InXile Entertainment announced that Wasteland 2 will include the original 1987 CRPG Wasteland for free. The original RPG is considered the godfather of post apocalyptic games and a sort-of spiritual successor to another game series made by Interplay: Fallout. This free offering would not have been possible without the kindness of EA towards InXile Entertainment because EA owns the rights to the title.

One of the biggest problems with Kickstarter is that it doesn't allow funding for companies outside of the United States but this fall the crowd-funding site will inch towards a more international approach. This fall companies in the United Kingdom will be able to fund their projects just like their comrades in the United States. This move expands on what is already possible in the UK related to Kickstarter because UK residents can already contribute to U.S.-based projects.

A Kickstarter campaign has been launched for OUYA, the new Android-based home game console backed by Jawbone Jambox and One Laptop Per Child designer Yves Behar, Ed Fries (inventor of the original Xbox), Amol Sarva of Peek, Amazon's Lab126 Muffi Ghadiali (who helped develop the Kindle), Peter Pham of Color, and Julie Uhrman of IGN as its founder and CEO.

In a deal financed by Arkenstone Investment, APB Reloaded creator Reloaded Games has merged with its parent company, K2 Network. The new company will operate under the Reloaded Games name.

"This merger represents the beginning of a new era for the company, as we evolve our two core businesses," said Reloaded Games CEO Bjorn Book-Larsson. "We have already signed contracts with independent developers to use our platform and portal for their free-to-play game distribution. We will announce those agreements in the next couple of weeks."

In days of old, Kickstarter would only sporadically release information on projects, and often only when one project or another met some amazing milestone. That practice is changing. Now the most popular crowdfunding site on the Internet will release daily statistics on projects so that visitors can drill down into the data. The information will be divided into three categories: Projects and Dollars, Successfully Funded Projects, and Unsuccessfully Funded Projects. These categories are in turn broken up into 12 sub-categories such as games, film, music, design, publishing, etc.

Feminist Frequency, a web series run by Anita Sarkeesian that explores “representations of race, gender, sexuality, class and ability in popular culture,” launched a Kickstarter campaign a few weeks back for a new series of videos entitled Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.  The project will examine and comment on female video game character stereotypes throughout gaming’s history.

Two Guys from Andromeda walk into a bar. The one guy says to the other, "Let's start a Kickstarter to fund a spiritual sequel to the classic Sierra adventure game series, Space Quest." The other guy says "F#@! yeah." Fast forward a number of weeks later and the Guys from Andromeda have managed to pull it off.

Roger Wilco may never fly again, but his spirit will rise from the grave in a new game tentatively titled SpaceVentures. The funding closed at $539,767 - $39,767 above their target goal - with the help of 10,809 backers.

This is one of those stories that will make people wonder whether the glass is half-empty or half-full when it comes to the statistics of success and failure related to games and Kickstarter. According to data gathered by Appsblogger and put into a handy-dandy infographic, almost half of the game projects looking for funding on Kickstarter managed to get funded, while more than half do not. Of the 1,729 game projects - which included card and board games too - around 43 percent were successfully funded.

The National Institute for Health is offering a grant to small indie game developers who are willing to partner with clinical neuroscientists to create game software that advances neuropsychotherapy and technologies that can be used to improve cognitive processes. While the grant only funds phase I and II research, but the goal is to quickly develop and commercialize successful studies.

Gambitious, a crowd-funding platform designed specifically for funding video game projects is asking established developers and those new to the game development to submit proposals for their game projects prior to the service's launch later this summer. The Holland-based crowd funding platform is an alternative to Kickstarter, providing a game development specific funding model that provides investors with an equity stake in the project instead of reward-based incentives.

Interplay co-founder and current InXile front man Brian Fargo tells Game Informer that Kickstarter can be the saving grace for mid-sized developers who can't find the funding and support they need from publishers who are more focused on AAA franchises and the high profile, well-funded studios that make them.

Ed Fleming, founder of the Main Campus Camps, let us know that he has launched a Kickstarter to provide some much needed funding to buy new technology for the summer video game design camp, along with some funding to give "in-need kids" free access to the program. Main Campus Camps hosts video game and science & technology summer day camps for children ages 5 - 16 years-old at Villanova University, just outside of Philadelphia.

Anyone that has ever flipped through the pages of Computer Gaming World knows the epic struggles between Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk in their popular column Tom vs. Bruce. The second most popular column at the time in the magazine could return if it can raise enough money to do so. The Kickstarter campaign is asking for $10,000 to write ten brand-new columns to be released on a monthly basis over the next year.

With 11,638 backers, the Kickstarter for Isle of Wight-based video games developer Stainless Games has successfully funded Carmageddon Reincarnation. The remake of the popular racing game that encourages using your car as a weapon against innocent bystanders has raised $445,895 (as of this writing). The developers were asking for $400,000. The project still has eight days to go before funding closes.

