According to an analysis by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, more than $10 million has been pledged to various game-related projects through crowdfunding site Kickstarter since the beginning of March. In the month of March, a total of $6,977,432 in funding has been successfully collected by game projects as well.

InXile's Wasteland 2 Kickstarter managed to bring in around $2,933,147 from 61,289 backers, well over the $900,000 it originally asked for. According to InXile founder Brian Fargo, and additional $107,427 was raised from PayPal pledges - mostly from individuals outside the United States who can't use the Kickstarter system. 

Develop has an interesting article about how War Balloon Games found that the reward tiers it created for its iOS game Star Command have drained much of the cash it generated when it pitched the game to the community in October of last year. The company raised $37,000, but only initially asked the community for $20,000. But what the Star Command developers did not anticipate was the cost of the various reward tiers it created to get donors to drop larger and larger amounts of cash.

I find this fascinating.  Having just crossed the million dollar mile marker, the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter was just updated to say that if it reaches $1.5 million, developer Harebrained Schemes will build a special mission exclusive to backers as a thank you.  A thoughtful gesture for sure but the comments show that backers are overwhelmingly against the idea.

Hairbrained Schemes' Kickstarter for a 2-D turn-based RPG for tablet devices and the PC has managed to raise $897,767 of its original goal of $400,000 from 20,895 backers. The company that has worked on such franchises as Shadowrun, Mech Commandeer, Crimson Skies, and MechWarrior, hopes to hit a new milestone of $1 million. They say that if they meet this new funding goal they will add some new content. As of this writing the game, Shadowrun Returns, will be developed for PC, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux.

While we are not sure if it is the first Kickstarter funded game development project to come to market, Saturday Morning RPG is the first in recent memory to be released. The iOS action RPG which is being released as an ongoing serial (i.e. like a Saturday morning cartoon) successfully managed to raise $10,661. The developers were looking to raise $6,000. The first two episodes launch today.

It will be interesting to see how the public (who didn’t participate in the Kickstarter) receive the game. The App Store page for the game contains mostly positive reviews so far.

Garry Gaber, the project lead on Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns while at LucasArts, has launched a Kickstarter to raise funds for a space combat game for PC and PlayStation Vita called Starlight Inception. Gaber is looking to raise about $150,000 for the game, which he describes as a "first-person/third-person free-roaming space shooter". If all goes well with the funding, Gaber hopes to have the game ready for take-off in the third quarter of 2013.

Everybody is doing it so why shouldn't Jane Jensen give it a shot? Jensen is best known as the creator of the popular Gabriel Knight adventure game series. In the last eight years she has designed and directed such casual games as Women’s Murder Club, Dying for Daylight and Deadtime Stories at Oberon Media/I-Play Studio. Now she is returning to her adventure game roots with a new company she has formed with her husband called Pinkerton Road.

What started out as a PS3 hardware hacking project has turned into a full-fledged project looking for some Kickstarter funding magic. The technology is simply called an "open source tracking device," and is designed to tell you where your PS3 is by texting or emailing. The project is a little more complicated than that, of course, but that the basic premise.

Replay Games and Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe have managed to raise $107,959 of the $500,000 funding goal from 2,806 backers on Kickstarter for its Leisure Suit Larry in the Lands of the Lounge Lizards remake. Al Lowe, the original creator of the comical adult themed adventure game for Sierra, posted a thank-you message to the Kickstarter community for its early support of the project. Of course, $100,000 is a long way from $500,000 but it's a promising start. The crowd funding campaign has 28 more days to go.

InXile is inching towards its new goal of $2.1 million in funding, a milestone it set last week in hopes of bringing Obsidian Entertainment on board to help provide tools and develop Wasteland 2. The Kickstarter for the sequel to the classic Interplay post-apocalyptic RPG has hit $1,903,323 with the help of 38,742 backers - with 14 more days to go.

Everybody's doing it so Replay Games, the blokes who managed to secure the rights to the classic Sierra adult-themed adventure game Leisure Suit Larry, have decided to do a Kickstarter. Their hope is to raise enough funds to make their planned remake of the first game - Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards - without the help or need of a publisher.

Earlier this week it was revealed that Silicon Knights had not received grant money from the Canadian government that was announced on July 14, 2011. In a "he said, she said" moment, SK front man Dennis Dyack tells GamesIndustry International that he just doesn't understand why the Canadian government is holding out on the grant money. The Canadian government attempts to explain the hold-up, which Dyack then denies.

InXile announced that it will work with Obsidian Entertainment to design Wasteland 2, but only if its Kickstarter funding reaches $2,100,000. The Kickstarter's original goal was $900,00. It is currently inching towards $1.7 million. The collaboration makes sense if you consider where many of the company's founders and employees came from: Interplay and Black Isle Studios.

Cipher Prime sent out a reminder that there are right around four days left until its Kickstarter appeal for Auditorium 2: Duet ends. That would be a real shame for them because the project isn't that far from being one-hundred percent funded.

