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.

Sweden-based developer Mojang is working on a custom version of its hit Minecraft game for the $25 - $35 Raspberry Pi micro-computer. The new game is called Minecraft: Pi Edition and was officially filed this weekend at Minecon fan event in Paris, France. According to the official FAQ on the Raspberry Pi web site, the game came into being after the company sent "a bunch of boards out to Notch and the guys at Mojang in Stockholm a little while back."

Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight is going to be a little different this year... This year's event will let fans decide which ideas get made into games, with a live stream of the entire process to boot. But the best part is that, when it's all said and done, all of the games made during the vent will be released as a special Humble Bundle.

BerryBots 1.0.0 has been released for Raspberry Pi, Linux, and Mac OS X - with a Windows version "coming soon." Developed by Patrick Cupka (who some of you may remember from the Quake community as the sole proprietor of the popular web site The Void), BerryBots is described as a game designed primarily for the Raspberry Pi that teaches players the basics of programming. The game caters to novice programmers by letting them program a ship that moves around a simple stage, sees gameplay events, and shoots at other ships.

A Kickstarter for a space in Los Angeles where independent developers can get together is being pitched today as the "LA Game Space." The idea of the project - should it get the $250,000 in funding organizers are asking for - is to transform an old warehouse in the Arts District of Los Angeles and turn it into a hot spot for game design and independent titles. They plan on hosting workshops, exhibitions, research labs, public events with guest speakers, and space where indie game makers can set up shop. Think of it as a sort of indie game commune, if you will.

Teasing an upcoming interview with Hotline Miami co-creator Jonatan Söderström, VG247 offers tidbits on the developer's positions on piracy and making games "just for money." Recently made headlines when he offered support to players who had pirated his game over on Pirate's Bay.

First he talks about why he makes games:

Jonatan Soderstrom, one of the co-creators of the popular indie PC game Hotline Miami, apparently noticed a thread over on The Pirate Bay complaining about bugs in his game. So what does he do? He joins in and promises a patch!. Yes, Soderstrom offers support even to people who pirated his game. From the thread (uncovered by PC Gamer):

Last week, Haunts: The Manse Macabre game developer Rick Dakan found that he had run out of money after successfully funding his game via a Kickstarter campaign. Obviously backers of the game were not pleased with this news and media outlets were quick to point out what happens to backers when a project they fund doesn't get completed (the general consensus being that they get screwed).

Speaking at the Broadband World Forum in Amsterdam on Wednesday, Eidos Life President Ian Livingstone said that broadband bottlenecks around the world are slowing down the game industry's transition from the physical to the digital world, and urged telecommunications companies to build more broadband infrastructure.

"What we need is super-speed broadband,″ said Livingstone. "You're kind of holding us back in many respects."

While we would be hard pressed to attest to the validity or effectiveness of the ReConstitution 2012 interactive web app, we do find it more than a little amusing - mostly because of the way its creators describe it.

With five days to go, Obsidian Entertainment's Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for its old-school RPG Project Eternity has managed to raise $2,805,528 of its original $1,100,000 goal from 58,780 backers. The company has managed to surpass multiple stretch goals, which in turn has allowed them to add a ton of features and extras to the game that fans will appreciate. In the latest update to the Kickstarter page, Obsidian laid out its plans for the last five days of the campaign.

While the upcoming game developer jam - F*ck This Jam might have the most colorful name ever - organizers are aiming to take developers out of their comfort zones to create games in genres they absolutely loathe.