2 Richard Garriott launches a dev contest (but there's a bit of a catch) Richard Garriott wants a modern-day port of his teletype RPG D&D #1, and to get it he's asking developers to compete to see who can port it best.

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  NEA awards grants to Games for Change and other game-related nonprofits A number of game industry organizations will be receiving financial grants from the National Endowment for the Arts this spring, including Games for Change and a number of educational programs.

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  Choice Chamber an uncommon mix of new ways to fund and play games Gamasutra caught up with Mike Molinari to learn more about how the burgeoning notoriety of his Kickstarter campaign for Choice Chamber has affected its development.

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  School of Dragons: The evolution of an educational MMO An in-depth look back at the development of School of Dragons, with an eye toward production process and live services -- and challenges hit when the game changed platforms during development.

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  GDC Europe 2014 opens registration, continues call for papers You can now register early at a discounted rate to attend this year's GDC Europe, which will be held in Cologne, Germany August 11-13. Also, you still have time to submit talk proposals for the show.

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1 'Twitch plays Pokemon' leads to new funding opportunity for devs UPDATE As game broadcasting behemoth Twitch grows in strength, the company takes the next step for its business -- directly supporting those games which interact with Twitch functionality.

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  How I got into games: On delayed artistic expression On growing as a person and as a game developer: How mentors help, how creation helps, and how "self-confidence changes everything."

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2 The next step for Twitch: Selling games via the streaming platform A landmark moment for video game broadcasting company Twitch today: You can now buy Vlambeer's latest game Nuclear Throne directly through Twitch, the first game to be available for purchase through the service.

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  Fable lead designer leaves Lionhead Ted Timmins, lead designer on the Fable series, has left Lionhead after around a decade at the studio.

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5 Sony is selling $47 million worth of shares in Square Enix Sony announced today that it plans to sell all of its shares in Square Enix Holdings, to the tune of 4.8 billion yen ($47 million).

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  Blog: Organizing yourself when overwhelmed "I'm not writing this to give you a fail-safe solution. I don't even have a solution. I'm just going to argue a bit how first trying to organize yourself can help your efficiency through the day."

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1 What's the state of patents on VR controllers? Attorney Dat Nguyen researches the current patent holders on technologies that apply to VR controllers -- and suggests what might happen in the space thanks to that.

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1 Latest Final Fantasy XIV figures: 500K registrations in 6 months The Final Fantasy XIV reboot couldn't have gone any better for Square Enix, as the publisher announced today that more than 2 million people have registered an account for the game.

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9 New report reveals most popular games on Steam Ars Technica has an interesting report this week that delves into Steam sales and user play-time statistics, apparently tracking public Steam database information to get a broader overview of which games are most popular on the platform.

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1 Q&A: Canabalt creator rides the wave of indie publishing, collaboration Adam Saltsman has always been a man of many hats, but with his latest venture Finji, an indie game publisher-cum-collaborator, he's now essentially evolved into a human hat stand.

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4 Bungie composer Marty O'Donnell fired 'without cause' Marty O'Donnell, the video game composer best known for producing the music for Bungie's Halo series, is no longer with the studio -- and according to the industry veteran, it wasn't a pleasant separation.

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14 In-app purchases really are most effective for mobile game monetization In-app purchases handily beat every other form of monetization for effectiveness and popularity both, according to new data released in a report by VentureBeat Intel based on a survey of 176 developers.

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1 Google Play slowly catching up to Apple's App Store revenue The latest report from analytics firm App Annie suggests that while Google Play outpaces the iOS App Store in downloads, the latter is still generating more revenue -- but that revenue gap is closing.

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  Trendy hires ex-LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez as CEO Dungeon Defenders developer Trendy Entertainment announced today that it has hired former LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez as its new CEO.

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  Blog: Cube & Star - An arbitrary postmortem "The game wasn't designed for sale or critical attention. It wasn't designed with any overt rules or goals. It was a zen little garden with which I could explore some concepts and enjoy the process of development."

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4 TransGaming to become a publisher, start licensing out port tech Software portability company TransGaming, responsible for Mac ports of PC games like EVE Online, will begin licensing its port technology out to developers as it becomes a Mac game publisher.

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2 Getting Oculus VR immersion right, with Please Don't, Spacedog! "Everyone else is doing immersion wrong," says Please Don't, Spacedog! developer G.P. Lackey. His game uses an Oculus and MIDI controller combination to confront players with unfamiliar territory.

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11 This Lego robot arm plays free-to-play games while its owner sleeps 3D production director Uli Kilian has found a novel way to earn in-game currency for his favorite free-to-play games without having to lift a finger -- he gets his Lego Technics robot to tap, tap, tap for him.

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  Visualizing dynamic player behavior flow "Games can generate massive amounts of behavioral telemetry data... In this post we focus on in-game behavioral telemetry (gameplay telemetry) and one specific machine learning approach: clustering."

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2 6 tips to make your backlog lean "A large backlog is a problem. A fat backlog will impede innovation and cause a frustration. Is our ability to generate ideas paradoxically one of the biggest impediments for new ideas?"

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