Tag: Critical Distance

Eric Swain External Sources

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2017 – Post-Mortem

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2017. I have done so many of these post-mortems it’s getting to the point I feel like I may just be repeating myself. Yet, at the same time, I can’t help but look back at the project this year and think of how far I’ve come over the past 8 years. Eight years. Damn. A lot has changed over that time. I was still in college when I started doing this. In 2010, I had an idea. Critical Distance does roundups for the best criticism featured during the week. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Minisode 16 – Milkmaids and Vikings

This is the last minisode of the year for the Critical Distance Confab. Thank you to Angelina Bonilla, Red Angel, for sticking around after her interview to do this extra 15 minutes of recording. I’ll admit, I’m a little iffy about how well we hyped up these two games. Red Angel was trying not to spoil anything and thereby leave the mystery intact to be discovered. I was trying to explain another game where its greatness comes from the building of many details compounding on one another and is not easily reduced to pithy statements. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Red Angel

I wrap up this series of interviews with video producers and essayists by checking out relative newbie and indie game specialist, Angelina Bonilla, better known as Red Angel. (Also, a lot easier to say apparently.) We had a long fruitful conversation in which Red Angel was able to display her enthusiasm and passion as she explained her own work. And yes, as cliche as it is, we did talk about her being a woman in this field. Together the two of us could only think of three women doing this type of work. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Minisode 15 – Horror Games Mark II

The latest minisode is up on the Critical Distance Confab. Returning for another horror themed episode is my associate from the Moving Pixels Podcast, Nick Dinicola. I haven’t played a lot of horror games recently, so I went with the one I had played, Stories Untold. It was the game we chose to do for our Halloween episode of the Moving Pixels Podcast, which ended up coming out on the same day. Ironies of irony, given that this is a podcast about highlighting games nobody is talking about, the day prior Campster released a video talking about it. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – PostMesmeric

Alex Carlson, the subject of this month’s interview on the Critical Distance Confab, and his channel PostMesmeric is a relatively new find for me. Because YouTube can only find it in itself to recommend videos I’ve already watched (multiple times) it closes off a lot of what is out there to me. I can’t find new channels and voices because the system does not allow you to know they exist. This is bad enough for channels that have enough subscribers to count as a following, but for small channels like PostMesmeric such treatment is a sentence to toil away in obscurity. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Heavy Eyed

Last week, we released our next podcast interview with one Mitch Cramer aka HeavyEyed on the Critical Distance Confab. This Kiwi (is that derogatory? should I just go with New Zealander?) relatively new voice on the scene and our discussion is mostly about him finding his footing as a critic. We are rapidly approaching the present with this series as Mitch only started near the end of 2015. It’s getting to the point where there just isn’t enough material or work to talk about for the people who started so soon, relatively speaking. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Critical Distance Confab Minisodes Are Back

August 31, 2017 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Critical Distance, Podcast Yesterday, I published the first minisode in over a year for the Critical Distance Confab, the Critical Distance podcast. Instead of just advertising the fact that minisodes are back, I’d like to take this chance to go over the whole story behind them: the behind the scenes thinking that went into them, why they left and why they’re now back. | more

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 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

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