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Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – The Critic and the Dragon

Joseph Anderson was one of the bigger YouTubers I managed to get for an interview. The larger one’s subscriber count, the harder it is to get a hold of them. (At least if you don’t already know them like I did with Chris Franklin.) So, I was really glad that I kept pinging away until one of my messages got noticed the deluge of emails he gets. Apparently, I was also the first interview and podcast he’s ever done. I should probably frame this tweet or something. | more

Eric Swain Game Essays

Thoughts on Batman – The Telltale Series Episode 1

August 11, 2017 | Filed under: Game Essays, Recent Posts and tagged with: Batman, Batman - The Telltale Series, Telltale After finishing the first episode of last year’s Telltale Batman game I was just gushing with observations, criticisms and other related thoughts. Instead of trying to pound them into a coherent essay (any one of these points could make an essay unto itself), I figured it would be more accurate and honest to leave them as the grab bag of thoughts they were. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Prepares for ‘Titanfall 2′

This week we welcome guest Max Bernard of ‘Great Levels in Gaming’ YouTube series to talk Titanfall 2. We take a break from the episodic games we’ve started to dive into one of the best shooters of last year, that statistically you haven’t played. It’s a masterclass of design and spectacle and we take a roving tour of the game’s level highlights from beginning to end. The episode is live on PopMatters, SoundCloud, iTunes and through the RSS feed. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Moving Pixels Podcast: Tales from the Borderlands Episode 3 – Catch a Ride

This week we continue our drive through Telltale’s episodic adventure game, Tales from the Borderlands, with episode 3 “Catch a Ride.” Sorry about last week, there was a slight snafu hitting the Monday release date. Then then episode was supposed to go up mid-week last week, but that didn’t happen either. So, it’s released this Monday and we’ll be back on schedule next week with the next episode. No extra waiting for it. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – A Measured Response: Hbomb

A new interview on the Critical Distance Confab is up. This time with YouTube critic and vaudevillian Harry Brewis, also known as Hbomberguy. (I will never get tired of that moniker. YouTube Vaudevillian.) Proving once again that preparation and not being hocked up on cold medication makes for a better, livelier interview. I was extremely happy with how it turned out, so of course this is first episode I get actual feedback about my worst nightmare: the audio. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Goes ‘Knee Deep’ in Swamp Noir

We begin another episodic adventure game to alternate between episodes of the podcast. We begin with episode 1 of Knee Deep. The episode is a bit more chaotic than usual, mostly because I don’t think any of us knew quite what to make of Knee Deep. It’s not a bad game, but it’s also not really a good one either. It’s doing quite a few interesting things, but also, its positioned itself as more generic work in the gaming landscape. It’s hard to read into it when everything it’s doing is rather boilerplate. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

TGC Game of the Year 2016 Addendum

I struggled a bit with my game of the year list, mainly because I was trying to squeeze more games than would fit. 15 games into 10 slots at final count. I debated whether I should increase the list to 15 to accommodate all the games I wanted to mention. I also did think about forgoing the top 10 format entirely. With an alphabetical list I could put as many as I wanted onto the list without getting wonky with the numbering system. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

TGC Game of the Year 2016

July 5, 2017 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year, Game of the Year Time got away from me. I could have passed on doing this altogether, never published it and nobody would have cared, but I’d know. I’d know and that would gnaw at me. This is a wrap up to 2016. In a way, this is an exercising of the last remnants of that year. Things haven’t improved overall, but carrying on any psychic baggage that could otherwise be compartmentalized away from the present is something I don’t want to do and cannot afford myself. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Talking on Games

There interview was delayed a little thanks to E3, but here it is with Hamish Black of Writing on Games. I want to quickly apologize for how I sound and my less than stellar ability in asking questions in this one. At the time I thought I was normal and all right to go. Only during the editing did I realize how loopy on antibiotics I was. I also want to make some observations on the changing nature of these interviews that isn’t appropriate to say in the official post. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Discusses ‘Tales from the Borderlands Episode 2′

We continue our episodic discussions of Telltale’s Tales from the Borderlands with episode 2. There has been a big change in how we handle episodic games in our podcast between this series and the last time we tackled a Telltale game. Before they were a form of audio playthrough. We went chronologically through the events of each episode discussing plot points and our rational for our choices. We did much the same when we did Life is Strange. But our discussion for Tales from the Borderlands is much more fluid. | more