one night a week later after it had been edited. A combination of poor sleep schedule, life and laziness kept me from editing it. It was also 13 pages long. In that intervening time it has been edited again, apparently. I couldn’t care less about what was added and this is long enough. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

An Act of Non-Consequence

I've been on a documentary binge as of late (Thank you Netflix) having watched 6 in the last 24 hours at the time of writing. As it so happens while watching them, I noticed a correlation in the behavior of the subjects of the majority of the documentaries and players of video games. The documentaries in question, or rather the aspects of the documentaries I'm going to talk about, all deal with the idea of responsibility. Of course it's very easy to point to who is responsible, but then the question becomes 'why did/do these things happen in the first place? | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

What Do I Do Here?

Usually I take the criticism silently and appreciatively and I still do, but after more than seven months I'm still getting the same comment. "I can't wait to see where your going with your blog." It is a little annoying that after all this time my blog still feels schizophrenic enough that I haven't fallen into any sort of groove yet. I felt that I had to spend some time examining my thoughts and my opinions of critiquing in a way I have never done so before and probably should have done in the first place. I sat down and thought about what exactly where I want to go with this site. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

L.B. Jeffries on Video Game Critics

I love L.B. Jeffries' writing. To me he is one of the most eloquent and hardest working in our field. And to my knowledge does it all for free. He has also described himself as the angry young man of game criticism. Last year he turned his critical eye towards the idea of the video game critic. He explored critics from other mediums and then looked back at what we as game critics could learn from them. Personally I've tried to take some of these ideas as base point to work from, but even then I don't think anyone has gotten a methodology that works to encompass the player's input. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Zarathustran Analysis compliation

L.B. Jeffries is one of the best video game critics on the web right now, in my humble opinion. Back last April through June he wrote a 10 part series on how to critique as oppose to review games. He called it Zarathustran analysis. It is a little dense, but then the subject its working with isn't exactly easy to work with. These articles are a little old, but are a must read. (Only on the internet is 7 months old. | more