Top 8 fan quirks for the glory of games: creating a real blade from Assassin's Creed, designing a house in the style of The Elder Scrolls and Civilization 5 Day

Fans' devotion sometimes goes beyond all bounds. Tattoos with your favorite heroes, sons and daughters named after characters from your favorite game are just the tip of the iceberg. So what else are gamers willing to do to prove their devotion to virtual worlds? Here are some crazy examples...

Let's start with the simplest, but no less interesting — with collector's editions of games. Often you can find figurines of the main characters or entire scenes in the form of dioramas.

Among gamers there are many skilled crafters and cosplayers who take on complex but stunningly detailed projects, so it's not surprising that some wanted to make their own version of the «collectible figure».

A fan of FromSoftware projects created a scale copy of the wandering mausoleum weighing 13 kg. and with a total number of parts of 5-6 thousand.

During the existence of the gaming industry, players have repeatedly impressed the community with their works. You can take a look at some of them below.

Looks amazing, doesn't it? Here we can see the Murloc village from the Warcraft universe (MiniQuest), a scene from Diablo 3 (Roman Khramov), empire and rebel fighters crashed in the desert on Jakku from «Star Wars» (Roman Khramov), and even a village from Minecraft (Flickr).

A separate category includes replicas of devices and weapons from fictional universes, carefully transferred to reality by various craftsmen. There are entire channels on the Internet dedicated to the «crafting» of such weapons.

For example, the inventor and owner of the popular YouTube channel Colin Furze created a working prototype of a hidden blade from the Assassin's Creed universe, as well as a built-in ax and umbrella from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. He even demonstrated the effectiveness of the latter by taking a blast from a flamethrower while covering himself with this umbrella.

The team of the AWE me channel is no less interesting. They «craft» weapons from games. And the material used is not epoxy resin or paper, but real steel.

Of course, such a weapon will not be allowed at Comic-Con — it quite effectively cuts (or, more precisely, chops) fruit, bottles of liquids, mannequins and even furniture. Thus, the creators had to hold the iconic sword of Cloud Buster from the Final Fantasy universe together — it turned out to be so massive.

Figures and replica weapons are, of course, good, but most of the time they will gather dust on a shelf and delight their owner with their existence. What about something more... atmospheric? Applied? In general, let's talk about gamers who decided not to limit themselves to one item and dedicated their home to their beloved universe.

For example, a fan of American Truck Simulator with the nickname ricotrucker1 decided recreate a truck cabin in your room — repeating all the interior details: seat, steering wheel, copy of the front panel with a glove compartment and all instruments, gear shift lever and pedals. Four monitors serve as a «window» into the virtual world.

Decided to keep up with him YouTuber under the nickname BANKII. Here the scope is even more striking — the whole room was stylized as the interior of a spaceship from Star Citizen. To do this, I had to order a separate frame and spend about $30,000 on finishing. And yes, automatic sliding doors are included.

Finally, full immersion has been achieved by Tyler Kirkham, DC Comics artist and avid fan of the Elder Scrolls series.

He recreated the interior of his house from the vastness of Tamriel: he covered the walls with stone, purchased stylized wooden furniture, hung various swords and axes, and even placed mannequins with armor. There was also an alchemical laboratory and a small secret room. All this splendor cost the artist $50,000.

Songs dedicated to characters from games and the projects themselves are not that rare. Just remember the musical project Miracleofsound, which has been creating original songs based on famous universes for many years, or the St. Petersburg band The Chalkeaters, recently thundered with a song about the crossover Doom and Animal Crossing. You can listen (and watch) to their latest work below.

But maybe there is something bigger? Certainly! The Russian theater group «Theater Eterius» has been delighting fans of The Elder Scrolls universe for several years now. Their repertoire includes the musical «Song of the Dovahkiin», the main character of which is the viewer himself — he will have to remember and relive all the adventures of the dragonborn: from escaping from captivity to encounters with dragons.

No less interesting is the second musical, «Dream at Red Mountain» which tells about the events of deep antiquity in the world of the Ancient Scrolls. An hour and a half of acting, beautiful voices and a beloved universe — all this is definitely admirable.

But fan short films based on games are much more popular online. We wrote about many of them: fans film projects based on the universe Metro 2033, by first BioShock and even according to indie hit Papers, Please.

Are you ready to devote 8 years to the gaming universe? Eight years of not relaxing in your free time, but of painstaking and exhausting work? The authors of the fan remake of the first part of Half-Life called Black Mesa are ready.

The result is a Half-Life that has been updated in every aspect, from graphical innovations to improved enemy intelligence. Completely new soundtrack, voice acting, redesigned levels and many other fixes and improvements.

The community and Valve itself liked the work so much that it was added to Steam as a standalone game. This is almost the only case of a commercial release of a game based on someone else's intellectual property.

The whole game is, of course, good. But it's somehow long and tedious. Is there a shorter path to fame? Several players seem to have discovered this «shortcut» — they named their sons after video game characters.

This is what, for example, ex-player of the Alliance esports team in Dota 2 Joakim «Akke» Akterhall did. His team won The International in 2013, and the girl, who is interested in the same universe, didn't mind.

A simple Dota 2 fan from the Philippines followed a similar path. The man named his son Strygwyr — this is the name of the Bloodseeker character according to the game lore.

Esports players from the camp of League of Legends, another popular MOBA, are not far behind. Kang Chan-yong, known as Ambition, named his son Jarvan 5 in honor of his champion Jarvan 4, thanks to whom his team was able to win the championship title in 2017.

By the way, the prototype of Chan-yong's appearance formed the basis for Riot Games' animated video dedicated to the next tournament — this is how the company often celebrates the most outstanding players.

Long before the «boom» of NFT tokens in the Second Life and Entropia Universe universes, players were actively exchanging virtual items for very real money.

The first project became something of an improved version of Roblox with an emphasis on an adult audience. Here, just like in the project popular with children, most of the content is created by the users themselves, there is a concept of personal worlds and mini-games, and the emphasis is on social interaction.

Entropia Universe is a rather controversial game that has always had a lot of noise around it. First of all, because of the ambiguous monetization system — the money decides a lot in the game, and it is almost impossible to earn them without investing real money in the project. You will literally have to clean up animal feces or collect fruit. But if you pour more money into the project, there is a chance to make money on it: it is possible to convert virtual currency into very real dollars. And some of them succeeded.

So, for example, the author managed to sell a copy of the real Amsterdam (several of its blocks) in Second Life for $50,000. And in Entropia Universe, as in a much more «gambling project», the player gave for the Crystal Palace — a potentially profitable location for «farming» — $330,000. As an owner, he can impose a «tax», earning money on each monster killed by other characters.

Although this still does not compare with the purchase of an entire planet in the same EU: virtual property was sold under the hammer for an incredible $6,000,000. Of course, this is not just a «skin for a machine gun». The main feature of the planet was the player-created and developed economic system — another potential object with high profitability. But you must admit — the amount is astronomical for a simple player.

One funny incident that went almost unnoticed in the gaming community was that in 2010, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley proclaimed September 21 as Civilization 5 Day. That's what he said then.

A whole holiday for one game sounds really cool, right?

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We deliberately left behind the scenes the real «madness» of the players — giving birth in an Internet cafe, marriage to «Tetris» and escaping from the army to watch a movie based on the Warcraft universe. If this material, as they say, resonates with you, we will certainly continue the story.