Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor's online educational video game site iCivics has partnered with educational technology company EverFi to create a new initiative called Commons – Digital Town Square. Available for free to all K-12 schools, Commons – Digital Town Square hopes to provide educational gaming with social components, testing, simulation-based gameplay, animations and pre- and post-assessments for students.

Riot Games announced that it has rescheduled the remainder of the Season 2 League of Legends World Playoff matches for October 10 starting at 5:00 PM Pacific Time (that's 8:00 PM Eastern). The matches will be streamed live and free in high definition on Twitch and Own3D, and will feature player cams, replays, interviews with players and more.

The matches will be played in the following order, starting at 5:00 PM Pacific Time:

Match 1 - Team WE vs. Counter Logic Gaming EU quarterfinal match

Match 2 - M5.BenQ vs. Taipei Assassins semifinal match

Polygon offers a mildly interesting and inspirational story about how some favorite pastimes - soccer and video games - are being used to teach kids in the African nation of Rwanda about the importance of financial literacy. The game, Financial Football, is now in schools across the country and is being sponsored by the generosity of credit card giant Visa.

Indie Game Developers have teamed up for the Rising Star Indie Bundle, which offers five indie games for whatever you are willing to pay for them. More importantly, half the sales from this bundle will go to the Get-Well Gamers Foundation.

The AbleGamers Foundation announced this morning that Paul Barnett, creative director for BioWare Mythic, is joining the advocacy group's Advisory Board for the Foundation. Barnett, who is colorblind himself, brings first-hand knowledge of both the gaming industry and the disability community. The group hopes that this addition to its Advisory Board will push the game accessibility movement to the next level.

Gay Gamer chronicles a legal fight that is brewing between the sub-Reddit r/gaymers and Gaymer.org. Gaymer.org sent a cease and desist to Reddit asking that the sub-Reddit be removed because it violates a copyright it holds for "gaymer."

Here's the trademark Gaymer.org owns - filed by site owner Chris Vizzini in 2007:

Variety reports that G4TV owners NBC Universal are going to revamp the popular tech and geek culture channel to be more "GQ," catering to the "modern male." Details on the revamp, set to happen in early 2013, have not been revealed, and many in the gaming, geek and technology culture of the internet are concerned that NBCU will dump the decent programming G4TV offers such as extensive event coverage. G4TV has always had a strong presence at events like Comic-Con, E3, and GDC.

Minecraft developer Mojang has teamed up with the United Nations to create a new initiative called Block By Block.

Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki has hinted that the company might consider adding an easy mode - much to the chagrin of those who like the game the way it is: hard as hell.

The Kickstarter for GaymerCon closed, raising $91,389 from 1,531 backers. When organizers launched the crowd funding appeal they were looking to raise right around $25,000. Thanks to the generous support of the gaming community, North America will see its first GLBT gaming event ever August 3 - 4, 2013 in San Francisco. Details on the venue will be revealed at a later date.

The official Twitter feed for the country of Sweden, @Sweden is being handled this week by Naseer Alkhouri, a game developer who describes himself as a "homeopathic swede" that "develops games for a living." Sweden has a policy of letting its citizens "guest-star" every week to speak their minds.

Microsoft is hosting the Gaming and Giving for Good (or G3) Xbox LIVE charity event on August 18, 2012 to benefit Extra Life, the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals fundraiser. By playing your favorite Xbox 360 games, you can help raise some much needed money for your local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital by gathering pledges for donations from friends and family. In support of the G3 event, Xbox LIVE is also offering a Free Gold Weekend to everyone on the weekend of August 18.

Update: We asked GaymerCon co-founder Benjamin Williams what the next stretch goal would be for the event and what organizers planned to do with the money if they manage to raise it before the deadline:

When we last checked in, the GaymerCon Kickstarter had managed to raise $28,471. Nine days later the crowd funding drive has managed to raise $48,102 from 921 backers with just 16 more days to go. GaymerCon promises to be the first "all-inclusive" fan-focused gaming event to provide a friendly, fun, and safe atmosphere for gamers and geeks to get together for two days in San Francisco (August of 2013).

Games industry veteran Don Daglow thinks American gamers have trouble dealing with failure in games. He claims that this stems from the American education system where children are no longer taught to learn from the mistakes.

"The idea of failure has been dramatically reduced," he said, adding that American students don't "fail" anymore. Instead they are "challenged." Daglow thinks European developers should keep this in mind when trying to design games that they want to succeed in the American market.

