Pac-Man Recipes? Jennifer Sims from Insight Editions reveals how the arcade icon translates to a cookbook

Jennifer, thanks for joining me to discuss The Official Pac-Man Cookbook. What’s your job title?
I’m Jennifer Sims, Editorial Director on the Insight Editions Gaming, Music and Sports team.

Perfect. Now, the obvious joke here would be for me to say, “Surely Pac-Man only eats pellets and ghosts…” So! What kind of things are in this?!
Ha! Well, it’s a lot of everything, Deej, because the approach we took is to ask ourselves, “What can we do to celebrate Pac-Man? As I think you know, we publish a number of cookbooks for various intellectual properties – especially in the division I work in; gaming. So our goal is to never just make a cookbook and slap a name on it, but to really celebrate the property and the fans who love it.

Indeed – and I’ll be sure to include a few photos throughout so that people get a feel for the fun and quality of the book…
Thank you! Because we really do want to dive into things and bring out items that resonate with fans. As you say, though, Pac-Man eats pellets, ghosts and – occasionally – fruit! So what we’ve done for the cookbook is look at dishes that are inspired by Pac-Man. It might be a dish inspired by the cherry, say, or something shaped like a ghost. That tends to be our approach to these types of books – although, for some games, it might be what’s actually in the world of the game.

Really? Are you able to give an example of one of those?
Elder Scrolls comes to mind! Both our Elder Scrolls Cookbook contain the kind of food that the characters might eat when they go to a tavern in Tamriel, for instance. For Pac-Man, though, it’s about being inspired and having fun with the theme. That’s a big part of what we do for anything… It was at the heart of Pac-Man in particular, though, because getting to work with that team was so great!

How did this come about, Jennifer? Did you approach them or did they approach you?
As I recall, they approached us. Pac-Man is celebrating his 45th anniversary this year – which just seems incredible! They’d seen what else we’ve done in the marketplace and really liked the quality of our cookbooks. And we’re very lucky in that way because it happens quite often… We have a lot of good partnerships, and a track record that shows people can trust us with their property. So our process always involves meeting with the team and talking about what they want to see and what’s important to them. And then we pretty much agree on an approach for the book.

Makes absolute sense. I think it’s fair to say that Insight Editions has a reputation for doing these extraordinary cookbooks. What was the first one you worked on, Jennifer?
My first one here was outside of gaming… It was Marvel’s Black Panther: The Official Wakanda Cookbook. That was great to work on; It was full of African recipes, inspired by the fictional country. Since then, most of the titles I’ve worked on are inside gaming but Insight has worked with popular properties, such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, Gilmore Girls… so many more! Too many to mention, Deej! Similarly, in gaming we’ve done IP that includes Final Fantasy, God of War, World of Warcraft, Persona, Diablo and a whole host of others.

I should clarify that you do titles that aren’t cookbooks as well, do you not?
Oh, yes! A lot of other formats…I have to say, though, that – as an amateur cook myself – the cookbooks are some of my favourites. I like that cookbooks are great for fandoms because everyone needs to eat – obviously! So no matter what your fandom is, the right cookbook gives you a unique way to share in that with your friends, family or other fans. When we get feedback on our work – through a convention, book fair or online – a lot of what we hear from readers is around that kind of sharing. Out of interest, do you cook, Deej?

Oh, good god, no – I can’t add pepper to a Cup-of-Soup! I’d still buy your cookbooks though – great coffee-table books. So how do you put these titles together?
Every project’s a little bit different. Like I said, some licensors come to us with a property that already has food as part of its make up – so that might be one starting point… Other times it’s things that are inspired by the setting or characters. Either way, what we tend to do is choose someone from a stable of authors we like to work with; people we know do great work.

And when you say authors…
Really talented recipe developers – ideally someone who works in the type of cooking we’re looking for… Because someone who does a lot of medieval-themed dishes might be very different from someone who specialises in desserts. So that’s a starting point: working with a developer to conceive a list of recipes. Then, depending on their expertise, we pick what we call a ‘lore author’ as well…

A lore author?!
We also call them ‘flavour text authors’. They write things like the headnotes that appear before recipes – the storytelling aspect of the book. So sometimes we have one author who writes the whole book, but quite often we pair an experienced recipe developer and writer with someone who really knows the property. Of course, in the case of Pac-Man it’d be hard to find a gaming author who’s not familiar with the property! Ha!

Ha! But with another IP…
Exactly… With more niche games, we’re looking for someone who really knows that world’s details. When paired with a recipe developer, they work together to refine a recipe list that our editorial team feels reflects the property and gives a good balance of dishes. Because that’s the thing… We really do want to create things that people want to cook! We want them to try the recipes. We then share a list of recipes with the licensor. And as with any publishing project, there’s some back and forth to make sure everyone’s happy before moving on to photographing the food.

Fantastic! The only problem with your answer is that you made everything sound easy! Ha! And tell me, Jennifer, how did you come to be doing such an interesting job?
Well, I’ve been working in gaming publishing since around 2004 – first as an author of strategy guides. I don’t know if you remember the strategy guides that you’d see like in game stores, but that’s how I got into the industry. I worked for Brady Games, which was a division of Penguin Random House. From there, I started working as an editor for the same publisher; they later became Prima Games. But it was a very niche publisher so they shuttered as printed strategy guides became less popular.

So then I took a small break. After that, a former colleague was curating the Insight Editions team for gaming publishing. And I was very lucky – they gave me a call and I jumped on board. I’ve been here for about four years. It’s a great place to work and we get to work with such fun properties. How can you turn that down as an editor?

Quite so! And in my experience, that sense of fun and passion permeate the work; you can feel it on every page.
Oh, thank you so much!

Not at all! To wrap up, Jennifer – and I’ll warn you… This is a question that most people struggle with, so brace yourself! Are you braced?
I’m braced!

What is the one question I could have asked you today but didn’t?
Oh, my goodness!

Ah! See… You said you were braced, but you weren’t braced enough!
I know! I only thought I was braced! Well, I don’t know how you would’ve phrased the question, Deej, but I just would love to share what’s really important to our team here… Because we’re a group of people who really are fans of these things ourselves. Now obviously, not everyone’s a fan of everything…

We are fans, though, and we understand fandoms; we love being able to make products that allow you to inhabit the world you love a little more… To bring that world, whatever it is, into your life. Now, that could be through serving up something from The Star Wars Life Day Cookbook! It could be from pretending you’re living in the world of Fallout and creating a feast for your fellow vault dwellers…

Right. Pulling a little of that fiction into your life; making it real…
Making it real and being able to share that kind of love of different properties with your friends and family. I think that’s at the core of what we do at Insight Editions because it’s what we all like to do! We all tend to talk about those things with each other – professionally and personally. So I think having that kind of understanding drives what we do and I think it’s important. It speaks to the heart of what we discussed before… We don’t just want to make a cookbook that has Pac-Man in the title for the sake of it – we want it to feel like Pac-Man through and through.

Brilliant. Well, that brings us full circle, Jennifer, and I can assure you you’re succeeding! Thank you again for chatting – lovely to meet you.