Australia's Bureau of Statistics has released an interesting game for iOS devices that uses real census data (circa 2011) from the country's various towns called Run That Town. Players build a town using real census data (which can include the real town they live in… in Australia) and run it.

First Lady Michelle Obama recently gave a commencement address at Bowie State University encouraging more young African Americans to continue their education. She does so by throwing culture like videogames, television, and music under the bus.

Nintendo has decided to target "Let's Play" videos on YouTube with "content ID match" claims, according to multiple reports this morning. By making these claims it allows Nintendo to either block content or monetize the video. This is not sitting well with Let's Play video makers like Zack Scott whose videos have been targeted by Nintendo.

S.O.S. Gamers has launched a crowd-funding campaign for Get Schooled, an initiative that supplies underprivileged schools and community centers in the New York City area with access to educational technology including computers, calculators, and recreational items such as video game consoles and games.

GTFO, a documentary about sexism and harassment in the video games industry and within the gaming community has surpassed its funding goal of $20,000. With four more days to go, the documentary has managed to raise $23,829 from just 882 backers on Kickstarter. The documentary is being put together by New York-based filmmaker Shannon Sun-Higginson, who describes herself as a casual gamer.

Papo & Yo developer Minority Media took the wraps off the next project it is working on - a game about bullying. The game is called the Silent Enemy, and explores the topic of bullying and what people who see bulling tend to do (not get involved). According to a promo video for the game, it will feature an "Aboriginal character" who embarks on a quest to find springtime in Northern Quebec. During that quest the protagonist will be bullied by crow-like creatures that hinders his quest.

Accessibility advisor AccessAble Games is looking to raise $40,000 via Start Some Good for a Spanish and English language game called My Carnival that helps children with cystic fibrosis maximize their pulmonary functions.

We've seen the pay-what-you want bundle dedicated to indie games from places like the Humble Bundle and Indie Royale Bundle, but Story Bundle is offering a great collection of books for whatever you are willing to pay - and all of them are related in some way to gaming.

Last week we asked you if you "have you ever stopped playing a video game on moral grounds?" The question was inspired by this story about a man who got a refund from Valve because he objected to a certain scene in the Steam version of BioShock Infinite involving a religious rite.

Women in Games International (WIGI) and the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles (GSGLA) are now working together to create the first video game patch for Girl Scouts. Scouts can earn the patch by taking part in a special program put together by both the GSGLA and WIGIIGI using various tools to create a game.

Book publisher Seven Stories Press announced today that it will publish the English language version of the book about independent game Minecraft and its creator Markus 'Notch' Persson at the end of this year. The book is called "Minecraft; The Unlikely Tale of Markus "Notch" Persson and the Game that Changed Everything, and was written by Swedish journalists Linus Larsson and Daniel Goldberg, with the English translation being handled by Jennifer Hawkins.

Dead Shark Triplepunch has been named the winning team at Make Something Unreal Live 2013, Epic Games announced. The team has won a variety of hardware prizes in addition to the main award of a commercial Unreal Engine 4 license. The team from Belkinge Institute of Technology in Sweden won with their game Epigenesis, which was developed with Epic’s Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free version of the Unreal Engine 3.

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) announced the theme for its 2013 Youth Free Expression Film Contest. This year’s theme will be "Video Games in the Crosshairs." The non-profit organization goes wherever it is needed to fight against censorship in the United States. After the Sandy Hook School shooting back in December of last year, politicians at the state and federal level started wagging their fingers at video games as a catalyst for the violent act.

The U.S. Department of State and marketing agency The SuperGroup have released a game that they hope will teach 12 - 16 year olds American culture and better English. The goal is to make learning about language fun. The browser-based game, which is available now online and on mobile phones, comes with support materials for teachers and was tested in non-English speaking countries like Peru, Columbia, and Indonesia.

Microsoft has launched the Kodu Game Design Challenge for young children, challenging youngsters to use its Kodu Labs game development package available for free on Windows (and for $5 on Xbox Live Indies) to develop a game. Children between the ages of nine and 18 years-old are eligible to compete.

AbleGamers Foundation announced that its Pachinko for Charity event at PAX East 2013 in Boston over the weekend raised $17,022.09! The group dedicated to evangelizing the need for accessibility in video games for all gamers says that supporters came out in droves, waiting as long as 20 minutes to play even while the lines were three or four rows deep.

