Today Sauropod Studio pitched its game Castle Story to the public for some much needed funding on Kickstarter. In the early hours of the campaign, the game has already met its goal. Sauropod Studios was looking to raise $80,000 to bring the game to the PC and Mac, but with the help of 3,348 backers it has already raised $95,055. If you watch the video (embedded to your left) you will quickly understand why this project has gotten early buzz.

Taking a break from offering DRM-free pay-what-you-want indie games, the folks behind the Humble Indie Bundle are trying out a new medium - music. Today they announced the Humble Music Bundle, offering six digital albums from the likes of Cristopher Tin, They Might Be Giants, Jonathan Coulton, MC Frontalot, and Hitoshi Sakimoto (who created the music for Valkyria Chronicles).

Using the Unity 3D game development engine, researchers from North Carolina State (who are leading the development), Arizona State University, and Indiana University, have developed a simulation that allows crime scene investigators to look at a crime scene from multiple angles.

Episode 11 of the Super Podcast Action Committee almost didn't happen this week. Oh, Andrew and Zachary sat down and talked for a full 60 minutes, but an upgrade to the recording software we use managed to throw a wrench in the works leaving us with only 32 minutes of questionable audio to work with.

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.

Quantic Dream founder David Cage thinks that the video game industry needs to learn to innovate or it will inevitably die a slow and painful death. In an interview with GamesIndustry International, the Heavy Rain creator said that creating innovative and new kinds of experiences for consumers is paramount to the survival of the industry.

While Ouya, (the $99 Android-based games console that promises an open-source-style high-concept developer ecosystem) may be just a concept at this stage, it's hard not to take notice of it when so many major players are attached to it already.

In an interview with IGN UK, Junction Point founder and Epic Mickey and Deus Ex creator Warren Spector says that games are shaped more by what ideas developers cut out than they are by what is left in.

"I always say games are not about what you include in your game, they’re about what you cut; they always are," said Spector. "Ideas are easy. Everybody in the game business just has more ideas than they could possibly put into every game they ever work on in their lives."

In an age where acronyms such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, CSA, and more put fear into the hearts of Internet users all over the globe it's time that someone stand up and clearly define what rights we should have on the Internet. Like the Continental Congress did when America declared Independence way back in 1776, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) and other advocacy groups have come up with our own version of a "Declaration" for the Internet age.

Apparently Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has turned his Brooklyn Heights, New York apartment into a set for an upcoming documentary on Dungeons & Dragons.

While Ohanian hasn't played D&D since high school, the Reddit co-creator tweeted that he will be interviewed for the documentary and will have his Brooklyn Heights apartment temporarily transformed into a D&D themed set.

A new 4G provider called Karma wants to offer a pay-as-you-go portable hotspot device that costs $69 and charges customers $14 a GB. The device is powered by Clearwire's network, which provides WiMax 4G service in 80 major cities in the United States. There are no monthly fees or minimums, but there is a special perk for those willing to share their hotspot with other people: free data.

At DreamHack Summer 2012, it was announced that Bachir "Athene" Boumaaza has reached an incredible milestone: he has raised $1,000,000 in the name of Save The Children, a global charity that helps feed and educate children in poor countries around the globe.

Business publication Fast Company has unveiled its list of the Top 100 Most Creative People for 2012, and many familiar names have made the cut this year. The list, which the publication calls an "annual celebration of business innovators who dare to think differently," honors Double Fine's Tim Schafer, EA Sports executive vice president Andrew Wilson, and SuperBetter Labs Director of Design Chelsea Howe.

The winners of the National STEM Video Game Challenge were announced today at The Atlantic's Technologies in Education Forum in Washington, DC. The competition was designed to motivate youngsters throughout the country to promote the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) by making video games.

Season two of the ultra popular Fallout-based fan web series, Fallout: Nuka Break, will get the help of Fallout: New Vegas designer Chris Avellone and the original Fallout lead programmer Tim Cain - if they can raise $120,000 in their latest Kickstarter appeal. Both have agreed to sign on to season two as writers and designers and make guest appearances if the creators of the show can raise enough cash.

Venture Beat has a fascinating report on a new Detroit-based startup called Are You a Human, who want to replace that irritating CAPTCHA text people have to use to prove they are human on just about every website on the Internet with playable mini-games. Obviously we endorse any idea that can eliminate CAPTCHA because it's irritating on so many levels...

The Indie Game Magazine is sponsoring a seven-day game competition in conjunction with International Indie Games Day in June. Participants will spend no more than seven days developing a game prototype that will be submitted to the International Indie Games Day website for judging. Those who want to take part in the competition must submit their prototype game before June 18th, 2012.

In November of last year a Marine Archaeological company that has been working in the waters around Africa and Asia for the last 17 years decided that they wanted to bring their experience in deep sea treasure hunting to life as a video game, so they began working with Estoril, Portugal-based developer Arqueonautas to build a strategy game called ARQ Quest. In the game, players take on the task of creating the perfect atmosphere for treasure hunting - from building the perfect team of specialists, and investing research, to buying the right equipment and stocking up supplies.

Described by its creator as is kind of a 'sex game' that features no sex," Hot Coffee plays with the phrase synonymous with the infamous secret sexual gameplay hidden in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (thanks Polygon). While there's no actual sex in the game there's enough innuendo in it to turn a modest man or woman beet red.

Miami-Dade County, Florida public schools are preparing to launch the first-of-its-kind magnate school that focuses on video games this fall, according to the Miami Herald. Dubbed the iTech Academy at Miami Springs Senior High, students will be able to learn how to design and program video games. Educators backing the school believe that this special program will teach students how to better solve problems and also prepare them to work in the technology and gaming industries.

CCP Games has told Eurogamer that it will not interfere in an in-game campaign of destruction that is targeting the monetary system in its online space game EVE Online. Controversial former Council of Stellar Management boss Alexander "The Mittani" Gianturco (who CCP banned for encouraging the community to grief a suicidal player during a recent FanFest event) plans to lead a major attack the Jita trade hub.

If you are taking your family on a Disney Fantasy Cruise any time soon, you may be happy to hear that video games are an important part of the cruise's entertainment offerings. The interactive entertainment offerings are in two brand new $1 billion ships sailing the Caribbean: the Disney Magic and the Disney Fantasy. 

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. 

University of Tennessee graduate student Charles Chin has won the Vol Court spring business pitch competition and is on track to develop and release a video game similar to SimCity that highlights the importance of energy production and consumption in the real world.

Epic Games and Train2Game announced over the weekend that Commando Kiwi is the winner of the Make Something Unreal Live competition, with its iOS game The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Lost Chapters. The winner of the competition was revealed during the Gadget Show Live. Four teams presented their new iOS games based on individual books in the Fighting Fantasy series to franchise creators Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone OBE, who selected the winner. 

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.

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.

Yesterday we reported that THQ would shift the focus of Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online to an offline game, and as a result, would lay off 118 employees from its Relic and Vigil Games studios. While that was horrible news, developers have reached out to those displaced workers to offer them jobs in every corner of the country via Twitter.

While many of us wait to get our hands on Raspberry Pi - the tiny $25 - $35 computer - one person that got his hands on it has used it to create a ZX Spectrum emulator. Andy Taylor (the guy responsible for the UK Computing Museum) has ported Fuze, an emulator for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, to Raspberry Pi and has put a video of it running on YouTube.

The fifth annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge is officially underway and entries are now being accepted. The game design contest was created by Jennifer Ann’s Group with the goal of promoting games that deliver awareness on the dangers of teen dating violence. This topic is particularly important to the group's founder, Drew Crecente, who lost his daughter.