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.

Veteran game designer Don Daglow wanted to make a smartphone-based baseball game called Tony La Russa's Baseball With Fans so he launched a Kickstarter appeal to raise $249,000. Unfortunately after only a week of activity, the project only managed to bring in about $2,440 of that goal from 23 backers.

Popular crowd funding site Kickstarter has no plans or interest in becoming a publicly traded company, according to CEO Perry Chen. The company, which recently expanded into the United Kingdom and has managed to drive nearly $350 million into 76,000 projects since April 2009, is backed financially by a number of investors including Union Square Ventures, Betaworks and a number of angel investors.

You can't get blood from a stone, but the state of Rhode Island is going to try anyway. The state announced today that it has filed a lawsuit against Curt Schilling and various executives at the now bankrupt 38 Studios in an attempt to recoup the $75 million loan guarantee given to the studio to set up shop in Providence and create an MMO.

A prominent executive officer at Vancouver-based game developer Slant Six Games says that the Vancouver video game industry in danger of dramatically declining because of the lack of support from the government of British Columbia. CFO Lance Davis blames a lack of investment from the regional government since 2008. He also claims that this lack of support has led to 14,000 job cuts at various game studios in Vancouver. In June of this year Slant Six cut a quarter of its workforce temporarily.

Kickstarter has officially opened up its doors to those in the United Kingdom who want to get in on the business of crowd funding projects. The UK version of the services "kicks off" with 200 projects. Kickstarter hopes that it will be as successful in the UK as it has been in the United States where more than 75,000 projects have launched and $343 million has successfully been raised to date.

World of Tanks, World of Airplanes, and World of Warships creators Wargaming announced this morning that they are "fully underwriting" aircraft enthusiast David Cundall's efforts to recover British Spitfires reportedly buried in Burma at the end of World War II. The company's investment in Mr. Cundall's will allow him and the Burmese authorities to pursue the long-standing mystery of the Pacific theater.

Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts must be a happy camper this week as his Kickstarter campaign for Star Citizen cruises past its target goal of $500,000 with 26 days left before it even hits its deadline. Currently the new space simulation game from Roberts has raised $544,293 from 11,974 backers.

In Episode 25 of the Super Podcast Action Committee hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about what happens when a fully funded Kickstarter project (in this case the game Haunts: The Manse Macabre) fails to become reality, the wisdom of knowing when to shut down a failing Kickstarter campaign (the focus of that topic being Loot Drop's attempts to fund the 'Old School RPG'), the latest on the "six strikes" copyright enforcement scheme adopted by U.S. ISPs, Andrew's latest video, and the horrors of using voice chat on Nintendo's Wii U.

The federal government of Australia is planning to introduce brand new incentives to help grow and support the country’s game industry, according to an MCV Pacific report.

Loot Drop - the studio created by John Romero, Brenda Braithwaite and Tom Hall - has given up on trying to fund its promising old-school role-playing game project through Kickstarter. After raising only a small part of its $1 million funding goal, the trio has decided that it would be in the best interest of all involved to discontinue the funding drive.

Electronic Arts announced this morning that the very first crowd-funded game has landed on Origin, the company's digital distribution platform. After successfully being funded via Kickstarter, the post-apocalyptic vehicle-based action game from 2 Dawn Games and Reverb Publishing is complete and ready for purchase.

Electronic Arts announced earlier this year that it would support games funded by the community through sites like Kickstarter and would let them be sold via Origin free of charge.

Obsidian Entertainment's Project Eternity Kickstarter has hit a major milestone in its last few hours - it has surpassed Double Fine's Adventure game Kickstarter to become the highest funded game project in history. The crowd funding campaign for Obsidian's old-school RPG now sits at just a little over $3.5 million with just nine more hours to go. They hit this number with the help of 68,207 backers. Originally Obsidian was looking for $1.1 million. Obviously all this extra money was driven by promises made for meeting certain stretch goal milestones.

Some interesting comments from Free Radical founder and the founder of the recently launched UK studio Crash Lab categorizes the Kickstarter funding model as "asking people without knowledge of the risks" to fund projects.

