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Eric Swain External Sources

The Change Economics Wrought on Design: ‘Magic: The Gathering’ and ‘Hearthstone’

And I’m back to writing my PopMatters column, though a few days late thanks to a mixup in the backend, but what can you expect when I don’t write anything for over two months. Hearthstone has been taking up a lot of my gaming time in recent months, so I figured I should speak to my feeling about it. I was really into it starting out. Every day I would play for quite a long time. But then I hit the free-to-play wall. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Reviews for March/April/May

I stopped writing PopMatters columns back in March for a number of reasons, all of which have to do with being super busy trying to get technical things to work and those things refusing to. I really want to get back to writing again instead of staring at code sheets, but at least I kept up with the reviews at any rate. I love Shadowrun: Dragonfall. When I finished the game, I exclaimed on twitter that I hoped I wouldn’t even up being hyperbolic when I say it is the front runner for my game of the year. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Exploring the Rituals and Riddles of ‘Year Walk’

We pick up after last time with Simogo’s other notable work from last year, Year Walk. This discussion this time around is more about the amorphous nature of the game itself rather than a detailing of the meticulous construction like in our Device 6 podcast. Year Walk is more about atmosphere and experiencing the folklore of a culture we are not as familiar with. We also get into the differences between the iOS mobile version and the PC version and how Simogo utilizes each format’s particulars to the game’s advantage. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

A Game of Words, Exploring ‘Device 6′

This week on the Moving Pixels podcast we look to last year’s iOS standout, Device 6. It’s always nice to come out of a conversation with a greater appreciation of the game in question than you went in with. That exactly what happened here with our discussion of Device 6 and it’s thematic underbelly. So, give the podcast a listen here and enjoy. *sings* “That’s Anna. Oh, sweet Anna. Dreams are coming true. One in a million that is you.” *sings* | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Little Human, Big Apocalypse

It may be a little past the time when everyone else was talking about it, but the Moving Pixels Podcast episode on The Walking Dead Season 2 episode 2 is now up on PopMatters. We look at the continuing struggles of the second season to truly provide the same type of morally dubious choices that so endeared us to the first season. At the same time, I think we understand that isn’t as big a problem even if it doesn’t lead to as easily set up discussions. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Another Hand of ‘Hearthstone’

My what a difference a couple of weeks makes. We recorded this episode of the Moving Pixels podcast several weeks ago and Hearthstone, as well as my understanding of it, has changed quite a bit. It’s quite funny really, how much my understanding of the game has changed in the time since we recorded the podcast. So many assertions and details are just wrong and my own predictions are so off base. For instance, I figured Blizzard would announce a new play mode – Tournament – to the menu. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Seamier Side of Fairy Tales

Another Moving Pixels podcast is up. This time we discuss the second episode of The Wolf Among Us. This was recorded back on Sunday of IndieCade East. I had gotten back from the city only about half an hour before. Luckily my tiredness doesn’t weigh down the discussion. It’s another good, long critical discussion. We start off with a long section about the form of the Telltale style adventure game and how it affects our reaction regarding The Wolf Among Us in comparison to the first season of The Walking Dead, before moving on to the specific events and character beats of the episode itself. | more

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

Eric Swain External Sources

TWIVGB March 23rd and Critical Distance FAQ

With Kris spending the entire week at GDC, I stepped in to take the reins for this week’s Critical Distance roundup. As Critical Proximity was last week and Kris apparently has spent a good deal of time explaining Critical Distance to a bunch of new people, mostly middleware developers, I figured this would be a good time to go over much of the basics around Critical Distance as we still get asked much of this. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Brothers’, A Tale of Rubbing Your Belly, While Patting Your Head

March 17, 2014 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Moving Pixels, Podcast, PopMatters This week’s episode of the Moving Pixels Podcast is on Brother: A Tale of Two Sons. Brothers is a game that made it into my personal top 5 last year on the back of it utilizing the medium to do something different and far more focused than most video games can claim. | more