Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight and the first Spotlight for 2013! It's a new year and hopefully the latest wave of staff content has you excited to see what is in-store for the future. Also Game of the Year stuff is done so let's talk about the now! The surprise staff of the week was Alex who debuted his first Encyclopedia Bombastica as well as his top ten movies of the year. If you have a Twitter account and always wanted to follow the lead devloper of Giant Bomb, who surprisingly enough is NOT Dave Snider, check out @dannichi. 

Community Events and Game Nights

• Official Dota 2 Key Giveaway Thread - Post your DOTA 2 Key(s) to Giveaway Over Here!
• The Giant Bomb PC Gaming Hub Serious Sam 3 Game Night - Set for Saturday Night at 10pm GMT - Get More Details on the Event Over Here!
• GB Anarchy Reigns Tournament - Set for January 14th - Sign Up and Discuss the Event Over Here!
• Gerstmas 2013 - Start the Year on a Good Foot and Join the Community Game Giveaway Event over Here!

Wonderful Wikis 

• Paper Galaxy
• Anarchy Reigns
• Chronovolt

Best of Blog

The big winner this week was STATS! Marino hit it up with a double whammy this week by giving the year end stats of the Giant Bomb community's Xbox 360 achievements as well as the end of the month community stats. Unfortunately this month will mark the final edition of the data dump as the community activity metrics are being dropped with the site redesign. However that's not all, Cincaid took the time to provide all of the stats based on the Quick Looks on the site and dantey tabulated the staff Game of the Year rankings. Also embarking on an ambitious end of the year project was ZanzibarBreeze who has an 8 hour long MP3 of the best moments of the Giant Bombcast from 2012. Mento sets himself up for failure with his 2013 gaming resolution blog and ANt610 discusses why he enjoys having a significant gaming backlog. thabigred explains why he wasn't entirely impressed by Analog A Hate Story, simultaneously Sarumarine pontificated on why Borderlands 2 didn't make his Game of the Year list despite having played a significant portion of the game. Gamer_152 listed the major events and controversies of 2012, and to be expected there are plenty. Finally we have what I suspect will be the last batch of Game of the Year stuff until December. 

• By the Numbers: Data Dump 2012 Final Mix #Reload (By: Marino)
• By the Numbers: Xbox 360 vs Giant Bomb 2012 (By: Marino)
• 4 Years, 4 Months, and 1,268 Quick Looks Later (By: Cincaid)
• Game of the Year 2012: By The Numbers (By: dantey)
• The Best of the Giant Bombcast, 2012 (8 Hour MP3) (By: ZanzibarBreeze)
• Resolutions: Making 2013 Less Fun Already (By: Mento)
• Back Catalog Benefits (By: ANt610)
• The Bread Basket: Reboot - Irish Dukes and Deer Ticks (By: Breadfan)
• McDerby's Top Ten Games of the Year! (By: mcderby4)
• NoobSauceG7 Top 10 Games of 2012 (By: NoobSauceG7)
• Analogue A Hate Story: Wonderful Exercise Despite Flaws (By: thabigred)
• Recently Played: Borderlands 2 (By: Sarumarine)
• The Cynical Dead: My Time with Telltale's Walking Dead *SPOILERS* (By: Demoskinos)
• My Top 10 Games of 2012: I Like the Games You Hate! (By: LiquidPrince)
• An Addendum to GOTY: 2012 Strikes Back (By: ArbitraryWater)
• Alaska's Top 12 Games of 2012 + Awards (By: Alaska_Gamer)
• My Top 10 Games of the Year (By: CJduke)
• Sparky's Update - Happy New Year! (By: Sparky_Buzzsaw)
• The Biggest Events of 2012 (By: Gamer_152)
• Fatbomb: December Edition (By: Fattony12000)
• The Moosies Video Games Awards Top Ten Games of 2012! (By: MooseyMcMan)
• The "I Only Played Nine New Games in 2012" Awards! (By: Roomrunner)
• Aura's Top 10 Games of 2012 (By: aurahack)
• The Renegade Ego GOTY: The Only GOTY That Truly Matters (By: Video_Game_King)
• My End Of 2012 Awards - Part Four [Part Three, Part Two, and Part One] (By: dankempster)
• SeeJay's 2012 - The Favorites, Disappointments and Surprises (By: PhatSeeJay)
• MattBodega's Top 10 Games Of 2012 (By: MattBodega)

