As a game developer, it also helps to get new heroes to look up to, which is something I miss dearly from the good old days. This is a wonderful thing for me as a gamer, as I get to know whose vision I'm playing through and maybe understand the creators through their work. With the rise of crowdfunding and indie games, there's been a stronger focus on the people behind the games again. The only downside to this is that game libraries in basements will look a lot less impressive when they're just posters of screenshots of your game collections.

Soon we'll be able to fully cut out this unnecessary middleman between the game developer and game player. Finally consoles are starting to catch up to PC and mobile and offer most of their game content digitally. Game Developer polled accomplished industry veterans and indies alike for their respective takes on what we're glad to be done with, looking forward to working with, year-end shout-outs, and more. We've seen indie studios surge to the forefront on new and established platforms, new business models and dev tools lower the barrier to entry, and all kinds of major changes that will undoubtedly be felt for years to come. From crowdfunding to studio shutdowns, 2012 has been a big year for the game industry.

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