Nintendo has a novel way of getting gamers (who do not already own a Wii U) excited about the games it will be showcasing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles next month. At participating Best Buy stores consumers will be able to get hands-on time with pretty much the same game demos as the press gets access to from the E3 show floor. The announcement was made by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime today during a Nintendo Direct presentation.

The Peter Thiel Foundation (founded by the former CEO and co-founder of PayPal) announced the third set of young entrepreneurs to be awarded 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowships. These new "Thiel Fellows" will receive $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation as well as mentorship from the Foundation’s network of entrepreneurs over a two year period.

At a recent Ubisoft press event to promote its upcoming game Watch Dogs, senior producer Dominic Guay revealed how the company is working hard to make the hacking in the game as authentic as humanly possible. Joystiq covered the press event extensively in this article.

Four coding schools just for young girls and women are trying to change the number of females that program (and give girls more STEM-focused educational opportunities) in the United States - as highlighted in this ReadWriteWeb feature. The start-ups catering to women and girls aspiring to learn how to code include Girl Develop It, Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, and Girls Learning Code/Ladies Learning Code.

Over the weekend, a Philadelphia skyscraper was transformed into the world’s largest video game by a Drexel University professor who used the building’s lighting system to display a working version of Pong.

The gigantic game of Pong was the creation of Drexel professor Frank Lee, who has spent the last five years working on the idea.

Digital Eel has turned to Kickstarter to fund the follow-up title to its wonderful rogue-like space adventure games Strange Adventures and Weird Worlds. The new game is called Sea of Stars and features the same kind of lunch-break-length space adventures complete with randomly generated worlds, space exploration, turn-based space combat and the kind of quirky humor that the previous titles are known for.

Project Awakened recently suffered a major setback when the Kickstarter campaign asking for $500,000 in crowd-funding missed the mark by $161,502. Being so close to the goal and garnering the support of 6,287 backers,

Phosphor Games has decided that it will try again - but this time it will do it without the help of Kickstarter. Right now those backers who want to see this open-ended super powered action game world come alive can fund it again at www.projectawakened.com.

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.

Ridiculous Fishing and Serious Sam: Random Encounter developer Vlambeer says that "non-evil" free-to-play game design is almost impossible and that game developers should not be afraid to price their games at $3. Vlambeer's Ridiculous Fishing, which almost saw the studio go under during development, went live last week on Apple's App Store and garnered strong sales and critical acclaim from fans and critics.

Yesterday notable indie developer Jason Rohrer (best known for such indie titles as The Passage and Sleep Is Death) quietly started taking early orders for his next game, The Castle Doctrine. The Castle Doctrine is an online focused game where the player must protect his spouse and children from home invaders.

Polygon has an interesting interview with Plague Inc. developer James Vaughan, who reveals to the publication that he has been asked to speak to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Plague Inc. is a unique strategy game for iOS that lets the play take control of a deadly pathogen and infect one person - patient zero - with the end goal being to spread the plague to every corner of the globe.

Over the weekend, two Newtown, Connecticut residents opened a family friendly video game arcade in the town called the Sandy Hook Arcade Center (as reported by Polygon). The all-ages arcade is meant to help the town heal and promote family values in the aftermath of the elementary school shooting in December where 26 human lives were lost as the result of a shooting rampage by a lone gunman.

Chris Roberts' Star Citizen has surpassed the $8 million dollar funding mark from several sources including over $2.1 million on Kickstarter alone. That milestone is leaps and bounds above the original pitch for $500,000. The PC based space sim from the man behind Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer continues to break new ground for a crowd funded game, raising more than a half million dollars in February alone.

Electronic Arts announced that it will host the first-ever EA Hackathon at the EA headquarters in Redwood City, California on March 16. Teams will compete against each other for a chance to win a (what we assume will be) tasty and informative lunch with EA CTO Rajat Taneja, a selection of unnamed EA products, and $1,000 in cash for each participating team member of the winning team (of course).

EA describes the challenge as follows:

According to a Eurogamer report detailing how Triumph Studios came to be developing Age of Wonders 3, it was revealed that Mojang co-founder and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson was very instrumental in making it all happen.

