Me and Dilyan are very happy today, because we published the second issue of our magazine for games and gamers, called Ctrl+Alt+Defeat.

We try to centre each issue around one main theme — for the first it was war and for the second we chose heroes. We got in touch with a number of game critics, journalists and developers and asked them about their favourite game heroes. We got a lot of great opinions and inputs from Gameranx.com news editor Ian Miles Cheong, Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb Software, Leigh Alexander from Gamasutra, Brad Gallaway from GameCritics.com & PNWJournos.com, Mathew Kumar, publisher of  exp. Magazine, Kirk Hamilton, San Francisco features editor at Kotaku, Chris Dahlen, Editor-in-chief of Kill Screen Magazine, Game designer Nels Anderson and Denis Farr, Editor of GayGamer.

As the heroism theme is not usually discussed in relation to games I felt some explanation was in order.

There are many who question video games as works of art for various reasons and also many who argue games have a lot to do with art. I think one thing which brings the games closer to being art are the heroes they create. Just think how many people love Lara Croft or Jill Valentine, dress like them and dream of being them. Same thing with the Prince of Persia or Nathan Drake. I’ve heard people quote game characters just like they quote characters from movies and literature.

Game heroes set examples, they are loved, hated, criticised and praised just like the heroes of ancient Greek legend. In some cases Greek mythology is even “enriched” with new modern heroes like Kratos, whose story is a mix of old tales and modern-day stories.

Can game heroes be compared with the heroes of ancient Rome or Greece or with the heroes in books or movies? Check out our answer in the new issue of Ctrl+Alt+Defeat.

Check out Ctrl+Alt+Defeat Two