Robin Hunicke, the game designer and producer responsible for creating Journey at thatgamecompany, has been hired by the University of California Santa Cruz as Associate Professor of Art & Game Design. Hunicke will officially join the faculty in January 2015 and be in charge of leading the new undergraduate program in Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz.

Eidos President for Life Ian Livingstone has applied to launch a free school in England that will deliver lessons to students using video games. Livingstone told the BBC that he wanted to start a school that uses games-based learning and get away from what he called the  "relentless testing" method used and most schools in the country.

"I'm passionate about children who have been born into the internet," he told the BBC. "I think they learn in a different way."

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.

Mantis Digital Arts has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund an educational game about bees, with plans to launch it shortly thereafter. The game, Buzz Whizz Bees, is being developed for web browsers, Android, Ouya, and iOS - and will sell for $2.99.

The game is being designed to help teachers and parents introduce children ages four to eight to the interesting world of bees by letting them play "as a varying range of different bee species, enabling them to comprehend bee behavior by gathering food, scouting for new food sources and defending the hive."

A new study from Florida State University finds that Portal 2 might be better at "brain training" than software designed specifically for the task.

The New York Academy of Sciences will be keeping an eye on players of the upcoming online science education game Galxyz when it launches in 2015. The inspirations for developing an online educational game for children that teaches STEM education (for kindergartners to 12th graders) came from a father watching his young daughters quickly getting bored while playing science education games. He wanted to create something a bit more challenging, and ultimately more effective.

Riot Games announced that the North American Collegiate Championship (NACC) is ready to kick off its 2014-2015 season. The NCAC is a League of Legends collegiate competition featuring hundreds of teams from universities across the U.S. and Canada. Last year 540 teams from over 300 universities competed for a chance to win thousands of dollars in scholarship money.

The 2014-2015 NCAC competition will now span the entire academic year and North America has been divided into four new regional brackets: North, South, East, and West.

Rovio has teamed up with Room to Read, a non-profit literacy advocacy group whose goal is to promote reading and gender equality in Asia and Africa. For the next two weeks Rovio will offer a "Good Deed" coin as an in-game purchase for Angry Birds Epic. Rovio will donate $1.40 from each $3.99 purchase to Room to Read to help drive its initiatives abroad.

Educational game company Tangible Play has generated around $2 million in pre-orders for Osmo, its educational game platform for iPad, according to Gamasutra. The accessory kit, which retails for around $49, is shipping to to preorder customers - including more than 2,000 schools. Tangible Play is a Silicon Valley startup founded by former Google, Disney and Ubisoft employees.

According to statistics released by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) this week, around 390 academic institutions across the country are now offering video game-related certificates, undergraduate and graduate degrees.

As the ESA points out in its release, that represents a 50 percent increase over the 254 schools that offered video game-related education in 2009. While there are schools all over the country that are now offering these types of courses, California had the most with 73 schools, followed by New York with 26, and 24 each in Illinois and Texas.

The SETI Institute announced that it will be hosting the "SETI-JAM" October 17th-19th at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. What the hell is a SETI-Jam? It's a collaborative game-building event that will include over 70 scientists who will design games of any genre that use genuine SETI data. The event's focus is on the Drake Equation, a calculation that estimates the number of 'communicative extra-terrestrial civilizations' in the Milky Way galaxy.

Valve Software is increasing its support for iD Tech by providing attendees with free access to Valve-created games, free Steam accounts, and access to the company's Source SDK. Valve has been a long-time corporate sponsor of the iD Tech educational program.

Over the weekend the White House hosted the White House Game Jam, where game creators in the serious games and "Games for Change" space took part to show "the beneficial properties of games."

Parents have a hard time getting their young children to read, so if that means letting them read "anything" that can capture their imaginations, then they'll take that option. This Associated Press report offers some anecdotal evidence that books associated with Mojang's game Minecraft is a popular choice for kids as reading options, and parents and even teachers are happy with that.