Fantastic Forums

With the year over the final results of ThatFrood's Community Game of the Year project are in! See which games made the top ten or twenty on the spreadsheet. BBAlpert has created sprite versions of the staff as if they were in a LucasArt adventure game. Finally debate and discuss the game that got cut from your GOTY list, appreciation of jam, and the validity of realistic water physics. 

• The Giantbomb Community's Top Ten Games of the Year for 2012! (By: ThatFrood)
• LucasArts Bombsquad Sprite Edits: USE Wrestling Mask ON Deer (By: BBAlpert)
• The Most Painful Cut From Your GOTY Top Ten (By: Mezmero)
• Should Characters Take Fall Damage from Water if They're Going Fast Enough? (By: BBAlpert)
• Jam Appreciation Thread (By: edwardt)

Lovable Lists

Lists are lists are lists. Thiago123, MajorMitch, and amlabella will be the users with the last Game of the Year lists on the Community Spotlight until December. Finally listman Mento provides a tabulation of every game he played in 2012 as well as a brief summary of his thoughts on them. 

• List of Games Beaten in 2012 (By: Mento)
• GOTY 2012 (By: Thiago123)
• GOTY 2012 (By: MajorMitch)
• GOTY 2012 (By: amlabella)

Useful User Reviews

• Airmartini's user review of Hitman: Absolution
• Bleaker's user review of Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
• mcderby4's user review of Spec Ops: The Line
• TheRedDeath's user review of Diablo III
• crusader8463's user review of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken
• Orange_Tory's user review of Victoria II

User Created Podcasts

• Giant Bomb Community GOTY 2012: The Podcast!!
• The Mighty Electronic Box (GOTY Edition 2012)

I love how creative users got with their top ten and game awards this year.

@Sparky_Buzzsaw said:

I love how creative users got with their top ten and game awards this year.

Regardless of what you meant, I can't help but read that sarcastically.

@Video_Game_King: Haven't we covered that before? Or was it with someone else? Anyways, no, I'm being serious. People really did a good job of changing up their formats or making them way more fun and interesting to read this year.

I'm going to draw a line on the ground and say that I'm not going to showcase anymore Game of the Year stuff.

Kind of weird to see GoTY stuff still coming. Anywho, here's a thing I did yesterday, I know it's easy for lists to get lost in the shuffle.

@ZombiePie said:

I'm going to draw a line on the ground and say that I'm not going to showcase anymore Game of the Year stuff.

Is it a squiggly line? Does it zig and/or zag? Is it some kind of weird string theory line that I'll never completely understand? Will the line involve dancing? I demand details!

@ZombiePie: Thanks your Royal Pieness!

my first review in the last ?? years... Dishonored

Whoa I forgot I even posted that last week. Yes it was a year of regrets in gaming but now that it's over I've got nothing. Looking forward to quite possibly the craziest year in gaming in 2013. New consoles and a thriving digital industry? Things are going to get ugly from here.

Girl games 'gain.

I posted Part 1-3 of my most anticipated games of 2013. Should be finished in the next few days.

I am going to have a small get together with friends and family today, so maybe expect the next Spotlight to come out late again.

That said I could use a bit more input for the next edition as I have been away for a bit.

Hopefully not too late: Comic Commish and Miscellany. (Also, a list.)

As for other stuff to put forward, it's been kind of quiet around here of late. The only thing I can think of is Branthog's Gerstmas giveaway thing that's about to start. Checking my followed user blogs window, I see RecSpec and MajorMitch each had a weekly update. The rest is either mod stuff or VGK, all of which I assume you already know about.