While I have fell through with the Japan-related posts (though I have some of them almost ready, so you might see them in the end), I need to cope with a new reality : the year is about to end. And while this is not in itself a cause for worry, it does mean that I should probably do like so many people are doing and start doing some kind of recap of the past year.

Those reading me since quite some time know that I used to do series of posts titled “12 moments in anime” when I watched a lot of it. But it is not the case currently, so I decided to keep the format (12 posts, but counting down to the end of the year rather than to Christmas, because it is too late for that), but change the topic. And so I present to you “12 moments in gamedev”, in which I will take some time to recollect and give a shout out to the game developers or studios, or other gamedev-related thingies, that made my year what it was. The first of those, as the post titled suggests, is a quite strangely named fellow called Breakdance McFunkypants. Or, as he is known elsewhere, Christer Kaitila.

Earning his nickname.

This guy is, as seems to be a relatively common trend in successful indie devs, a multi-talented individual. He (of course) make video games, but he writes books, write songs… But the feature that makes him stand out for me is his unabashed enthusiasm. Throughout the year, his tweets have proven to be a great source of motivation, to the extent of making me wonder if he ever runs out of optimism.

He also published the Game Jam Survival Guide, taking his big experience of game jams and input from a wide range of other game jammers (if you do not know what a game jam is, it is an event where the participants have to create games from scratch under a set of constraints, for example a time limit like 48 hours). He promoted a huge amount of his fellow indie game developers’ projects, and he is currently busy organizing the One Game A Month Challenge to boost the morale of indies who languish in ever-unfinished projects and make them sit down and release some games in the coming year.

I think that, for people like me who are making game in their free time, motivation can be in short supply at times, and it is very important that we keep it up to continue developing our games when we come home from work. And Mr McFunkypants is one of those that unknowingly helped me with that.

If you want to know more about him and/or his games and books, he has a website. If you would rather have your dose of energy shot straight to your Twitter timeline, he is on there too. Or if you prefer Google+, you can encircle him. Finally, you can find his latest release (not counting his latest game jam game), Mars Orbital, on his website and it is pay-what-you-want!

Thank you once more for your enthusiasm and for being such an awesome guy, Mr McFunkypants!