Epic Games announced today that it is giving away its Unreal Engine 4 game development suite for free to universities and students. Teachers and students interested in obtaining Unreal Engine 4 for free can now submit their credentials through Epic's official site at www.unrealengine.com/education. Once approved, they will have access to the suite for free. Normally that Unreal Engine 4 license would cost $19 per month.

A new game from Budding Biologist created in collaboration with scientists at UC Davis teaches first- and fifth-graders to think like a scientist using inquiry-based tools on a fun adventure.

Zabuza Labs has launched "Save Trees - A Game for Social Cause" for Android-based devices, a simple game that offers a message about conservation and protecting the environment. The game promises to entertain with simple gameplay mechanics while delivering a "social message" and educational information on trees.

The United States Census Bureau has released a new mobile app for iOS and Android devices that tests users' knowledge of various demographic facts for the states and D.C. The app is called Census PoP Quiz, and it is free to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Depression Quest, an interactive fiction game about dealing with the peaks and valleys of depression, has finally made its way to Steam this week. Available for free, Depression Quest is the creation of Zoe Quinn. The game was originally released on February 14 of last year, but had to wait until January of this year to get the "greenlight" from Steam.

Little Worlds Interactive has released its strategic tower defense game, The Counting Kingdom on Steam Early Access today. What's interesting about The Counting Kingdom is that the main gameplay mechanic involves solving math problems to cast spells.

In The Counting Kingdom, players jump into the shoes of a wizard's apprentice who must stop a horde of angry monsters from destroying the castle towers in the kingdom by using spells, potions, and food old fashioned mathematics.

The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s Professional Programs unveiled a new academic course dedicated to the study of video game development. The course, "Interactivity: A Course in Video Game Design and Development," will be taught by video game scribe Marianne Krawczyk (best known for her work on the God of War and Prince of Persia series) and Sony Computer Entertainment’s Senior Manager of Internal Production, Whitney Wade.

In an interview with Medical Research, Lynn E. Fiellin talks about how video games are helping to teach young people about risk prevention related to HIV. Fiellin is an M.D., an Associate Professor of Medicine Yale University School of Medicine, and the director of play2PREVENT Lab.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF), and HHF’s Leaders on the Fast Track (LOFT) today announced applications are now open for the second annual ESA LOFT Video Game Innovation Fellowship. The program provides minority youths with an opportunity to promote social change through video games, according to the ESA. The Fellowship program will award 20 people between the ages of 15 - 25 with grants to create video games or mobile applications which seek to solve problems that face their communities.

The Raspberry Pi foundation has announced that it has upgraded its cheap micro computer to a new version called Model B+. Described as the "final evolution" of the first-generation Raspberry Pi, the new hardware comes with two more USB 2.0 ports, a microSD card reader and 14 more GPIO pins for a total of 40 on the board.

Nintendo has made four student games available for free on Wii U eShop in Japan. All of the games were built by teams of students in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan.

Developer Pixelberry's High School Story, a game that took on the issue of bullying in High School, has set its sights on another important issue: teen boy image issues and eating disorders. A new version of the mobile game aims to provide "educational resources and professional support to the 20.2 million American teenagers who are unhappy with their bodies."

The Los Angeles Mayor's office and the Los Angeles Unified School District recognized over 150 students today who were certified through the Digital Living Project. The program focuses on online privacy and safety, cyberbullying prevention, and introducing students to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) based careers.

GamesIndustry International has an excellent article chronicling the plight of a female developer whose game was banned from Apple's App Store for depicting a sexual act. At first blush the game, HappyPlayTime, might sound like pornography, but it's more about education in a fun and entertaining way, according to its creator.

Playing computer games such as Angry Birds and Lemmings teaches children some pretty important life skills including concentration, resilience and problem solving. Professor Angela Mcfarlane, an education expert in the United Kingdom who has advised the government there on educational technology (she is also currently writing a book called "Authentic Learning for the Digital Generation") and will soon become the head of the College of Teachers.

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).