July 23, 2012 Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts The RPG Lineage Chart Way back at PAX East I got to talking with some people over dinner Saturday and one of the topics that came up was my Dragon Age II Lineage post I did the year before and the research that went into it. I described what I did and that I ended up making a chart. In looking through my collection of business cards from that weekend I believe it was Scott Macmillan that asked to see that chart if he could. Well, I found it recently after the recent home renovation in a pile of papers and roleplaying books. | more
March 16, 2012 Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts A Clarification of Genre: RPG Please read A Clarification of Genre: Introduction because this post will be building off of the foundation concepts put forth there. That post also contains some clarifications for how I will be writing this series. You can read the previous entries: Action and Adventure. Now comes the big enchilada. The one I’m sure to get the most arguments/hate mail about. RPG I’m going to break up the formula of the posts for this one and instead of starting off with the definition of the Super-genre, I’m going to work up to it via the thought process by which it came about. | more
March 12, 2012 Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts A Clarification of Genre: Introduction Several months ago, I tried to explain some of the problems I saw with the discussions of video game genres. These conversations around what are Adventure game and RPGs keep popping up every couple of days in posts and all over twitter and I wanted to address some concerns with what I saw taking place in these conversations. I didn’t convey my ideas well at the time. Also, spawning off of this post I realized that while people debate genre there is a lot of annoyance at these debates at the perceived uselessness of the idea of genres. | more
November 14, 2011 Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts The Supergenres of Action, RPGs and Adventure Games I wrote a piece for Gameranx asking the question, ‘What is action/adventure?‘ This is part of the larger question about game genres, one that’s been discussed at length over twitter and several posts have come up as well with regards of what certain genres are. As much as the genre debate is generally one of semantics, or in the case of Action/Adventure pigeonholing, I feel there is a necessary undercurrent of philosophy and focus behind the question of what they are that is generally lacking in the current discussion. | more
