Cats. The Internet loves them, so it makes sense that pet food maker Purina would sponsor a cat-themed game jam called the Friskies "Games for Cats Hackathon." The event challenges game designers to create games or apps that cats can play with. The grand prize-winning design team will receive $15,000, while runners-up will be awarded $3,000 and $2,000 to take home.

Media Molecule co-founder and studio director Siobhan Reddy has been named Australian Woman of the Year in the U.K. for 2013. The award is sponsored by Qantas Airways and the networking organization Australian Business.

Reddy was born in Sydney but migrated to the United Kingdom in the 1990s. She is in charge of the Guildford, U.K.-based studio that developed the LittleBigPlanet series and is hard at work on its latest IP called Tearaway. She was honored with the award last night in London.

Ron Gilbert has left Double Fine Productions, according to a blog post on his site Grumpy Gamer. Having finished his work on his most recent project, The Cave, Gilbert has decided that he wants to strike out on his own. Gilbert is best known for creating the Monkey Island series of adventure games and the popular action-RPG series Deathspank.

Zynga General Manager and Vice President Dan Porter has issued an email which was subsequently posted on Zynga Blog that pushes back against reports that he recently said at an event that the company copied games and that it is an industry wide practice. In his email he attempts to clarify what he claims he actually said and what is widely being reported this morning.

InXile has managed to raise over $2.1 million dollars in just a few short days for its spiritual sequel to the hit RPG Planescape: Torment. Initially the company was looking to raise $900,000, but that number was surpassed in the first six hours of the crowd funding campaign. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single-player role-playing game based on designer and writer Monte Cook's new tabletop role-playing game, Numenera. The game will be distributed DRM-free for Windows (PC), Mac, and Linux and will be available in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.

Last December Epic Games president Mike Capps said that he was leaving the role and moving into an advisory role so he could focus his attention on being a father, but it looks like he is walking away from that job as well. In a Facebook post today (reported on by Gamasutra), Capps announced that his plan on advising the company is not working out:

While Richard Garriott (also known as Lord British in most circles) may no longer hold the rights to the Ultima series of classic CRPG games or Ultima Online (he sold it, along with Origin over a decade ago) that hasn't stopped him from returning to his roots. Today Garriott announced that his Austin-based studio Portalarium is hard at work on his newest game, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a sort-of spiritual sequel of sorts to the Ultima series, but set in a whole new universe.

Women in Games International today announced its plan to present a panel at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco later this month that focuses on the need to encourage more youth participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects. The panel brings together leaders from video games, government, and media organizations to discuss the issue and to raise awareness. The panel is called "Responsibility to Youth and Staying Competitive in the Global Marketplace" and will take place Wed., March 27 from 2 - 3 p.m.

While the crowd funding campaign for Torment is going gang busters on its first day, developer inXile is taking a preemptive strike against anyone ready to accuse it of neglecting its previously crowd funded project Wasteland 2.

Layoffs have reportedly hit Timegate Studios, the development studio that helped co-develop Aliens: Colonial Marines alongside Gearbox Software. The number of layoffs are unknown at this time but Timegate has confirmed to Polygon that these layoffs have in fact happened.

When a publisher leaves a studio high and dry in the United Kingdom, industry trade body Tiga thinks that such abandoned projects should be eligible for tax relief. Tiga CEO Richard Wilson said that publishers have in the past left some studios in the UK “high and dry” by demanding large development teams for extended periods to then cancel a project with little or no notice at all.

GamesRadar is reporting that BioWare San Francisco has been shut down and all of its 25 - 30 employees have been laid off, a source within the company tells the publication. The studio, formerly known as EA2D, developed the Facebook game Dragon Age: Legends and Mirror's Edge 2D for browsers.

GamesRadar's source claims that Electronic Arts apparently came to the conclusion that it was "too expensive" to develop mobile games in Redwood Shores, CA.

Hey look!  An interview with Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford that doesn't go into the kerfuffel surrounding the development and release of Aliens: Colonial Marines!

Remember that thing back in 2007 where Hollywood heavyweight Jerry Bruckheimer said he would make some video games with a studio he set up called Jerry Bruckheimer Games? Yeah, that's not happening anymore. While the studio set up by the Pirates of the Caribbean producer never officially announced any games, it was common knowledge that he had at least three game projects in mind at the onset of his endeavor.

