Double Fine's Kickstarter campaign for the "Double Fine Adventure" game project has surpassed $1 million. Originally they were asking for $500,000 in funding but within eight hours of launching the appeal they had raked in well over $800,000 for a point-and-click adventure game and a documentary to be filmed by 2 Player Productions. Earlier in the day Tim Schafer said that any money over the initial amount would be used to bring the game to other formats.

Indie developer Jeff Vogel (whose Spiderweb Software studio recently released Avadon: The Black Fortress) writes an interesting article for GamaSutra today explaining his philosophy on the most effective method for dealing with piracy. The thrust of his argument is that players will pay for easy-to-pirate games because it makes them feel good about supporting a developer.

Developers whose platform of choice for game deployment is Facebook say that the social network's mandatory payment system ends up being a "twenty percent net tax" and seriously hurts their margin of profit.

"We thought conversions would go up and be around 15 or 20 percent,” said Kevin Chou, Chief Executive for Kabam, “But it turned out to be around 5 to 10 percent, meaning that we’re taking a 20 percent net tax.”

Rocksteady co-founder and game director Sefton Hill has called on the UK government to offer tax breaks to game studios before it’s too late. Hill says it is time for the UK to support its games studios to match the benefits offered overseas or risk losing them.

"A lot of my friends have moved abroad to get work; there's a real talent drain," Hill said in an interview with CVG. "Montreal is a central place for development and it's mainly because the tax breaks they give are so phenomenal."

Double Fine's Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert have proven that using crowd-sourced funding can be successful. Last night the company launched a Kickstarter page asking the community for $400,000 to create a new point-and-click adventure title. Around $300,000 of that will go towards development, while $100,000 of the money will be spent to create a "making of" documentary series about the game by 2 Player Productions.

Entertainment Media Council founder Morgan Ramsay has released his new book, "Gamers at Work: Stories Behind the Games People Play." Gamers at Work features 18 interviews with legendary video game creators and entrepreneurs conducted by Ramsay. Through first-hand accounts with the industry's most famous people, the book explores how entertainment software companies are formed, and how they are kept running. Some have succeeded, some have walked away and other have failed abysmally.

The Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) has revealed all the finalists for the 10th Annual G.A.N.G. Awards -as chosen by its 70-person Advisory Committee. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception received nine nominations in various categories - the most of any game this year.

According to a Touch Arcade forum user, a company has been offering to boost the ranking of free apps using bots on Apple's App Store. According to a user named "walterkaman," the unnamed company will set up automated and repeated downloads of a client's app in order to push it into Apple's Top Free charts. While the company was not named and the story has - as of yet - remained unverified, it has caught the attention of Apple.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun points out an interesting list compiled by veteran developer Simon Roth from Frozen Synapse developer Mode 7. The list shows companies that no longer collect any kinds of royalties from games they once had a hand in making. The point of it is to show what happens when a publisher buys out a developer and then kills that developer off.

According to a developer survey conducted by UK game industry trade group TIGA, only 33 percent of developers in the United Kingdom are working solely on games for traditional retail. Only ten percent of those start-ups surveyed said that retail was their area of focus. The rest, two-thirds according to TIGA, are working on digital or social game properties. TIGA claims that just 33 percent of UK developers now work solely on retail, and based on survey results, estimates that the digital and social games sector will grow by 21 percent every year until 2015.

"I Feel Used" quips Volition Designer Jameson Durall in a post on #AltDevBlogADay. In a lengthy post Durall rails against the used games market and how it is "significantly impacting the revenue" developers receive. He talks about how great it is that developers are coming up with new ways to recoup money from the used games market such as online pass codes:

Someone claiming to be a former Zynga employee in this Reddit thread says that it was the modus operandi of the company to do exactly what it has been accused of by several developers in the last couple of weeks: copy games that were deemed successful.

By Kevin Dent

I started to play Triple Town as of last weekend; I had a blast and even more so when I see that they were actively supporting it with frequent updates. Then I started to hear some rumblings in the industry about how another game basically ripped it off.

Since then, we have seen Spry Fox issue proceedings against Lolapps. Most of us have read about it and shook our heads; I want to take the rhetoric out of it. I wanted to just look at the basic facts.

In an exclusive interview with GameBeat, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus denied accusations that it copied a rival developer's Facebook Bingo game, but also said that social game developers refine and improve game concepts on the market to create the best products.

Over the weekend Santa Monica, California-based Buffalo Studios claimed that the upcoming Zynga Bingo was a cheap knock-off of its Bingo Blitz game, which already has a million daily players on Facebook.

While some publishers and developers spend a lot of time railing against the evils of file-sharing and piracy, Rovio is not one of those companies. The Angry Birds creator says that piracy can actually bring new business to companies.

