Terry Pratchett was fond of saying that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. On the face of it, this sentence is mathematically absurd, but in the fantasy world of Pratchett's Discworld books, powered by the magic of narratives, it makes perfect sense. Of course heroes are always going to face incredible odds, and of course they are almost always going to overcome them, because that is what heroes do.

Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld has a long association with video games. Not only was the author himself a fan of Doom, Thief, and The Elder Scrolls, but the relationship between his satirical fantasy world and video games goes all the way back to 1986's The Colour of Magic – a text-adventure adaptation of Pratchett's first Discworld novel. Later games based on Pratchett's work include 1995's Discworld, a notoriously difficult adventure game voiced by actors including Eric Idle and Tony Robinson, and 1999's Discworld Noir, a 3D detective game where you play as the universe's first private investigator. But the most ambitious Discworld game in existence is not officially associated with Terry Pratchett at all. The Discworld MUD is a text-based "multi-user-dungeon" – an early form of online role-playing game where everything from places to in-game actions are described in words.

Welcome to Pushing Buttons, the Guardian's brand new gaming newsletter. If you'd like to receive it in your inbox every weeek, just pop your email in below – and check your inbox (and spam) for the confirmation email. I want to use this first issue to tell you what to expect from this newsletter. The gaming world is fast-moving, and it can be hard to keep up with while also living a busy real life. I want to be a friendly guide to what's interesting and relevant, and what games are worth your valuable time and attention.

In November 2001, Terry Pratchett was in Chester, famed for its Roman ruins and well-preserved medieval architecture. Staying at a hotel in the city centre, Pratchett opened the window of his room, and looked across the historic skyline. "I realised I could drop down on to a roof," he wrote later. "And from then on there was a vista of roofs, leads and ledges leading all the way to the end of the street and beyond; there were even little doors and inviting attic windows … There is a line break, and then he adds. "I'm going to have to stop playing this game." Pratchett was not considering a new career as a cat burglar. He was reflecting on his favourite video game – Thief II: The Metal Age. Released in March 2000, Thief II was the sequel to 1998's Thief: The Dark Project, a pioneering stealth game set in a gothic fantasy world. In both games, players donned the cowl of Garrett, a laconic master thief partly inspired by Raymond Chandler's PI Philip Marlowe. Thief charged players with breaking into medieval mansions, rooftop apartments, banks, cathedrals even police stations, stealing as much coin and valuables as they could while avoiding patrols of sword-wielding guards. Pratchett's relationship with video games is well documented. Always technologically savvy, he was an early adopter of PC gaming, and enjoyed everything from Doom to Deus Ex and Call of Duty. He even helped to create a mod (an unofficial add-on) for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, writing lines of dialogue for a character. But Pratchett held a particular affection for Thief. He played all three games in the series, and often contributed to a Usenet newsgroup named alt.games.thief-dark-project. That newsgroup, analogous to a modern forum, has long since been deactivated, but its posts survive in a Google groups archive. Combined, they provide a fascinating record of Pratchett's evolving relationship with both the Thief series and video games in general. Like so many players who become involved in online communities, he posted because he was stuck. In a post titled: "Help!

Your partner asks you why the little, evil dudes in a certain game called Overlord speak as if they were stolen from a Monty Python sketch. Your terse response--being an evil Overlord while commanding a horde of unruly minions is hard goddamn work, after all--is that someone was paid a good amount of money to make them sound that way. But the question sticks in your mind as the in-game banter continues to amuse, so much so that you find yourself laughing out loud. As the credits roll, you make sure to note the person responsible for the quips and barbs: Rhianna Pratchett. After a quick Google search, you find that she's the daughter of the famous Discworld author Terry Pratchett, and that she began as a gaming journalist before crossing over to write for games rather than about them.

Lara Croft is one of the few video-game characters to have crossed over into real-world celebrity. As with James Bond, her various iterations have reflected the times. When the first Tomb Raider game was released in 1996, she was a sex symbol in sunglasses and a tank top, later featuring in Playboy and on the cover of style magazine the Face. Embodied by Angelina Jolie in the 2001 film, she is curvy and capable, kicking the collective ass of the Illuminati. In 2013, she was a shipwrecked student in torn cargo pants – an accidental metaphor for graduates struggling through the economic recession.

Rhianna Pratchett is a veteran video game writer who most recently penned the scripts for Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider, but today on Twitter she announced her amicable departure from the series. Pratchett helped usher Lara Croft, the franchise's legendary protagonist, into the modern era when Crystal Dynamics rebooted the series in 2013. With Pratchett as lead writer, Tomb Raider was nominated for Best Narrative and Game of the Year at the 2014 Game Developers Choice Awards, while Rise of the Tomb Raider won Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing at the 2016 Writers Guild of America Awards and Outstanding Achievement in Character at the DICE Awards that same year. In a series of tweets, Pratchett thanked the Crystal Dynamics team and said she was off to new adventures. Crystal Dynamics, in turn, wished her the best.