As of this writing Cipher Prime only needs $16,064 to meet its goal of $60,000. A recent update to the Kickstarter page for the project asks for the community's help with spreading the word and offering some funding if you can:

A fresh update to the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter page from InXile front man Brian Fargo details what can be possible and what the company won't be doing no matter how much money they manage to raise. First the one thing Fargo says that they won't do (or have no plans of doing) is creating console versions of Wasteland 2.

As of Monday morning InXile has managed to raise $1,363,509 in funding for Wasteland 2 from 25,533 backers, with 29 more days to go. Everything that InXile promised at the launch of this Kickstarter appeal can be considered a done deal - including the game being available on multiple platforms.

While I’m not going to make a habit of posting a news story every time the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter hits another milestone, it's important to pass along news that the game has been fully funded, which means it will actually be made and someday you'll be able to play it. InXile had asked via its Kickstarter appeal for $900,000. Just two days after launching the campaign they have managed to raise $1,044,997 from 18,695 backers.

Goldman Sachs (a company our tax dollars helped keep going - you're welcome!) is the latest financial investment firm to buy stock in The GAME Group. The U.S.-based firm purchased 13,120,220 shares in the UK-based video game retail company March 12. Yesterday it was revealed that U.S. investment firm Blueshore Global had acquired an eight percent stake in the retailer. The buy-in by Goldman Sachs entitles the firm to 3.78 percent of its voting rights.

The Wasteland 2 Kickstarter is off to a good start, with 11,538 backers pledging $642,383 in funding so far. InXile kicked the campaign off yesterday, asking the Kickstarter community for $900,000 to fund a sequel to the post-apocalyptic role-playing game classic that inspired the Fallout series. Earlier in the morning donations hit the $400,000 mark.

While it's hard to tell just how much InXile will be able to raise in the remaining 33 days of this Kickstarter appeal, there's little doubt that they will far exceed their initial target number.

Double Fine has managed to raise well over $3 million for its Adventure Game Kickstarter funding campaign and with it ending today, they are offering a live Ustream broadcast that everyone can watch to countdown the close of the funding drive. As of this writing 80,791 people have backed the project, raising $3,070,029. The campaign ends at 8:00 pm ET. The original target goal was $400,000.

Professional gaming league Major Gaming League has managed to raise $11.3 million of a $13 million target in funding, according to an SEC filing uncovered by GamesBeat. The filing lists relevant parties (according to GamesBeat): Sundance DiGiovanni, founder; Jarratt Brown; Michael Sepso; Edward Glassmeyer; John Kermath; and Harlan Stone.

InXile has been talking about doing it for almost a month, and now it has come to fruition: the company founded by former Interplay front man Brian Fargo has launched a Kickstarter funding campaign to raise money for the development of a Wasteland sequel. So far the company has managed to raise about 10 percent of the $900,000 it is asking for ($98,138 from 1,647 backers as of this writing).

inXile is putting together its list of rewards for those who support the development of Wasteland 2 through a Kickstarter campaign, which is scheduled to launch sometime this month. After creating the different reward levels, InXile made a few changes at the request of the community. The most notable is that the game will be DRM-free when it is released.

IndieGala, who is best known for two bundles featuring a variety of indie games using a "name your own price" sales model, announced that it has launched "GalaFund." According to the group, the GalaFund will help poor developers realize their dreams:

Testing began on a video game created by researchers at the Oklahoma University funded by a $10.7 million grant it obtained in October of last year from the U.S. government. University students signed up to play the game and check for coding typos and other obvious problems, play tester and communications senior Chelsey Schuessler told the UO Daily. In the next phase of the project, which begins in August, researchers will test the game to see if does what it is intended to do: prevent biases in decision-making.

Double Fine has released a blooper reel of Tim Schafer's video pitch for the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter. The video (to your left) features Schafer hamming it up, flubbing lines, and occasionally hitting himself in the head. 2 Player Productions, the company working on the Double Fine documentary about the making of the game, also announced that Terrance Lee (the man that created the music for the indie game Dustforce) will be handling the documentary soundtrack.

Game audio news web site NUBUWO is making a last minute appeal for help it reach its final funding goal of $12,000 before 2:00 am ET.

Indie game crowd-funding website 8-Bit Funding returns under new management. The site has been taken over by the people behind popular indie game site DIY Gamer and Indie Game Mag. The site was launched in early 2011 as a small-scale and more tightly focused alternative to other crowd-funding websites such as Kickstarter. In early February the management team behind The Indie Game Magazine purchased the site.

Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun at length, Tim Schaefer said that the success of the company's Adventure Game Kickstarter campaign is not the death knell of publishers that many claim it could be. In fact, he says that his company is actively pitching to several publishers on a regular and ongoing basis. The Double Fine Adventure Game Kickstarter campaign has managed to generate over $2 million to date.