The whole thing started when Triumph kept seeing a blurb mentioning Age of Wonders in the Minecraft title screen. After sending Persson a demo of the game they all managed to work something out:

Introversion's tiered pre-order idea for its upcoming Prison Architect game seems to have paid off a great amount of dividends for the popular indie British studio. The company behind such hits as Uplink, DEFCON, Darwinia, and Multiwinia says that it has sold 30,333 pre-orders, generating $1,019,265. The company accomplished this by offering different tiers much like the rewards you might find attached to a Kickstarter campaign.

The National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) today revealed the nominees for the 12th Annual 2012 NAVGTR Award nominations. Since 2001, a panel of over 600 trade voters have chosen the best games in over 50 categories, recognizing interactive entertainment industry achievements in the fields of art, technology, and production.

A Canadian tax department worker who developed and released a game that made fun of his day job as a customer service representative now finds himself out of work. Apparently his bosses at the Canada Revenue Agency didn't find his game all that amusing. That game is called I Get This Call Every Day and, as anyone who handles a phone support role (or any other profession where you have to directly deal with people) can attest, people aren't always that fun to deal with...

Organizers of the Global Game Jam say that this year's event is expected to break previous participation records, with over 300 locations in 60 countries with "tens of thousands of people" planning on participating over the coming weekend in the fifth annual GGJ event. The 48-hour long game creation marathon is taking place January 25−27, 2013 beginning in New Zealand on Friday, Jan 25th at 5pm local time. One the Jam starts other time zones will join in as they hit the 5 P.M. starting point.

Thatgamecompany's popular PS3 title Journey has been nominated for 11 Dice Summit Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) announced today. Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick will host the video game award show at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas on Feb. 7, while Machinima will live stream the awards show. A total of 63 games were nominated for various awards across various platforms including console, mobile, web, portable and PC platforms received nominations this year.

Chuck Bittner is a quadriplegic, a comedian and an avid video game player. More importantly he is a strong advocate for disabled gamers who need the ability to use custom buttons in games because he plays a lot of them using his face. He has championed a remapping petition urging game developers and publishers to include custom button mapping in all of their biggest titles. He also wants to go to PAX East this year to further spread the important message of button remapping, but he needs your help.

The Independent Games Festival (IGF) juries have announced the Main Competition finalists for the 15th annual awards - nominating nearly 30 independent game titles from around the world. This year's finalists were picked by expert juries, following "playthroughs and recommendations" of 580+ IGF entries from over 200 top independent game experts, according to organizers.

A group of gamers and Zelda series fans have come together under the team name of Fun For Freedom to create what they call a "Zeldathon." The group will play through Nintendo's popular RPG adventure games for charity over the next five days while streaming their antics on this Twitch.tv channel.

Winda Benedetti from NBC News conducts an interesting interview with two child psychologist to ask them about the effects of gaming on young children. She interviews Dr. Tyler Black, Clinical Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Emergency Unit at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver, BC, Canada; and Dr. Matthew Chow, the Clinical Director of Telepsychiatry at BC Children’s Hospital.

With just nine days to go, the latest indie game music bundle, "THE NUBUWO WINTER BUNDLE" has managed to raise $2,900 of its $8,000 goal from 124 backers. The Kickstarter campaign urges supporters to "discover game-inspired music and fund Tokyo's FAMI-MODE 2012 DVD, featuring live chip music performances and interviews."

Android-based OUYA console will soon be in the hands of the public - or at least that part of the public that wants to develop software for the platform. The OUYA will ship out beginning on December 28 to those who backed the Kickstarter and will arrive to supporters shortly thereafter.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA.) has released a draft of a new bill called the "Internet Moratorium Act 2012" on his web site Keep the Web Open. Issa was one of several members of congress strongly opposed SOPA. The bill will be appreciated by those who have opposed laws that add new regulations to the internet in the name of fighting piracy and cyber crimes because it aims to put a moratorium on such laws.

Pixel Academy, a New York City-based company founded by former Lead Game Designer at Nickelodeon (Mike Fischtha) has been conducting workshops for children ages 8-12 all over the city at locations such as homes and public libraries. These workshops teach children video game design, 3D printing, Arduino fashion design, and other fun technology based courses.

The top four games have been voted on by the community in Double Fine's annual game development jam, Amnesia Fortnight.