This is the last entry in our look back at 2012, and to round things off, a few things we wanted to call out.

GameGlobe

If you've not heard of Gameglobe, it's basically an awesome set of tools for creating games. Imagine a 3D environment that lets you drag and drop assets and game mechanics, and thus create whole games that you can share with your friends.

Essentially, if you've ever thought that – deep down – you wish you'd studied game development at university, or just had a bit more time to check out modding tools, GameGlobe is probably your best ever chance to test out your skills.

Some of the folks who are making game levels now are already getting a reputation for quality and have found themselves with a following – in particular you should check out these ones:

A Miner Problem

The Rescue Part One – The Baron

Dystropia

GameGlobe's now in open beta, so head on over and get playing and creating!

Final Fantasy: 25th Anniversary

It's amazing, really – I guess the industry is of an age where it will start to hit the big number anniversaries more regularly from now on, but when it dawned on me that Final Fantasy was 25 years old this year, I was pretty stunned. I mean, that's a long time.

During those years the franchise has sold over 100 million games, which by my reckoning makes it on average over million every year across that whole time.

Wow.

It's a very impressive achievement, and probably one that only a few other games franchises could rival – so we wanted to make sure we could celebrate in some way.

One of the ways we did this was by setting up a special invite-only Distant Worlds session in London, just before the official public concert, including signing sessions with Nobuo Uematsu, Arnie Roth and Masashi Hamauzu.

You can check out the experience through one of the attendees – Rident – here and we'll be featuring another one in the New Year.

A Final Note...

While there are other high points I could note - releases such as All Zombies Must Die! or of course the PC re-release of Final Fantasy VII - I want to end this year's blog posts with a bit of a retrospective thanks to all the fine people that have worked so hard to give you folks (and those people who interact with the specific communities we have around our games) what (we hope) you're looking for.

Obviously, we don't always get it right, but one thing I can promise you is that they all work really hard - and that as a company here in Europe we are absolutely always listening. Even if it might not always feel like it.

As we've referenced before, we've got some cool plans to change the sorts of things we're bringing you next year - and while this won't happen all in one go overnight, we're pretty sure that by the end of the process those changes will be absolutely clear.

But more on that next year - for now, some honourable mentions:

Ben Bateman: Obviously, as the guy who's shouldered the vast majority of work here on this site in the past year, I think you'll agree he deserves a good holiday (which he's already been enjoying for some time!).

George Kelion: He works for Square Enix London Studios, and has been working super-hard on both Heroes of Ruin and Sleeping Dogs since he joined us in June.

Nick Price/Travis Barbour: Our IO team - very busy very recently, overseeing the community work for Hitman Absolution.

Meagan Marie: Working out of Crystal Dynamics on Tomb Raider, hopefully some of you may have gotten the chance to see her at one of the many Europe-based events she's travelled to this year! Big few months coming up after Christmas…

Adam Badke: The newest member of the team, taking over at Eidos Montreal, and looking after – among others – Deus Ex.

That's it from us for this year; we'll be back in early January with more... but in the meantime keep your eyes open for a few festive greetings!