March 16, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

This War of Ours

Continuing to talk about games from last year, we dig into the narrative and systems of This War of Mine. I like the game on a micro level, but feels it falls apart somewhat on a macro level. I don’t think it can maintain itself with what it has. It needs more contextual material otherwise that part of game dries up. My compatriots have different opinions. You can give it a listen here. Additionally, we’re still trying to get the podcast back on iTunes and hitting one snag after another. | more

March 12, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Books Fight Boss

This was meant to go up in February. In general, we want the podcasts to go up on the 15th, in the middle of the month. But the 15th was a Sunday and TWIVGB schedule takes precedence. Then I has one of the busiest months when it comes to outings and it turned out to be one of the toughest editing jobs yet.1 So it’s late. I had a good talk with BossFightBook’s founder and editor Gabe Durham about his little publishing house. Continuing the theme of interviewing people having to do with video game books. | more

February 3, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

Investigating ‘Ethan Carter’

This week on the Moving Pixels Podcast we try to parse out The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Thanks to Steam sales and a lot of great games hitting near the tail end of last year, we’re doing some catch up. Kind of grateful that January has been slow in that respect. It ended up being a pretty great discussion because none of us really agreed with the interpretation and evaluation. Or at least it was going well until the last 10 minutes or so when I try to make a point I can’t quite articulate on the fly and fumble the whole thing. | more

January 19, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

Moving Pixels Podcast: Our Best Games of 2014

It’s that time of year again, the one where critics and websites all sit around and have fun talking about the games they liked over the past 12 months. As per usual, I’m still working out what my best of year list will look like. I’m still playing games for instance that could make it on. Lots of catch up happens at the end of year and, for me due to my CD commitments, into January. That list is still incoming. As for our discussion, it is really interesting to see our unique perspectives come through our lists. | more

January 19, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – On ‘Killing is Harmless’

Things are still getting hammered out with regard to the direction we want the podcast to go. In the meantime, I interviewed Brendan Keogh about his book that headed a whole wave of video game criticism books, Killing is Harmless. Don’t have much to say at the moment. The interview quite nicely speaks for itself and plans for future possibilities are still being worked out. Now that I’m back from my road trip the RSS feed has been updated so it should be on iTunes now. | more

December 18, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Actually, It’s About…2014

Released today was our annual end of year wrap-up podcast. This year I brought up regular Kris Ligman, semi-regular Alan Williamson and newbie to the podcast Lana Polansky. This year sucked. I think pretty much everyone can agree on that. However, because every year we all end up feeling miserable we decided to avoid directly talking about the biggest story of the year and in doing so found the year was a much nicer time that we had all forgotten. I like that year. | more

December 8, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

Moving Pixels Podcast Steps Over ‘The Line’

Two years after its release, we get around to discussing Spec Ops: The Line on the podcast. I hadn’t played it before we decided to finally do Spec Ops. I owned it and I knew, as a critic, it would be important to play, but there was always something keeping me from doing so. I hadn’t read Brendan’s book on it either. So in a very short amount of time, I both played the game and read Killing is Harmless in preparation of the podcast. | more

November 24, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

Choose Your Own Clementine

Finally, after months post-release we get around to concluding our podcast series on The Walking Dead Season 2. It has been interesting to see the reception of Season 2 over Season 1. I feel that it’s a little more than the fact in 2012 The Walking Dead was new and fresh to people and in 2014 it wasn’t. As we say in our wrap up Season 2 is a little bit of a mess, one way or another. It struggled to connect to its audience the same way the first season seemed to do almost instantly. | more

November 10, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

A House Dividing

Despite a bit of a scheduling hiccup, our talk on episode 4 of The Walking Dead Season 2 is out. Instead of discussing the episode itself, I want to touch on something that happened concerning this episode elsewhere. About two days after recording this episode, IGN held a sit down with two of Telltale’s designers. During that talk the subject of Sarah’s death came up. It was made light of as well as the rash way a player has to behave in order for Sarah to save herself. | more