January 11, 2018 Eric Swain Thoughts

2007: Ten Years Later

Back in 2014, Tony Zhou, of Every Frame A Painting fame, wrote a blog post about the best films of 2004. It wasn’t stating what they were, but rather a survey of what the critics said they were, a glance at the box office and then comparing the two against what films stood the test of time a decade hence. He went on to use that data to explain why certain films lasted and why they did over certain other films in the same year. I took inspiration from the first part of that effort. | more

January 9, 2018 Eric Swain Thoughts

Laptop Fluff 2.0

January 9, 2018 | Filed under: Recent Posts, Thoughts and tagged with: Fluff, laptop, RSS A bunch of years ago, I bought a new laptop, one with an actual dedicated graphics card and modern processor. Sufficed to say that as time moved on, it was not as hot or useful as it was when I got it. It wasn’t just that games nowadays require more power in pretty much everything — processor, graphics card, RAM — and year even indie games were causing my computer to chug at times, but really the problem was that thanks to the ongoing updates, my internet browser were causing constant slowdowns and crashes. | more

March 25, 2014 Eric Swain Thoughts

A Podcast Data Entry Project

I missed this week’s and last week’s post on PopMatters because I got a little too caught up in trying to finish another self-inflicted project. For a while now the Moving Pixels podcast RSS feed has been borked thanks to what I suspect was an internal update to the backend. Part of that means that the podcast episodes no longer appear on iTunes. iTunes reads it off of the feed and if the feed says there are no episodes on it then it displays no episodes. | more

February 6, 2014 Eric Swain Thoughts

Weekend Digital Couch Chats

I’ve posted this on twitter a few times over the last couple of weeks, but in interest of explaining it better I’m going to put it into long form. I’m increasingly annoyed at twitter’s ultimate design of output. It’s not good for a lot of things and over time people have expanded its usage, but it's reaching the point where its causing more problem on both a surface level as well as to the underpinning of debate, discussion and even the simple act of talking. | more

December 8, 2013 Eric Swain Thoughts

The Revolution is Over

December 8, 2013 | Filed under: Recent Posts, Thoughts and tagged with: Indie Game, VGX Ignore the title. I suck at titles. Last night Spike’s VGX awards ceremony was broadcast all over the internet and as expected it was the cultural travesty we’ve all come to expect from it. I’m not really interested in how they can remedy the situation and fix the awards show, instead I want to use it to point at a larger trend that seems to be taking place this year. | more

June 7, 2013 Eric Swain Thoughts

Against Sequels

June 7, 2013 | Filed under: Recent Posts, Thoughts This is something that’s been on my mind and with E3 starting next week, somewhat timely. I don’t particularly like sequels. I don’t like additions. I like completed wholes. I like stories with beginnings, middles and, most importantly, ends. One of my favorite TV shows, if not my favorite, The Wire is so because it knew when to stop. If I was asked if I would like another season of The Wire, it would be tough, but in the end, I’d say no. | more

June 6, 2013 Eric Swain Thoughts

Xbox One

I did the PS4 a while back, so now its Microsoft’s Xbox One’s turn. First off, yes the reveal conference was underwhelming and I spent most of it reading on my tablet and keeping up with twitter for the snark. A note on that: there was a lot less bile for Microsoft than Sony. Snark yes, bile no. Might have had to do with the fact it was 1 in the afternoon and not in the evening when most of the west was home. | more

March 7, 2013 Eric Swain Thoughts

Game Changer of the Next Generation

So, the PS4 announcement was a thing and amid the hype, the backlash to the hype and the reasoned deconstruction of what was revealed I keep seeing the same things focused on. The PS4 is showing more of the same, the PS4 has a share button that could do things, the PS4 has or hasn’t set itself up as a new generation system. I’m not going to argue or dispute any of that. Though I will give a general shame on you to those spreading their bile. | more

March 2, 2013 Eric Swain Thoughts

GoFundMe for PAX East

PAX East is coming up soon and like last year I have managed to secure a Press Pass for the event. I’ve gone twice in the past three since PAX East started and have always had a good time. I’ve gotten to meet some wonderful people that I’ve only ever talked to on twitter before. This year however, despite having a pass and have arranged a place to stay for the weekend I don’t have the money to actually get up there. | more

February 20, 2013 Eric Swain Thoughts

‘What do you think will be the best game of the year?’

February 20, 2013 | Filed under: Recent Posts, Thoughts and tagged with: Guess Seemingly every year at the beginning of the year everyone asks themselves and each other what games are they most looking forward to and what they think will be the best. Often one question presupposes the other in the asking. 2013 is no different. Though after the landmark year that was 2012, I think that the question is fundamentally different than it was in previous years. | more