Major League Gaming, Dreamhack and the Electronic Sports League revealed today a partnership that unifies pro-gaming tournament activities throughout their 2012 and 2013 eSports seasons, according to this press release from Dreamhack - as reported by Polygon.

Time Magazine has compiled its list of the "All-Time 100 Video Games." Compiled by Time staffers, the list is divided by decades going all the way back to the 1970s and ending in 2010. Nominations from the 1970s include such classics as The Oregon Trail, Pong, and Space Invaders. For the 1980s hits such as Super Mario Bros., Frogger, Donkey Kong, and The Legend of Zelda get a listing. The 1990s choices include Solitaire, Doom, and Goldeneye 007.

Spike TV has announced the nominees for the tenth annual Spike TV Video Game Awards. Borderlands 2, Halo 4 and Journey lead the pack, each earning seven nominations. The Spike TV VGAs will be hosted by Samuel L. Jackson and are scheduled to take place Friday, Dec. 7 at 9 p.m. ET. The annual awards are broken down into 30 different categories ranging from Game of the Year to Best Performance by a Human Male and Female.

A new video game that will be highlighted at the Games for Change conference hosted by RMIT in Melbourne on Thursday and Friday hopes to raise awareness about refugees seeking asylum in Australia. Refugees often take dangerous journeys on the open seas to reach the shores of friendly democracies. The game puts players in the shoes of these "boat people" who are trying to make their way to places like Australia to find safe haven and the kind of freedom and opportunities not available to them in their native lands.

Some poor guy that dressed up like Master Chief to give a presentation on behalf of Microsoft's Xbox 360 launch in Israel called games other than Halo - and no doubt other than Halo 4 which releases today in regions around the world - girly. Besides being a poor choice of words that will likely be construed as misogynistic and sexist, Master Chief may not realize that a good portion of the military in Israel is comprised of women. Oops.

Members of the video game industry in the United Kingdom are teaming up with UK charity GamesAid to put together a Christmas concert that will raise money for charity. A choir comprised of 24 men and women from across the industry including OBEs, CEOs, Managing Directors, PR, sales people and marketers has been formed and is practicing for its very first event on December 19 at St. Stephen's, Rosslyn Hill in London. Tickets cost £20 for adults and £10 for children under the age of 16.

World of Tanks, World of Airplanes, and World of Warships creators Wargaming announced this morning that they are "fully underwriting" aircraft enthusiast David Cundall's efforts to recover British Spitfires reportedly buried in Burma at the end of World War II. The company's investment in Mr. Cundall's will allow him and the Burmese authorities to pursue the long-standing mystery of the Pacific theater.

The University of Southern California will officially launch Mission: Admission Oct. 29 on Facebook. The free Facebook game is designed to help high school students in underserved communities learn the process of applying for college and financial aid in a fun and engaging way.

Earlier this year it was rumored that gaming and geek culture network G4 would be changing its format to support the "GQ" demographic, and that much of its most popular programming would either be reformatted or discontinued. Today we learn that it looks like its most popular programs will face the latter and not the former. Polygon is reporting that the network's two most popular shows have been cancelled.

The official blog for Bethesda has a short Q&A with Bethesda QA testers Joe Mueller and Jen Tonon, who are participating with other Bethesda employees on a team called "Children of Akatosh" to raise money for the Extra Life Charity.

Rice University in Houston, Texas is using Bethesda's hit role-playing game Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim to help teach an English course about Scandinavian fantasy worlds. The course is called "Scandanavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim" and hopes to teach students about fantasy as a psychological concept and how it is important in gaming culture. Students will play certain quests within the game, read selections from Norse and Icelandic sagas and identify parallels between literature and the game.

In a lengthy interview with GamesIndustry International, executives from Zynga and Electronic Arts talk about how publicly opposing the Defense of Marriage Act has impacted their businesses. Earlier this year Chick-Fil-A came out publicly to say that it supported traditional marriage between a man and a woman. This set off a firestorm of protests and boycotts for the restaurant chain.

Ilyes 'Stephano' Satouri, a 19-year old French professional StarCraft II player found himself at the business end of a half-month suspension after joking over Battle.net during a professional competition that he had had sex with a 14-year-old girl. Stephano's comments earned him a suspension without pay for the month of October, according to a GameSpot report.

A new game called In a Permanent Save State is set to release on Friday (October 12) on iTunes. The makers of the game hope to bring attention to the fact that several workers at China's Foxconn plants committed suicide and that their lives were inexplicably affected negatively by the Western demand for hi-tech gadgets like iPhones and Foxconn's drive to use workers to meet quotas - at any cost. The game will be released in conjunction with a downtown art exhibition in Reno, Nevada and a live orchestrated play through of the game, according to Benjamin Poynter.

