Leveling up your in-game cooking skill is often as simple as gathering up some ingredients and clicking a button a couple dozen times. But Nova Barlow has more ambitious plans: to max-out her real-world cooking abilities with a series of videogame-inspired recipes.
Fable 2 is a game about choices: If you rescue villagers from bandits, you'll earn a halo and a saintly glow; if you sacrifice them to a dark god instead, you'll grow horns and draw flies. But some decisions are a little more superficial. Susan Arendt recounts her time spent dieting in Albion.
Cooking is time consuming, enraging and frequently dangerous. But if you have a mind for details and an obsessive focus on self-improvement, you may find the hobby a natural fit. Rob Zacny explains how gamers and cooks have more in common than you may think.
When Brendan Main and his wife got stuck in a slumhole apartment in an unfamiliar city with Cooking Mama as their only entertainment, they both had the same hare-brained idea: to assemble a makeshift kitchen and try their hands at a few of Mama's strangest recipes.
World of Warcraft lets you choose between siding with the noble, heroic Alliance and the dubious, downtrodden Horde. But what kind of player would want to play as the anti-heroes of Azeroth? Jon Glover speaks with a number of Horde players about their faction of choice.
Batman is one of the most fascinating, multifaceted superheroes in all of comics ... as long as you don't think about him too much. Allen Varney digs a bit too deeply into the Batman Mythos and unearths some rather unpleasant character traits in the process.
Roleplaying games give you an opportunity to act out the part of the hero in a world that desperately needs one. But what happens when, after a few costly mistakes, you end up with a hero that is less than heroic? Will Hindmarch examines the angst of roleplaying a character you grow to despise.
2007's The Darkness wasn't just a competent first-person shooter - it told a powerful story about love and the loss of humanity through gameplay alone. Logan Westbrook takes a closer look at Starbreeze Studios' oft-overlooked diamond in the rough.
Since the earliest 3-D videogames, enterprising players have found ways to slip their characters into something a little more comfortable. But will a lust for profit put an end to these expressions of adolescent curiosity? Brendan Main takes a closer look at the phenomenon of the nude mod.
Plenty of MMOG players have dedicated a weekend to leveling up their tailoring or leatherworking skill. But how many of them are inspired to make their virtual wares a reality? Nova Barlow interviews a number of geek crafters about the hobby - and business - of crafting.
Whether they're new textures, objects, maps or complete game overhauls, most mods take a fair amount of time and effort to produce, and their creators are rarely paid. So why mod in the first place? Els Bellens asks that question of a number of notable modders and shares their responses.
Every year it gets easier for players to create their own videogame maps and levels. But is it any easier to produce a quality product? C J Davies speaks with Counter-Strike's David Johnston and LittleBigPlanet's Mark Healy about what makes good user-created content.
From the days of Spacewar!, videogames and the stars have always been connected. It should come as no surprise, then, that one of the great breakthroughs in gaming was the simulation of an entire universe. Erin Hoffman speaks with members of the Starflight development team about their ambitious project.
Brett Staebell has played enough RPGs to indirectly gain thousands of levels. But when a Japanese monk inquired about his own character progression, he was forced to confront some shaky assumptions on what it means to level up in the Game of Life.
Videogames are over 30 years old, which means everyone who was there in the early days is now over 50. And with an aging population of game developers comes the possibility that many of their stories will be lost when they pass on. John Szczepaniak discusses why we shouldn't forget their contributions to our hobby.
