Probably my favourite hobby next to playing video games is reading about people who love and design them. And I'm not talking licensed-by-Nintendo glory stories about CEOs overcoming their mistrust of Crash Bandicoot to make millions -- I'm talking books about the rest of us, lovers on MMORPGs, struggling indie devs, self-hating gaming addicts, virtuous guild leaders, gold scammers and 10-year-old girls plugging in their first console.

On 5 November 1995, a gamer called CJayC created the Video Game FAQ Archive. Later known as GameFAQs, the site was a hub for video game walkthroughs and FAQs, and later cheats, savegames, screenshots and so on. And that's what it is today, only it's a lot bigger than it used to be.

In the West, Twitch is an internet superpower. In Japan, things couldn't be more different. Mainstream success will be tough, but not impossible. Nothing is impossible.

I played the opening few hours of Batman: Arkham Knight in August. You know what I did after that? I opened up the map, saw that it was forested with icons, and then turned the game off forever.

Some of the games industry's most talented and experienced designers are making the leap from game development to academia. But how do you teach the art of making games?

Sometimes it's censorship. Sometimes it's unfortunate implications. And sometimes it's straight-up unexplainable. But whatever the justification may be, games get renamed all the time when they're released across different regions.

Late last year, it was revealed that Link would become a racer in Mario Kart 8. But that wasn't his first Mario rodeo. Nor was it the first time Zelda crossed over into the Mario series -- far from it.

Chris "Powerpig" McVeigh is a LEGO builder of no small repute, specialising in micro-builds of familiar things. This is "My Old Basement (Pixel Edition)" which you can pre-order for $US89.50.

From sci-fi references to artistic nods, the Mass Effect series has numerous connections to the real world -- this video, narrated by none other than Commander Shepard (or Mark Meer if you will) himself, looks at some of them.

Games have -- to put it mildly -- a weird approach to love. But love is weird in real-life too. In time for Valentine's Day, this is a celebration of video game romance in all its strange, stalkery, even inter-species forms. Enjoy -- and maybe don't try them out in real life.

Dayshot: Steam sales are good, provided you have self-control. If you don't, you might feel like the Scout above whenever a big sale rolls around.