Javier Mairena of The Game Kitchen dropped us a note to let us know that the first episode of its horror adventure game series The Last Door has been revamped to make it a little friendlier to those with hearing impairments and dyslexia. Javier says that his studio has added dyslexic-friendly fonts in the game as well as close captions for those with hearing impairments.

The first episode in the episodic horror adventure series launched on March 11 on www.thelastdoor.com. It is titled "The Letter."

George R.R. Martin, prolific fantasy author and the creator of the A Song of Ice and Fire book series on which HBO's hit TV series is based, took questions before yesterday's Game of Thrones screening for the new season set to air later this month.

Martin had some pretty interesting things to say about two subjects that get talked about here on GamePolitics: video games and piracy. First, when asked about video games Martin said that he loves them, though his obsessive play sessions tended to get in the way of his work so he has avoided them for quite a long time:

The AbleGamers Foundation has been named a finalist in the MS Society Da Vinci awards for its game accessibility guidelines - Includification. Includification is a 48-page fully-illustrated game accessibility guidelines document for developers to make games more accessible to gamers with various disabilities.

Indie game development studio Molleindustria has created a game called The Best Amendment, which it describes as an "unofficial NRA Game" that they say demonstrates why some of the NRA's stances on guns do not work.

A man sentenced to ten years in prison for robbing two men for $110 and their driver's licenses in 1999 spent a good portion of his time playing chess and developing a new puzzle-based game that uses the classic board game to teach children how to make good choices in life. Nkosi Brown said that he spent much of his time in prison playing chess to avoid fighting with guards and other inmates and during his time in solitary confinement he would play chess with other isolated inmates by yelling out moves and using a chess board scrawled onto the floor.

Eurogamer details a bittersweet story of one Total War: Rome 2 fan who was immortalized in the game, but the 24-year-old named "James" who inspired developers Creative Assembly when he visited the studio, would later lose his fight with liver cancer.

A new Kickstarter campaign has been launched to raise $125,000 to create a documentary about the "queer side of gaming," or the LGBTQ presence in the game industry and in the gaming community. The documentary is called "Gaming In Color: Queers and Gaymers of the Pixelated World" and hopes to expose the masses to another side of gaming culture - a side that is often hidden among the dudebros and gamer gurls of the community.

Michael Langlois, a licensed Psychotherapist, speaker, defender of video games, and author of the book "Reset: Video Games & Psychotherapy," will be hosting an interesting one-man panel at PAX East called "Rethinking Game Addiction."

Ultimately the discussion is meant to challenge the mainstream thinking on game addiction and to explore the mental health benefits of playing video games - even violent ones. From the description at the Pax East web site:

The USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) announced today that it has changed the name of its Interactive Media Division to the Interactive Media and Games Division. The name change is to "emphasize the program’s commitment to studying games and playable media in all forms," according to Tracy Fullerton, Electronic Arts Endowed Chair of the Interactive Media and Games Division at SCA.

The very first Tropes vs. Women video is alive and kicking and ready for your perusal. The video series by Anita Sarkeesian was crowd-funded by a very successful Kickstarter campaign, though some in the gaming community attempted to take Sarkeesian for being overzealous about misogyny and sexism in both the development and game-playing community.

The first video is called "Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games" and is described by Sarkeesian on the Frequency Feminism YouTube channel as:

It looks like the Boys Scouts of America are finally recognizing that video games and technology are important in society. The Boy Scouts of America is now offering a merit badge in game design, according to GamesBeat. The organization has apparently spent the last two years building a program that will enable scouts to do the work necessary to earn the badge.

Bottomline Guild announced its plans to host a 24-hour online gaming marathon to raise money for Wounded Warrior Project called GamePocalypse 2013. This massive gaming event will take place within the virtual worlds of Rift, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and PlanetSide 2. Gamers will be participating in events running for 24 hours, starting at 12:00AM Central Standard Time, March 16th, 2013. All proceeds from the GamePocalypse 2013 event will go directly to charity.

Bronies rejoice. Lauren Faust, who is best known for creating My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, has decided to team up with the fan-driven development team Mane6 to bring to life the pony-themed fighting game My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic. Mane6 and toy-maker Hasbro have also been in talks. You may remember that Hasbro sent the develops of the game a cease-and-desist letter which Maner6 quickly complied with. That put their little labor of love on indefinite hold.

Gaming World Wide has teamed up with Rize Up Gaming to bring their charity efforts to a community that believes in creating a positive social atmosphere for gamers of all stripes.