According to two reports, one on Polygon and another on GiantBomb, Respawn co-founder Jason West has retired from the company he helped found with Vince Zampella in 2010. Both were founders of Infinity Ward, the Activision studio responsible for the Call of Duty franchise.

Project Awakened, a game that lets you play a highly customized super being of your own making is nearing the half-way mark of its funding goal on Kickstarter but only four more days remain for developer Phosphor Games Studio to raise the rest of the funds. As of this writing, Phosphor Games has raised $210,596 of its $500,000 goal from 5,324 backers.

Update: We didn't have to wait long to hear Vblank Entertainment's thoughts on WiiWare. Speaking to Nintendo Life exclusively in an interview to be published in full over the weekend, Brian Provinciano called the WiiWare release a $20,000 gift to Wii fans. He asks everyone to go buy it so he can recoup some of those costs.

We mentioned this in passing when we reported on EA and other game companies signing onto an amicus brief supporting the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, but the event deserves a little more attention: On March 7 Electronic Arts and the Human Rights Campaign will host an event to address the full spectrum of LGBT issues in gaming in New York City.

Speaking to Polygon Double Fine expressed its desire to reacquire the console publishing rights to two of its games buried in a lot of intellectual property to be sold off as part of an auction related to THQ's bankruptcy. Double Fine owns the IP for Stacking and Costume Quest and the rights to publish the games on the PC platform, but THQ holds limited rights to publish both games on consoles.

Jake Solomon and the team at Firaxis Games have put together a video asking the community to watch them at this year's Game Developers Choice Awards at the Game Developers Conference in late March. From there the video kind of goes off the rails.

Indie Royale, organizers of the pay-what-you-want DRM-free bundle, have launched their latest collection of indie titles called the The Mash Bundle (thanks to Blue's News). This new bundle offers Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Guns of Icarus Online, Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior's Rise, KRUNCH, and Delve Deeper.

The Humble Mojam 2 Bundle has sailed past the $500,000 mark which in turn has forced Mojang co-founder Marcus 'Notch' Persson to shave off his trademark beard.

Notch made the commitment to shave off his beard last weekend during the Mojam 72-hour game development jam, but the number of contributions had not hit the $500,000 mark during that time.

Being a good sport, he decided to honor the promise today. He made the announcement via Twitter:

Just got my beard shaved for charity. Video coming later.

While most big game developers and publishers have abandoned a lot of the studios they used to run in Australia, one company has decided that it is a good place to open up a new office. Riot Games, makers of the popular online multiplayer battle arena game League of Legends, announced that it has opened up a brand new studio in Sydney Australia.

Organizers of the East Coast Games Conference (ECGC) announced this afternoon that former Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski and Ubisoft Montreal Creative Director Jason Vandenberghe will keynote this year’s event taking place April 24-25, 2013 at the Raleigh Convention Center in Raleigh, N.C.

Video Game Developer and IGDA Member Daniel Greenberg has challenged Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to a debate on whether video games are a bigger problems than guns in America. His comments were made awhile back during a segment on MSNBC.

While it is unlikely that the Senator from Tennessee will take up Mr. Greenberg's offer for a vigorous and substantive debate on guns, media violence, and real-world violence, he has thrown down the gauntlet anyway:

If you want a real opinion on violent video game content, then William Volk is probably someone to ask. He has been in the video games industry since 1979 and he has seen his fair share of games that pushed the envelope and got the attention of people that normally don't pay attention to such cultural phenomenon - like politicians and parent's groups.

The AbleGamers Foundation has partnered with Paradox Interactive to help bring video game accessibility to the Penny Arcade Expo East (PAX-E) in Boston, Massachusetts. Each year, the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade displays the latest assistive technology for gamers with disabilities to play today’s top games with just a little help.

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:

Free-to-play MMO developer and publisher Wargaming has come to the rescue of Gas Powered Games, who looked like it might go out of business just a few days ago after it canceled a Kickstarter campaign for its game Wildman - the success of which founder Chris Taylor categorized as vital to the company's future survival. Wargaming bought the Seattle-Washington-based developer of such hit franchises as Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander and Demigod for an undisclosed amount of money.