EVERYTHING these days is becoming automatic, from self-service checkouts to self-driving cars, jobs are being taken away from real people. One job that always felt secure was acting. Conveying human emotion isn't easy for humans to do, let alone robots. However, one company, Altered AI, hopes to break through this barrier, promising to give game developers the tools to "create compelling, professional voice performances." Currently, around 20 professional voice actors have lent their work to the database, with hundreds more "common" voices fleshing out its library.

Gaming culture is rife with graphic representations of gun violence and has been since arcade goers first blew aliens out of Space Invader's skies. You'll be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of AAA titles designed for adults (sit down Rayman) that don't rely on firearms, or use gore in substitution, either as a primary tool for the gameplay or as a thematic element. While firearms have been a mainstay in video games since the mid '70s, few games have cemented their position in popular culture than 1993's pioneering first person shooter, Doom. Not only did Doom bring the FPS genre into mainstream gaming culture, they also helped to normalize a level of gore not often seen since 1988's Turbografx 16 hit, Splatterhouse, one of the first games to ever carry a parental warning label. Doom's influence is clear in nearly every game in the genre.

Uncharted 4 has won the best game at this year's Bafta Games Awards. Developers from its studio, Naughty Dog, said it was "unexpected" that the action adventure title had won, having missed out on the other seven categories it had been nominated for. Chaotic restaurant kitchen game Overcooked took the prize for best British game and family title. The puzzle-platformer Inside had four wins, the most of any game at the London ceremony. It took original property, artistic achievement, game design and narrative.

In the ninth episode of "Westworld," the HBO television series that imagines an escapist theme park populated by human players and fantasy-fulfulling androids, a character named Dolores questions the appeal of the world outside. If humans are so eager to flee into her reality, she asks, as sentience flickers into her circuitry, why would she ever want to visit theirs? In 2016, the year that facts, political decency, and a handful of our most cherished celebrities joined the choir invisible, who could argue with her? Now more than ever, fiction seems a place of retreat, and the interactive fictions of video games have an especially keen appeal. In times that feel out of control, the controller is a refuge. No matter how dark the world we enter, we are, like Westworld's clientele, made to feel invincible.

Steam's Winter sale has officially started and runs until 1 p.m. EST on Jan. 2. This means you have a few more days to buy Doom, Farming Simulator 17, Firewatch and any other games you may have missed this year. Steam's store is running a bit slowly right now, like most sales when they start. Steam's Winter sale has a lot of great discounts, including Doom for $20, Stardew Valley for $10, Planet Coaster for $38, Tyranny for $40, XCOM 2 for $30 and Hyper Light Drifter for $12. Other games on sale are Dirt Rally for $24, Total War: Warhammer for $45, Civilization VI for $54 and Rise of the Tomb Raider for $30.

Despite having its naysayers, there have been plenty of phenomenal games released over the course of 2016 across all gaming platforms. From blockbusters such as Battlefield 1, Dishonoured 2 and Overwatch, to indie games like Abzu, Firewatch, and INSIDE, we've spent hours attached to our TV screens and computer monitors to bring you the top 25 games of the year. Let us know your thoughts underneath, whether we left off your favourite game, ranked one too high ("NO MAN'S SKY?"), or if completely agree with everything. The recent reveal of the Switch aside, 2016 was a fairly disappointing year for Nintendo fans, starved of new content after another delay to the latest Zelda game. Paper Mario: Colour Splash brought some welcome cheer to those still faithfully finding a spot for the Wii U underneath their TVs, with humorous shenanigans unfolding in the colourful kingdom of Prism Island.

In some ways, the fourth title in Naughty Dog's wildly successful action adventure series looks like the archetypal join-the-dots sequel. This wonderfully entertaining game is effectively about marriage – or, more accurately, the things we have to learn about ourselves to maintain long-term relationships. Nathan lies to his partner Elena and leans heavily on his friend Sully, but has to learn to be less selfish and irresponsible – a lesson made all the more urgent and poignant by the arrival of his troubled brother, Sam. That a big popcorn blockbuster is exploring these themes so engagingly and movingly is a testament to how this medium has matured over the last five years. Meanwhile, we also get everything we want from a lavish big-budget game: astonishing visuals, imaginative locations and some truly thrilling set pieces – the Madagascan marketplace scene is a classic. Even if you don't fall for the love story, you'll fall for the well-paced, well-engineered action – and if the ending doesn't get you right in the gut, you're not human.

It may have been a difficult year for the wider world, but 2016 did at least see a lot of excellent video games, from the glossy action movie thrills of Uncharted 4 to the agenda-setting multiplayer fun of Overwatch and the solemn dystopian vision of Inside. But we wanted to know what the industry itself thinks were the best games to come out in the past 12 months. To find out, we asked 50 of our favourite developers, including 30-year veterans, Bafta award winners and rising indie stars. We've split the list into categories, and at the end we have a list of the most popular titles of them all. Karla Zimonja (Fullbright) Known for: BioShock 2, Gone Home Working on: Tacoma My favorite game this year is Dishonored 2, which I am still in the midst of. I love stealth games, so I'm taking my time with this one! Emily's powers are super satisfying to combine in entertaining ways. Anne Lewis (Bethesda Softworks) Known for: Doom, Dishonored 2 Working on: Prey It might sound like I'm shilling for my company when I say this, but Dishonored 2 is my favorite game of 2016. Dishonored is one of the reasons I wanted to work for Bethesda.

The Game Awards 2016 take place on Thursday, Dec. 1 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. The show will be streamed live -- and you can watch here. Game titles nominated for the Game of the Year award include Doom, Inside, Overwatch, Titanfall 2 and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End . The award will be giving to the game that "delivers the best experience across all creative and technical fields." Uncharted 4 has the most nominations, with eight, including Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, Best Art Direction, Best Narrative and three nominations for Best Performance for voice actors Nolan North, Troy Baker and Emily Rose.

Physical photographs aren't the only way Firewatch will invade the real world. Developer Campo Santo recently revealed a partnership with production house Good Universe (Neighbors and Last Vegas) to make a movie based on the indie game about a fire lookout in a Wyoming forest, according to The Hollywood Reporter. No other details are available at the time, but fingers crossed that some enterprising Ford dealership doesn't repurpose the movie's eventual trailer for a summer sales event. Miss the game when it came out earlier this year on PlayStation 4 and PC? If the reason was because you only have an Xbox One, well, now you can fix that as the game graced Microsoft's console last week -- replete with a temporarily exclusive free-roam mode.