EMP Museum passed along word today that it will celebrate the opening of its newest exhibit with the "Indie Game Revolution Launch Party" on November 7, 2014. EMP has partnered with UK-based indie video game collective the Wild Rumpus to curate a gaming party that’s part indie arcade, a "sound and visual extravaganza."

All are welcomed to attend. New and unreleased games from Wild Rumpus will be at the event, along with titles to be premiered in Indie Game Revolution, sponsored by Nintendo.

Last night organizers of IndieCade 2014 handed out awards honoring such indie studios as Double Fine, Little Wins, and Down to the Wire. There were more than 1,000 submissions from developers, and over 30 nominations for the awards this year. IndieCade is an annual event held in Los Angeles that celebrates independent developers and the wonderful games that they make.

Hack 'n' Slash from Double Fine took the Grand Jury Award, while Loveshack's Framed won the Visual Design Award, and N++ from Metanet Software was given the Special Recognition Awards.

This week's Humble Weekly Bundle is all about IndieCade the annual festival of independent games happening now in Los Angeles. The Humble Weekly Bundle IndieCade 2 offers the games LYNE, A Slow Year and Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love for whatever you want to pay. Meet or exceed the average price to score Proteus and a double pack of ibb & obb for you and a friend.

GitHub revealed that it will give free access to a suite of development tools that small-scale game makers may find useful. The only catch? You have to prove that you are a student.

The offer is part of the GitHub Education initiative, and is available to students over the age of 13 and currently enrolled in an academic program. If you can do that, you can get access to project development help and tools like the Crowdflower crowdsourcing platform, a hosting plan with the DNSimple DNS management service, and free access to Unreal Engine 4.

Video game accessories company Hyperkin has publicly acknowledged (finally) that it uses open-sourced software in its RetroN5 console. In case you don't know, the RetroN5 is an all-in-one console system that allows consumers to play classic game software for a number of devices.

Dan Adelman, the guy that used to be in charge of Nintendo's indie program, was let go by the company in early August. Today we learn from Gamasutra that Adelman is helping developer Tom Happ with Axiom Verge. Adelman says that he is handling the business- and marketing-related stuff for Happ's upcoming game.

inXile Entertainment revealed this morning that its crowd-funded spiritual sequel to the classic Interplay role-playing game Wasteland has generated $1.5 million in sales in the four days since it launched. The crowd funded post apocalyptic RPG sequel launched on Steam last Friday for PC, Mac, and Linux. So far, the game is getting fairly good reviews from both critics and fans.

"We are ecstatic that the style of game we love so much has been embraced so well," said inXile founder Brain Fargo.

IndieCade, an annual international festival that celebrates independently developed games, has revealed the more than 35 games that have been named nominees for awards at IndieCade Festival 2014. This year's event will be held in Culver City, California October 9-12, 2014. This year's event will showcase almost 150 independent games and highlight the importance of "promotion, cultivation, and community of independent games development."

Are you ready to go down a rabbit hole? Because this story about community-developed tools for Minecraft is probably as meta as you can get!

Digital Extremes has launched Warframe on the Xbox One console worldwide today. Warframe is the first free-to-play game to be released through the ID@Xbox indie game development program. Digital Extremes' game is a third-person action game set in an evolving multiplayer sci-fi world.

Puppy Games has launched a Patreon to fund the ongoing development of its free MMO Battledroid. While the small indie studio continues to work on it, it has come to the conclusion that the MMO needs at least another year of development time and it does not have enough money to fund that effort. So they decided to turn to Patreon instead of other crowdfunding methods like Indiegogo or Kickstarter to raise some funds.

Kill Screen has a fascinating interview with indie developer Nicky Case, who is working on a video game about media bias. His inspiration? The network coverage of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

On August 9, African American teen Michael Brown was shot multiple times by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson. The death of the teen, who was unarmed at the time he was shot at least five times, sparked riots and protests in Ferguson, and tons of national attention from media outlets.

Prolific indie game developer Anna Anthropy has released her latest game, Gay Cats Go to the Weird Weird Woods as a Freeware download for Windows PCs. Built using Gamemaker, Anthropy's latest game stars her and her partners' cats, who go on a magical adventure in the woods together. The game is described as "a low-pressure, enjoyable, exploratory experience" that will take players about 15 minutes to finish.

IndieCade has revealed a few of the conference speakers for this year’s IndieCade Festival, which will return to downtown Culver City, CA October 9-12. Additional speakers and topics will be announced soon, as well as the final list of games to be showcased at the festival.

Indie developed contemporary game culture will be front and center at the EMP Museum’s upcoming exhibition, "Indie Game Revolution." The exhibit will open Nov. 8 and will feature such games as "Lovers In a Dangerous Spacetime," "Gone Home," "Quadrilateral Cowboy," "Papers, Please," "Tenya Wanya Teens," and "Never Alone," "GALAK-Z: THE DIMENSIONAL" (a sci-fi space shooter created by Seattle-based 17-BIT), and more.

