First, we spent a year playing video games. Then we spent a couple weeks debating which ones were best. Here, in alphabetical order, are Kotaku’s top 12 games of 2016.

Here, after much deliberation, is a collection of the best concept art from video games released in 2016.

The people who play video games have an impact on what we play and the gaming culture at large. Since 2012, that premise has informed our annual listing of the Gamers of the Year.

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the world of video games will surprise you in the best possible way. This year had even more great surprises than usual.

Coming out of my cage

The consensus is that 2016 was a bad year, and like every single other year, a lot of animals died. Unlike every other year, we went crazier over these animal deaths than we’ve ever gone.

2016 was a fine year for gaming at launch, but over the course of the past 12 months various updates and bug fixes have made it even better. Here are some of the year’s finest patch notes. Can you tell which games they are from?

Facebook fiascos, impending natural disasters, hackers, hacks, gadget goofs and deep-sea nightmares—this year had everything you never asked for. But there were brighter notes too. So come with us to a time when people complained about accidentally getting exercise playing Pokémon Go and wondered whether anyone knows…

On the climate and energy front, 2016 was a year of contradictions. Again and again, our planet smashed global temperature records. The fingerprints of climate change were visible in extreme weather from the North Pole to Louisiana. But the clean energy sector also hit some major milestones. Wind and solar power…

In 2001, when I was about 14 years old, my male friends invented a game that went like this: one of them—and it was always the same one—would sneak behind me, slap me—and it was always me—on the ass and run away as I sputtered, angry and humiliated.

Humans’ relationship with technology is growing ever-more intimate. In a sense, we have already become cyborgs, tethered to our external electronic devices, outsourcing to them our memories, our sense of direction, our socializing, our lives. But, if the past year’s technological advancements are any indication, our…

Looking back over the year, it’s easy to remember all the horrible, terrible, shitty things that happened. It may seem like nothing good happened in 2016, but that’s not quite true. We’ve compiled lists of both the good and the bad things that warmed our nerdy hearts this year... or that made us want to set everything…