Dave Tach, Polygon:

Cropland Capture, a game hosted on the Geo-Wiki Project’s website, tasks players with identifying cropland from Google Earth images. Players get points for identifying land and could win an Amazon Kindle, a Samsung Galaxy S4 and more through the game’s ongoing tournament. According to a recent tweet from the game’s official Twitter account, players have combed more than 300,000 square kilometers of land.

Crowd-source gaming initiative to find better cropland.

Luke Karmali, IGN

Speaking about the global 2.1 million figure, House said, “It’s an impressive and record-setting accomplishment for our company and for our industry, and we couldn’t have done it without you. I want to personally thank PlayStation fans, both old and new, for your vote of confidence.

PS4 sells gangbusters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qyVoAfkAuk

Jude Ower, Playmob CEO:

Over the past couple of years, gamers have raised over 80 million dollars for charities that they care about through games that they love to play. Now this is us just getting started and we can do so much more. So we at Playmob have setup Give8Bit, a channel on Youtube where you can find out the latest campaigns to give as you game. Please subscribe and get involved.

Make a difference while gaming.

Subscribe to Give8Bit on Youtube Follow Give8Bit on Twitter Like Give8Bit on Facebook

Tracey Lien, Polygon:

President of the marketing firm A Squared Group Amy Cotteleer says that marketing is so powerful that it can shape our values and beliefs, and we’re often not even aware that it’s happening. Coca-Cola’s marketing campaigns in the 1920s are the reason why the modern-day image of Santa Claus is a jovial, plump man in a Coca-Cola Red suit. Prior to Coca-Cola, there was no consistent image of Santa. He was often represented as a skinny man who sometimes wore green and sometimes wore brown. So if Coca-Cola could sell us the modern-day Santa, the game industry would not have had much trouble selling the idea that video games are for males.

Kick off this detailed and gorgeous read explaining why video games are for boys and why that needs to change with this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CU040Hqbas

Tracey Lien and Polygon, thank you for this amazing feature. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think there’s something in my eye.

USA Today

“Disney Infinity producer John Vignocchi says the Princesses’ arrival marks the biggest rollout of toys for the action game since launching in August.

‘The female characters, especially the Princesses, were among the top requests,’ says Vignocchi.

The House of Mouse brings more girls to gaming.