Chipmaker Adapteva wants to make parallel computing (or supercomputing) available to everyone, and they have launched a Kickstarter to promote a solution that costs right around $99. The Kickstarter project aims to raise at least $750,000, with a stretch goal of $3 million.

Australia's Minister for Innovation, Services and Small Business Louise Asher unveiled two new programs that he says will give Victorian games developers "valuable support to develop and market high-quality games for a global audience."

The new game programs will be overseen by Film Victoria, who will provide $500,000 to support the development of commercial projects through investment and business support. Mr. Asher said the Victorian Coalition Government is committed to driving and supporting Australia's growing games industry through these new initiatives.

Kickstarter has added new rules that the crowdfunding company hopes will strengthen the relationship between project creators and those that back them. In a post on Kickstarter's blog this morning, the Kickstarter team detailed changes that they hope will address the widespread concern that many Kickstarter backers think they are purchasing a finished product rather than funding its further development.

The official Kickstarter campaign for iMpulse launched this morning, with the aim of raising some much needed capital for this pocket-sized Bluetooth controller designed specifically for iOS and Android-based gaming.

British telecom company BT has apparently joined the ranks of OnLive investors that have been burned by Friday's announcement that the company would sell its assets off to a third-party entity controlled by Lauder Partners. BT said today that it is "highly likely" that it will be forced to write off its stake in a cloud-based video games service.

BT joins phone maker HTC, who said yesterday that it would lose its $40 million investment in the cloud-based gaming subscription service.

The Kickstarter for the OUYA has ended, with organizers of the crowd funding round raking in a final amount of $8,596,475 from 63,416 backers. Organizers were originally aiming for $900,000.

OUYA has managed to crack the $7 million dollar mark with a little over a day left to go before its crowd funding deadline on Kickstarter ends. As of this writing the $99 console has managed to raise $7,036,309 in funding (it started out with a $950,000 goal) from 52,932 backers. The Kickstarter campaign has 37 more hours to go.

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.

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.

Yesterday we reported that the makers of the Android-based OUYA console would be looking for funding outside of its Kickstarter campaign. Today her company is not seeking funding outside of the Kickstarter campaign and that it has no plans to find more investments at this time. In a statement Uhrman tried to clarify the record on funding, which is likely a touchy subject with fans who may have invested in the Kickstarter that has already generated over $5 million.

The Economic Development Corporation of Rhode Island finds itself highly dysfunctional in the wake of 38 Studios going bankrupt and not being able to meet its obligations related to $75 million loan. The pseudo government-corporate entity has been without an executive director since May when Keith Stokes decided to resign over the loan to 38 Studios. Today we have learned from several published reports that another loan the EDC approved is not going to be paid back and that another executive has resigned.

While the OUYA Android-based home console may be doing pretty well on Kickstarter (it's inching towards the $5 million mark), the creators of the console say that they plan to look for additional funding outside of Kickstarter. Some might balk at this new-found need to raise additional cash because the original crowd funding goal on Kickstarter was $950,000.

Since we're running a poll on it right now (if you haven't voted yet you can go here and do so now - even if you are not a registered member of GP), it seems only right that we offer a new update on the current level of funding for OUYA, the Android-based home console that has everyone either very excited or very concerned about the future of home consoles.

The Kickstarter for OUYA, the Android-based, indie developer-friendly home games console has been kicking ass and taking names since it launched a few days ago.

Stainless Games said during a Develop Conference keynote that the thrill is slowly leaving Kickstarter projects and that developers who are considering a pitch to fund their game had better do their best to craft the best possible pitch they can to be successful.

The company raised over $600,000 to fund Carmageddon: Reincarnation on Kickstarter, but Stainless Games co-founders Neil Barnden and Patrick Buckland consider the process not to be as easy as waiting for the checks to roll in - a lot of work goes into these pitches.

What a difference a few hours makes. The Kickstarter for OUYA, an Android-based home console system that promises a development kit for everyone and a strong open-source vibe, has already managed to raise an impressive $2,859,021 from 22,747 backers. This has to be a record, but the crowd funding campaign for the device still has 28 more days to go. The OUYA Kickstarter got off to a good start earlier in the week, generating close to $1 million in the first eight hours of its launch. The makers of OUYA were looking to hit a goal of $950,000.