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Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Explores ‘This is the Police’

This week we dig into the Belarus indie police simulator This is the Police. It was a game that seemed fine at first, but slowly devolved into ‘I don’t give a fuck just be over already.’ I danced around what I felt the major failing of it was, because I hadn’t completely ordered my thoughts on it, but it’s so damn cynical for no reason. And cynical in a way that doesn’t really make sense. It’s a depressing cartoon of a police force that so desperately wants to be taken seriously. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Great Levels, The Best Levels In Gaming

It’s a little late, but the first episode of the Critical Distance Confab for 2017 is up. I interview Max Barnyard about his YouTube show Great Levels in Gaming. We were migrating the server, so uploading the actual mp3 got delayed by several days. This is January’s episode and, despite it releasing in February, you can expect to see another interview later this month. I’d also like to apologize about the first 4 minutes or so of audio. What happened to the previous recording, happened to this one. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Experiences ‘Event 0′

This week we go into deep space and talk to a ship AI in Event [0]. We discuss language as a mechanic as through most of the game you are uncovering what happened on a derelict star ship by way of real text conversation with the ship’s AI. The game is a marvel of technical prowess. But we each had issues with it came together as a whole. Strangely enough, each of us had different issues. You can find the episode on PopMatters, SoundCloud, iTunes and through the RSS feed. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

My PopMatters Reviews from 2016

I haven’t written for PopMatters in quite a while. When I went to go upload post an article for them the other week I found that I no longer was able to. Most likely my permissions have been changed. Last year, I did write a number of reviews that I never got around to linking to here. I’m still going to appear on the podcast, but given my current situation with the site, this will most likely be the final roundup of written material I published on PopMatters. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Moving Pixels Podcast: The Best Games of 2016

This week on the Moving Pixels Podcast we list our top 5 games of 2016. As I say at the beginning of the podcast, this isn’t my final list. They’ll all most likely appear on my final list, that should be coming soon. But my goal here was to talk up games that we hadn’t done podcasts on and wouldn’t really get talked about. I succeeded in part. My compatriots on the podcast might have cheated a little with their choices, but ehh. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2016 – Post-Mortem

Has it really been seven years of me doing This Year In Video Game Blogging. Good lord. I hate myself for doing this. Without a doubt, every time I do this project, I hate myself and promise myself outrageous things like, “I’m never doing it again.” It’s painful, exhausting and I usually end up miserable for the entire duration of December. Skipping both birthday and Christmas in my efforts to get this shit done. But, before we go any further, I must link the methodology post for how we do the year end roundup. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Investigates ‘Gravity Bone’ and ‘Thirty Flights of Loving’

This week we look at two small games by Brenden Chung, Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving. Following up on our discussion Virginia we decided to look back at the games we figured had to be an inspiration for its choice of using film editing language. Coming at these two games, many years after their release and their initial splash on the critical scene, we find they hold up very well and in fact still feel part of the vanguard of narrative experimentation. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Interrogates ‘Virginia’

On this, the last Moving Pixels Podcast of the year, we look at the cinematic adventure game, Virginia. There’s a lot to talk about with Virginia, mainly because no one in the game says anything themselves. The entire game is wordless, even my quote below required some stretching to get. Because of that, a lot of the game is up to interpretation and insinuation. Of course, before you can ask what is going on, you have to reckon with how the game is delivering its visual experience. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Every Game a Painting

November 30, 2016 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Critical Distance, Podcast The November episode of the Critical Distance Confab is finally out. Continuing in chronological order brings up to Mr. Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit. I do feel like I should apologize for this podcast being so late. Though probably in the end it was best I didn’t hit the 15th target date as it would have gotten lost in the shuffle. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Exploring the Mind-Body Connection in ‘Soma’

This week, we finish our trilogy of going through the Frictional Games oeuvre with their latest game, SOMA. I really love this game. It was my number 2 game of last year. When we started down this Amnesia route, I knew this was the superior game already and couldn’t wait to get to it and dig in. The discussion we had did not disappoint. Also, stick around for after the ending music. My ending quote inspired an 8-minute discussion on one of the characters. | more