Speaking at the Midem conference in Cannes, Rovio Mobile CEO Mikael Hed said that piracy can actually can create good results.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) announced more speakers taking part in the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit, which will kick off February 8 at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas and run until February 10. The latest speaker list reveals a special panel starring members from Epic, Insomniac and Blizzard. Mike Capps of Epic Games, Ted Price of Insomniac Games, and Frank Pearce of Blizzard will take part in a session to discuss "what it takes to survive for 20+ years in the game industry while maintaining growth and original content." 

The organizers of the 12th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) have revealed the recipients of two of its Special Awards: the Pioneer Award and the Ambassador Award. The Pioneer Award is given to a developer for creating breakthrough video game genres or concepts that have a lasting impact on the industry. The Ambassador Award is given to individuals who do something that elevates the video game development community and industry as a whole.

The AbleGamers Foundation has given the 2011 Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year Award to Star Wars: the Old Republic. The charity dedicated to encouraging accessibility of games for players with disabilities says that Star Wars: The Old Republic deserved this year's award because it provided a lot of options for players.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) announced three debates to take place at the 2012 D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit. The event will be held at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, February 8-10, 2012, and feature a line-up of industry leaders, decision makers and visionaries. Kicking off the conference on February 8 (prior to the Keynote Opener) will be the three "Hot Topics" sessions co-moderated by Adam Sessler, host of G4’s X-Play and Perrin Kaplan, Zebra Partners.

Artist, game designer, musician and Digital Eel co-founder William R. Sears passed away recently at the age of 58 due to heart trouble. Specific details on the cause of death were not revealed. Better known as "Phosphorous" in the indie game scene, Bill was a core influence on Digital Eel's games - particularly the trippy artistic style of games such as Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, Brain Pipe, Soup de Jour, Dr. Blob's Organism, and many others.

RuneScape maker Jagex has hired former Rockstar veteran Alex Horton to the new post of chief creative officer, according to a GameIndustry.biz report.

Red 5 Studios, makers of the upcoming MMO shooter Firefall, have come out strongly against SOPA and PIPA, and plan to go dark for one day on January 18 to protest. The company also announced that, because of the Entertainment Software Association’s support for the bills, it has canceled its E3 booth and plans to skip the show. The shutdown will include all of its websites, its community sites for the game, and the Firefall beta.

Torchlight developer Runic Games has officially come out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). In a forum thread asking the company for its position on the anti-piracy bills currently before U.S. lawmakers, a Runic Games representative said the following:

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) announced today that Todd Howard, Game Director and Executive Producer at Bethesda Game Studios, will be its opening keynote speaker at the 2012 D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate and Entertain) Summit at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas on Wednesday, February 8. Howard will discuss game development and the player experience, in the keynote session titled "Why We Create, Why We Play."

League of Legends developer Riot Games let us know that they, have officially announced their opposition to controversial legislation under consideration in Congress: the U.S. House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The company's CEO, Brandon Beck, took to the official forums for the game (which has 11-million-players, for the record) to say that these two bills in their present form are unacceptable:

Organizers for the 12th annual Game Developers Choice Awards today revealed this year's finalists, which included Bethesda’s popular action-RPG Skyrim, Portal 2, and Bastion. The three titles had five nominations each in various categories.

Winners in all major categories will be honored at the Game Developers Choice Awards show, on March 7, 2012 at 6:30 PM at the Moscone Convention Center.

The nominees for the 12th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards are:

Nathan Fouts of Mommy's Best Games - the company behind Serious Sam: Double D - has written an open letter to members of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) asking them to urge the trade group to drop its support of SOPA. He also urged gamers, supposedly represented by the ESA and its Video Game Voters Network, to urge the group to drop its support of the bill as well.

Magazine publisher Computec Media announced details on the second round of its international game developer contest, Make the Game 2012. Indie developers interested in registering for the international browser and social games competition have until April 16 to do so. This year Computec Media plans to invest 1 million Euros in the contest to find the best new browser and social network games. Entries will be judged by a five-member jury of "experts," who will ultimately award prizes to up to three promising games.

The Humble Indie Bundle 4 has ended, and was the biggest bundle offering to date, selling 435,236 bundles for a total of $2,372,194.97. By the end of the pay-what-you-want DRM-free indie games bundle event, the organizers offered a total of 12 games including Nightsky HD, Cave Story+, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown, Bit.Trip.Runner, Super Meat Boy, Shank, Crayon Physics Deluxe, VVVVVV, Cogs, Hammerfight, And Yet It Moves, and a bundle of soundtracks. 

Deborah Thomas, CEO and President of Silly Monkey, LLC (a training company specializing in training games and business simulations) and President of the Georgia Game Developers Association (GGDA), plans to launch the first chapter of Women In Gaming International (WIGI) in the Eastern United States by convening the first meeting at Battle & Brew Food and Games, 279 Powers Ferry Road - Suite H, Marietta, Georgia on January 16, 2012.