Season two of the ultra popular Fallout-based fan web series, Fallout: Nuka Break, will get the help of Fallout: New Vegas designer Chris Avellone and the original Fallout lead programmer Tim Cain - if they can raise $120,000 in their latest Kickstarter appeal. Both have agreed to sign on to season two as writers and designers and make guest appearances if the creators of the show can raise enough cash.

City National Bank has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against Konami and developer Autumn Games for allegedly defrauding the financial institution of money it is owed related to a $15 million line of credit. City National Bank claims that Konami and Autumn Games defrauded it of $15 million in credit for the development of Def Jam Rapstar. They also alleged that both parties "lied" to the bank in order to secure the credit line, promising to pay it back with the sales of the game.

38 Studios has let some of its staff go, according to Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee (I), though how many people we do not know at this point. Chaffee made his comments to the media after a lengthy meeting with the Rhode Island Economic Development Committee and 38 Studios founder Curt Schilling. After the meeting Schilling had no comment for the press, save that his company would not be looking to Rhode Island taxpayers for help.

Social game matchmaking company Xfire announced this morning that it has secured an additional $3 million in funding. The company will use the cash injection to expand into Asian territories. The financing round was led by Singapore-based firm IDM Venture Capital. The cash follows the news that Xfire has inked a partnership deal with CHINA YOUTH GOYOR TECHNOLOGY (BEIJING) CO., LTD., who will help bring the service to more than 400 million gamers in Asia.

Everyone is getting in on the crowdfunding bandwagon. Electronic Arts announced today that it will make life a little bit easier for anyone that successfully funds a game through a crowdfunding program such as Kickstarter by letting them sell their game on its Origin digital distribution platform for free for 90 days. While 90 days might not seem like a very long time let's keep in mind that the best sales usually come in the first two weeks of a game's release anyway...

Things are going from bad to worse for 38 Studios and its employees. On Thursday a company representative hand-delivered a check for the $1.1 million payment that was due on May 1 to the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, but the company then said that it didn't have the money in the bank to cover the check. If a private citizen wrote such a check they would be under arrest and enjoying the amenities of a Rhode Island jail without bail, but that's another story altogether.

Not everyone has the brand and name recognition that Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo have. So how do you get funding when nobody knows who you are or what you are capable of? Games journalist and tech writer Scott Steinberg may have the answer you seek in his brand new book on the art of crowdfunding called "The Crowdfunding Bible: How to Raise Money for Any Startup, Video Game or Project." 

Update: A Boston Globe report indicates that 38 Studios founder and former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has asked Rhode Island officials for more money for his company in the private meeting that was held this morning. The newspaper says that board members of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation took no action on Schilling’s request. The amount he asked for was not disclosed.

In November of last year a Marine Archaeological company that has been working in the waters around Africa and Asia for the last 17 years decided that they wanted to bring their experience in deep sea treasure hunting to life as a video game, so they began working with Estoril, Portugal-based developer Arqueonautas to build a strategy game called ARQ Quest. In the game, players take on the task of creating the perfect atmosphere for treasure hunting - from building the perfect team of specialists, and investing research, to buying the right equipment and stocking up supplies.

InXile CEO Brian Fargo has updated the “Kicking it Forward" site - located at kickingitforward.org, in case you didn't know - to answer a number of questions about the concept he started when he launched his Wasteland 2 Kickstarter. The easy answer to a definition of "Kicking it Forward" is to kick back 5 percent of the successful funding back into other Kickstarter projects.

You probably don't know who Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe are right off the top of your head, but the duo are best known for creating the popular Space Quest series of comedic adventure games for Sierra back in the day. Like Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe and Gabriel Knight creator Jane Jensen, the duo see hope in creating a new spacey adventure by crowdfunding it, so they have launched a Kickstarter campaign to do just that.

The Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter campaign has closed with $1.8 million in pledged funding. The funding drive by Bellevue, Washington-based developer Harebrained Schemes was aiming for $400,000 when it started. It ended up raising $1,836,447 from 36,276 backers. Including PayPal pledges (which allowed those outside the U.S. to participate) the company managed to raise a total of $1,895,772.

The U.S. National Endowment for the Arts will fund four games that explore climate change and literature. This will be the first time the NEA funds video games since it changed its policy in May 2011 to include the category.

Replay Games and Leisure Suit Larry series creator Al Lowe have officially gone over their Kickstarter funding mark with just seven days left until the deadline. As of this writing, the project garnered $501,527 of its $500,000 goal as promised by 11,147 backers. That means that a remake of the very first game - Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards - will be developed.

Replay Games said that whatever money they garnered above its target number would go towards expanding the project to:

A new crowdfunding platform dedicated exclusively to game development will launch this June at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. Dubbed an "alternative to Kickstarter," the new platform is being built by Dutch company Gambitious.

Last Week Harebrained Schemes announced that if it hit a funding milestone of $1.5 million in its Kickstarter campaign for Shadowrun Returns, it would create special content that would tie story from the new game into the SNES and Sega Shadowrun games. This content, the company said would be exclusive to backers.