Tag: Experimental

Eric Swain Game Issues

Virulent, Vociferous and Vocal

(Excuse this entire article. I wrote this a few weeks ago when I needed to do so. This ended up as my version of stream of consciousness writing and given how I normally write that’s saying something. But, at this point, it’s merely an exercise in style and testing a new feature on the site. I have no idea if there is anything worthwhile to be gleaned in this post. If there is, great. If not, you were warned.) I generally like to give credit to what inspired me to think along certain lines with an essay. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues

Hypothetical Moral Behaviors

Last week I concluded a series of posts on moral choice in games, the first three posts looking at the idea of making specific choices at specific moments and the last about the choices we make that result in our constant play behavior throughout. I identified two ways behavior acts as a moral attribute. Either the behavior reflects a moral being in the player character or it allows the player to choose a path based on a play style that reflects a moral standing on an issue, usually violence. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

Existential Critical Crisis

(This is late. This was meant to come out over a week ago. It’s ironic that it was so difficult a piece of criticism to write in that it deals with criticism itself.  I still don’t think it’s quite right, but it’s got to come out sometime.) I said on twitter last week in response to the bad Freeplay panel that I would…hang on; let me see if I can find it. … Here it is: Well I’ve done a bit of that so far from one perspective and another, but here is the big enchilada. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

So How Did I Do on TWIVGB

Well Ben Abraham was away from the internet last week, something to do with spelunking I think, and asked me to step in as writer of the This Week In Video Game Blogging feature again. I don't know what it is, but every time I take up the task the internet decides that this is the week to get super prolific. So, we I ended up writing what I believe to be the second longest TWIVGB...so far. It didn't help that my list of links doubled about an hour before I should have written the damn thing. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

January’s ’09 Round Table Entry – Sister Carrie

Putting the Game Before the Book: What would your favorite piece of literature look like if it had been created as a game first? ...rather than challenge you to imagine the conversion of your favorite literature into games, I challenge you to supersede the source literature and imagine a game that might have tried to communicate the same themes, the same message, to its audience. Better late than never. | more