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor's online educational video game site iCivics has partnered with educational technology company EverFi to create a new initiative called Commons – Digital Town Square. Available for free to all K-12 schools, Commons – Digital Town Square hopes to provide educational gaming with social components, testing, simulation-based gameplay, animations and pre- and post-assessments for students.

Riot Games announced that it has rescheduled the remainder of the Season 2 League of Legends World Playoff matches for October 10 starting at 5:00 PM Pacific Time (that's 8:00 PM Eastern). The matches will be streamed live and free in high definition on Twitch and Own3D, and will feature player cams, replays, interviews with players and more.

The matches will be played in the following order, starting at 5:00 PM Pacific Time:

Match 1 - Team WE vs. Counter Logic Gaming EU quarterfinal match

Match 2 - M5.BenQ vs. Taipei Assassins semifinal match

Polygon offers a mildly interesting and inspirational story about how some favorite pastimes - soccer and video games - are being used to teach kids in the African nation of Rwanda about the importance of financial literacy. The game, Financial Football, is now in schools across the country and is being sponsored by the generosity of credit card giant Visa.

Indie Game Developers have teamed up for the Rising Star Indie Bundle, which offers five indie games for whatever you are willing to pay for them. More importantly, half the sales from this bundle will go to the Get-Well Gamers Foundation.

The AbleGamers Foundation announced this morning that Paul Barnett, creative director for BioWare Mythic, is joining the advocacy group's Advisory Board for the Foundation. Barnett, who is colorblind himself, brings first-hand knowledge of both the gaming industry and the disability community. The group hopes that this addition to its Advisory Board will push the game accessibility movement to the next level.

Gay Gamer chronicles a legal fight that is brewing between the sub-Reddit r/gaymers and Gaymer.org. Gaymer.org sent a cease and desist to Reddit asking that the sub-Reddit be removed because it violates a copyright it holds for "gaymer."

Here's the trademark Gaymer.org owns - filed by site owner Chris Vizzini in 2007:

Variety reports that G4TV owners NBC Universal are going to revamp the popular tech and geek culture channel to be more "GQ," catering to the "modern male." Details on the revamp, set to happen in early 2013, have not been revealed, and many in the gaming, geek and technology culture of the internet are concerned that NBCU will dump the decent programming G4TV offers such as extensive event coverage. G4TV has always had a strong presence at events like Comic-Con, E3, and GDC.

Minecraft developer Mojang has teamed up with the United Nations to create a new initiative called Block By Block.

Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki has hinted that the company might consider adding an easy mode - much to the chagrin of those who like the game the way it is: hard as hell.

The Kickstarter for GaymerCon closed, raising $91,389 from 1,531 backers. When organizers launched the crowd funding appeal they were looking to raise right around $25,000. Thanks to the generous support of the gaming community, North America will see its first GLBT gaming event ever August 3 - 4, 2013 in San Francisco. Details on the venue will be revealed at a later date.

The official Twitter feed for the country of Sweden, @Sweden is being handled this week by Naseer Alkhouri, a game developer who describes himself as a "homeopathic swede" that "develops games for a living." Sweden has a policy of letting its citizens "guest-star" every week to speak their minds.

Microsoft is hosting the Gaming and Giving for Good (or G3) Xbox LIVE charity event on August 18, 2012 to benefit Extra Life, the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals fundraiser. By playing your favorite Xbox 360 games, you can help raise some much needed money for your local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital by gathering pledges for donations from friends and family. In support of the G3 event, Xbox LIVE is also offering a Free Gold Weekend to everyone on the weekend of August 18.

Update: We asked GaymerCon co-founder Benjamin Williams what the next stretch goal would be for the event and what organizers planned to do with the money if they manage to raise it before the deadline:

When we last checked in, the GaymerCon Kickstarter had managed to raise $28,471. Nine days later the crowd funding drive has managed to raise $48,102 from 921 backers with just 16 more days to go. GaymerCon promises to be the first "all-inclusive" fan-focused gaming event to provide a friendly, fun, and safe atmosphere for gamers and geeks to get together for two days in San Francisco (August of 2013).

Games industry veteran Don Daglow thinks American gamers have trouble dealing with failure in games. He claims that this stems from the American education system where children are no longer taught to learn from the mistakes.

"The idea of failure has been dramatically reduced," he said, adding that American students don't "fail" anymore. Instead they are "challenged." Daglow thinks European developers should keep this in mind when trying to design games that they want to succeed in the American market.

While having a super casual mode for your game is a great idea, what you call it in private can sometimes seep out and cause you a headache if you are not careful. That is exactly what is happening to Gearbox Software this morning after a Eurogamer report called a new super easy skill tree in Borderlands 2 "Girlfriend Mode." The offense comes from the inference that "girlfriends" are somehow not very good at games (or not very bright) and need a special skill tree to help them along. Gearbox is basically being accused of using a misogynist term to describe the mode.