May 23, 2011 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
March 19, 2010 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
September 15, 2009 Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts Where are all the War Games? I've been playing Battlefield 1943 a lot lately. It's the first shooter in a long time that I've played. I am usually a single player game kind of guy and usually shun multiplayer modes, unless the person is sitting right next to me. But I tried out the demo and I was hooked in the free half hour it gave me and immediately bought the unlocked game. Playing it lead me to a realization. | more
August 28, 2009 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
March 18, 2009 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
February 27, 2009 QWERTY Recent Posts How to Write Good Video Game Critique (Since I am hard up for content I figured a weekly thing might be just the thing. When I described what I do here, one guy insisted that he write it. He submitted some posts and having read some of it, I now feel that this was a very bad idea. But I promised so this will be on a trial basis and will need the following: ) | more
December 18, 2008 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
December 17, 2008 Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune – design that is so much more I also write for the design blog Creativefluff.com, where I turn my eyes towards the design aspects of video games. Here is a bridge article between that site and this one where I examine the PS3 exclusive Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and find the design aspects lead to a little more than just a great game if you're willing to look. | more