Author: Miguel Penabella

Miguel Penabella is a PhD student investigating the spread of conspiracy online. He is an editor and columnist for Haywire Magazine. His writing has been featured in Kill Screen, Playboy, Vice, and Unwinnable, and he blogs on Invalid Memory.
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The Lonely Walk of Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon

There’s a brief exchange from Kentucky Route Zero that succinctly condenses the otherworldly atmosphere of Fragile Dreams. A fellow companion asks, “Do you believe in ghosts?” to which your protagonist elegiacally returns, “I do believe a place can be haunted.” Fragile Dreams suggests a re-interpretation of survival horror in similar terms, foregrounding what it means … Continue reading The Lonely Walk of Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon

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Suda 51, A Career: 2015-2051

The mild financial and critical success of DEATH or Glory fuels Suda’s subsequent vanity project, the inexplicable arthouse wrestling game Tokyo Takedown! Driven by the developer’s neurotic passion for masked wrestling, the game offers a throwback to his first foray into videogames in 1993, Super Fire Pro Wrestling III: Final Bout. Irresponsible fund allocations result … Continue reading Suda 51, A Career: 2015-2051

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Imaginary Real Places: Forza Horizon and the American Open Road

Racing games have always been an oversight in games writing, partly because it’s often difficult to write analytically and lyrically about a genre devoid of distinctive style (hence: generic), but also because critics simply snub racing games as uncomplicated fare. This kind of thinking is deceptive, disavowing the potential for stylistic authorship in any and … Continue reading Imaginary Real Places: Forza Horizon and the American Open Road

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Split Screen Series: Reflections on Max Payne 3

Split Screen Series is a critical dialogue of videogames by Justin Keever of Virtual Narrative and Miguel Penabella of Invalid Memory, investigating the stories, themes, aesthetic choices, gameplay, and formal properties of videogame art. Experiencing Max Payne 3 entails a world of tensions and thematic bifurcations. It’s a work of urgent artistry, both an introduction … Continue reading Split Screen Series: Reflections on Max Payne 3

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Living the Dream: An Allegory for Breaking Procedure

What happens when videogames frustrate narrative lucidity and the expected norms of play? Every Day the Same Dream, a 2009 short game authored by Paolo Pedercini and his Italian collective Molleindustria, resists the formulaic patterns of videogame composition to produce new meaning. Gaming essayist Braxton Soderman points to Molleindustria’s penchant for disruptive play, recounting the … Continue reading Living the Dream: An Allegory for Breaking Procedure

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Death and Form

André Breton, living amidst the eccentric artistic scene of Paris in 1929, wrote in his Second Manifesto of Surrealism, “The simplest surrealist act consists of running down into the street, pistols in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.” I kept this passage in the back of … Continue reading Death and Form