While having a super casual mode for your game is a great idea, what you call it in private can sometimes seep out and cause you a headache if you are not careful. That is exactly what is happening to Gearbox Software this morning after a Eurogamer report called a new super easy skill tree in Borderlands 2 "Girlfriend Mode." The offense comes from the inference that "girlfriends" are somehow not very good at games (or not very bright) and need a special skill tree to help them along. Gearbox is basically being accused of using a misogynist term to describe the mode.

The Art of Video Games exhibit from the Smithsonian American Art Museum is invading the Boca Raton Museum in Boca Raton, Florida on October 24. In fact, the Boca Raton Museum of Art will be the first museum in the nation to host the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibition following its successful run in Washington, D.C. The exhibit will run from October 24 to January 13, 2013, and is being sponsored by FMSbonds, Inc.

Researchers at Yale are developing a video game for the iPad that hopes to prevent HIV infection among ethnic minority adolescents through the use of interactive entertainment. Their research is based on the entire process appears in Games for Health, a new journal focused on using game technology as a tool for improving health and well-being.

The AbleGamers Foundation announced that the 2012 Children's Grant Program has launched. The program gives one child with special needs assistive technology he or she needs to play video games despite their disability.

The Gaming Alliance Middle East (which is made up of Microsoft Xbox Gulf, Sony Gulf - PlayStation Division, Pluto Games and Red Entertainment Distribution, among others) announced this week that its fifth annual GAMES event will take place in Dubai on September 20 at the Dubai Festival City. Admission for the event is free.

GaymerCon the first-ever all-inclusive fan gaming event that promises a friendly and fun atmosphere for gamers and geeks to get together for two days in San Francisco (August of 2013), has managed to surpass its funding goal of $25,000 in just a few days via a Kickstarter campaign. With 25 more days to go, the GaymerCon Kickstarter has managed to generate $28,471 (as of this writing) in funding from 560 backers.

Microsoft is "working toward improvements" to community moderation on Xbox Live, according to a report on Polygon. The company is working towards more robust automated moderation tools, including algorithms that can reportedly detect repeat offenders and mute them automatically.

With a little under two days of activity the Kickstarter campaign for GaymerCon has managed to raise $14,192 of its $25,000 goal from 246 backers, with 28 more days to go. As we mentioned yesterday, GaymerCon is a two-day event set to take place in August of 2013 in San Francisco.

You may recall our interview with Matt Conn (Episode 5 of the Super Podcast Action Committee) of GaymerCon, the first-ever gaming event that caters to the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) community set to take place in San Francisco in 2013.

Rajan Zed, President of the Universal Society of Hinduism, has issued another statement against Hi-Rez Studios' upcoming massively online battle arena (MOBA) game, SMITE. This time the group is asking the organizers of QuakeCon (which starts this Thursday in the great state of Texas) to remove the game from its competition line-up. From the statement, as reported by Kotaku:

On July 25 we reported that Gamers Against Bigotry had suffered a number of attacks and lost 1500 pledges to its cause. Relenting slightly, the group decided to launch an IndieGoGo campaign to raise awareness and $700 to fund ongoing operations. With a few hours left to go the organizers are happy to report that the campaign has managed to generate $3,252 so far.

UK-based games industry-driven charity GamesAid has opened up the nomination process to allow for voting on which charities it will support in its next round of funding. To be eligible, charities must be registered in the UK and focus on helping children and young adults in some way. Of course these charities will need be be game-related in some way as well. Organizations also have to have a turnover of £5m (roughly $7.85 million) or less and running costs of no more than 30 percent. Nominations opened up today and will end on August 13.

Zynga is loaning several of its developers to create a social charity game on Facebook. Development on a "social action" game based on the book Half the Sky by Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is well underway according to GamesBeat.

The book is about "turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide." The game will be released on Facebook on November 13.

Treyarch is diving headfirst into politics with the new villain from Call of Duty Black Ops 2. According to Gameranx the new villain will be Raul Menendez, a man described as a "champion of the 99 percent," who is a lot like Wikileaks front man Julian Assange. In the game Menendez hopes to start a "global insurrection against the status quo."

Martine Spaans has joined Gramble, the cross-platform "Social Gaming for Good" company, as its new Chief Communications Officer. Spaans will focus on game licensing while evangelizing the good things Gramble does to the independent developer community. Martine is an industry veteran who has handled online licensing, marketing and content management campaigns for companies such as Ubisoft, Spil Games and Blue Byte Software. The company chose Spaans to push the benefits of the platform to developers of all stripes.