January 2, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

My Work in 2014

It’s become customary to share ones work at the end of the year in one big roundup. I think it should be pretty obvious by now that I’m in favor of looking back and reflecting upon the past year. I don’t feel like going to deep on it though other than making mention of what I managed to accomplish. I fell apart quite a few times and couldn’t keep up with my own set workload, so I’d rather just let the aggregate of what I did worth mentioning be it. I continued to be on a lot of podcasts this year. | more

December 30, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2014 – Post-Mortem

This is my fifth This Year In Video Game Blogging feature. That means I have been a part of Critical Distance for over 5 years. That still hasn’t quite sunk in. I wrote up the methodology for how the TYIVGB feature gets done at the beginning of the month, but I figured I’d still do a post-mortem talking about how it actually went down. I had so much to say when I was silently trudging through the entire list of things to read and consider. Now I find myself somewhat silent now that it is out. | more

December 18, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Actually, It’s About…2014

Released today was our annual end of year wrap-up podcast. This year I brought up regular Kris Ligman, semi-regular Alan Williamson and newbie to the podcast Lana Polansky. This year sucked. I think pretty much everyone can agree on that. However, because every year we all end up feeling miserable we decided to avoid directly talking about the biggest story of the year and in doing so found the year was a much nicer time that we had all forgotten. I like that year. | more

January 31, 2014 Eric Swain Game Issues

TGC 2013 Game of the Year

A running theme in my life is that I’m always behind, always late, which is why you are getting my list for my 2013 games of the year at the end of January of 2014. I wanted to give myself more time to actually play some games because my December is usually concerned with other matters. I got some played, but nowhere near as many as I would have liked. As I look over other people’s and other sites’ lists for what they thought were the best games I notice a big divide, more so than probably any other year over the definition of what such an arbitrary list means in the first place. | more

January 30, 2014 Eric Swain Game Issues

Top 13 Most Talked About Games of 2013

January 30, 2014 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year In the run up to Critical Distance’s annual end of year podcast I was under instruction to shrink it by whatever means necessary. No one was in the mood for another 7-9 hours recording session and as the date came closer, I was in no mood to edit one. I cut down the events list by merging items and collectively we knocked off most of the inconsequential stuff. | more

January 12, 2013 Eric Swain Game Issues

TGC 2012 Game of the Year

I wanted to get this done earlier. In fact, I like having my game of the year post before the end of the actual year. For the last two years that meant taking time out of New Years Eve celebrations for typing it up. That didn’t happen this year because of my next point. I have played more games last year from that year than I have ever done so before. | more

January 6, 2013 Eric Swain External Sources

PopMatter’s Top Games of 2012

I was lucky enough to be asked to participate in PopMatter’s game of the year list. Their second one to date. I was also invited onto the Moving Pixels podcast to talk even more about the best games of the year. I don’t have any long diatribe about the nature of the list this year. Though I understand the time constraints, it is a little disheartening to see a year like 2011 (one of the weakest on record) get a top 20 and 2012 (probably going to hailed as one of the strongest) only get a top 10. | more

January 2, 2013 Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance 2012 End of Year Extravaganza

For the third year in a row, I decided not to enjoy my winter break with video games, but drive myself to exhaustion doing the Critical Distance end of year projects. Episode 11 of the CDC Podcast – The Talking Dead and the 2012 This Year In Video Game Blogging round up. Both did not go as smoothly as planned. The CDC podcast this time around was longer than any I’ve done before. Even by cutting the cast down to only 4 people (Myself, Kris, Alan and Ian) it still ended up longer than last year. | more

December 31, 2012 Eric Swain Game Issues

State of the Blog ’12

Holy crap on a stick. I’ve been doing this for four full years. That is gratifying in some ways and utterly depressing in others. But as many laments that I have over myself and the path that my career, or rather lack of one, I choose to spend this time over what I have accomplished than what I have failed at. It seems year over year I have posted more despite a 4-year stint of stagnation of which I can’t remember what happened at all. 47 posts here at The Game Critique over last year’s 33 and the year before's 24. | more

January 31, 2012 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