The second game from Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen is called "Swing Copters," and will be released later this week. Nguyen removed Flappy Birds from the Apple app store and Google Play earlier this year over personal concerns that his game was "too addictive." He recently re-released the game on Amazon's Fire TV device. Nguyen also received a lot of unwanted attention from the media in his home country of Vietnam, which scared him and his family.

Lucas Pope's grim border patrol simulation, Papers, Please is not only coming to the PlayStation 4 but the PS Vita as well. Papers, Please was just one of several indie titles that Sony highlighted yesterday during its Gamescom PlayStation press briefing. The news comes from PlayStation strategic content speaker Shahid Kamal Ahmad, who confirmed the upcoming Vita version on Twitter.

Dan Adelman, the guy that used to be in charge of Nintendo's indie program, has been let go by the company. In an interview with Kotaku he also said that Nintendo basically banned him from tweeting after he made comments about region locking and the 3DS port of The Binding of Isaac. Further, Adelman claims that Nintendo's PR department wanted to take his Twitter account over for him.

Gamasutra has released some highlighted data from its 2014 Indie Salary Report, an annual survey of non-salaried game developers in North America. The data shows that 2013 was not a great year for solo indie developers, with individuals in that category earning an average income of $11,812 in 2013, down a whopping 49 percent from 2012’s $23,130 average.

A new Kickstarter has been launched for a game called Ninja Pizza Girl.  Indie developer Disparity Games describes it as "a serious game about bullying, emotional resilience – and pizza delivering ninjas!"

Microsoft has updated the Xbox One this week to offer game trials, something it had been lacking and was frequently requested by Xbox One users. On Xbox 360 you can download trials of Xbox Live Arcade titles and play them to decide whether you want to buy them. This simple feature has not been available on Xbox one until now. Users have complained in the past that some ID@Xbox releases have been denied a larger spot on the Xbox One store, only visible at launch in the New Releases section.

Occasional GamePolitics contributor and co-host of Super Podcast Action Committee E. Zachary Knight has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for his RPG-flavored collectible token game, Demon's Hex. EZK and his brother Willis Knight are developing the game through their tiny indie game studio Divine Knight Gaming.

The Boston Festival of Indie Games announced today that over 200 independently-developed games have been submitted for this year's Tabletop and Video Game Showcases. The Boston Festival of Indie Games is an annual event celebrating indie games. It is open to the public and will take place at the Johnson Athletic Center at MIT in Cambridge, MA on Sept. 13.

Le Game Jam hopes to produce an awesome game based on the upcoming Tour de France event next month. Indie game developers taking part in the game jam have just 48 hours to create a Tour de France-themed video game at a unique joint event in Leeds and Sheffield, England before the great race next month. Teams from Leeds Metropolitan and Sheffield Hallam universities will be among those competing.

The V&A’s first ever Game Designer in Residence, Sophia George, today launches the annual game design competition for students, Dare to be Digital. George started her career on Dare to be Digital, winning in 2011 with her family-friendly puzzle game Tick Tock Toys. The Dare to be Digital competition is an annual affair hosted and run by Abertay University.

IndieCade, the international festival of independent games, will bring more than 30 independently developed games for this year’s IndieCade Showcase @ E3. The 2014 IndieCade Showcase @ E3 is presented in collaboration with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and will be located in South Hall, Booth #2835. Each game selected for the E3 Showcase was curated from submissions for this Fall’s IndieCade Festival, to be held in downtown Culver City, CA October 9-12. The E3 lineup serves as a preview of what’s to come at the larger fall IndieCade event.

Steam announced that 75 more games have been added to Steam via its community-driven Steam Greenlight program. In announcing these latest additions, the company reiterated how games are approved through the program:

German automaker Volkswagen has launched a design contest encouraging students to "create a cool video game car for Volkswagen." Those individual students or teams interested in the contest, found here, have until August 15 to create cars and video game scenarios for them to be played out in.

Volkswagen does have one reasonable stipulation; that "the typical character of a Volkswagen should at least be somewhat recognizable."

The contest will be judged by Volkswagen design chief Klaus Bischoff.

Prague-based independent developer Keen Software House says that its space-based sandbox game Space Engineers has sold more than 500,000 copies on Steam Early Access. That's not too shabby for an indie game that has been on the market since Oct 23, 2013.

Ukie, the trade group representing the games and interactive entertainment industry in the United Kingdom, announced that it has teamed up with Staffordshire University for a one day student and indie developer conference at the university's campus in Staffordshire, UK (College Rd, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire ST4 2DE, United Kingdom).