If you haven't heard of it yet, Kickstarter is currently the largest funding platform to creative projects in the world. It's the kind of site that you can sink hours into looking at all the incredible proposals people have. If you find something you like, you can "kickstart" it by throwing some money at the project. Each project has rewards to thank those who fund the project and one of the lower-rungs of the funding ladder usually involves getting a copy of whatever game/movie/product/etc is being proposed. It's a great system, and I really recommend looking into it if you've got some extra cash and want to support some great projects.

Anyway, something that caught my eye today was a project called "Tweet Land � The first set of games that play with reality!". It's a really cool idea, and it's already well on its way to meeting its funding goal. The basic premise is to release a series of iOS (and web) games that use tweets to create events in the game:

The game works really simple. Every time someone in the world tweets something, his or her tweets could affect the gameplay of Tweet Land by triggering certain action-keywords. It could be a "car accident" in your racing game, it could be your hate-gun gets reloaded in the action game, it could be anything.

I think what sounds so cool about this is that I've been a huge fan of randomized games on the platform. Various roguelikes, endless runners, and others games that are different every time you play them really appeal to me. Using the real world as a "random" event generator seems like such an amazing idea. Although, thinking about it, the real world really is far more random than any random number generator ever could be. Chew on that for a bit.

The down-side of all this Kickstarter business is that since we're essentially being pitched a concept, it could take quite a while for that to actually materialize into a game. Regardless, I'm excited.

While the rest of the world anxiously waits for GLaDOS to reboot, Gamevil announced on our forums late last night that Zenonia 3: The Midgard Story will be released on April 28th. In fact, if you want to know basically anything about the game, the beta testing thread on our forums is full of more information than anyone would likely ever need to know about it.

We also got a good amount of time with the game back at GDC, and explained the game's premise:

The story goes like this: The world of Zenonia was divided into the Heavenly Realm and the Earth Realm until a war between the Divine Tribe and the Devil Tribe caused the creation of the Midgard Realm. The main character of the original Zenonia, Regret, appears to his son, Chael, the hero of this story. Chael, shortly thereafter while walking in a wood with his fairy friend Runa, disappears into the mysterious Midgard Realm. Your goal, as Chael, is to help the Divine Tribe get back to the Heavenly Realm and return yourself to Earth.

Exciting stuff eh? Among other improvements Zenonia 3 will also sport Retina Display graphics and some of the best animation we've seen out of the series yet. In other related news the original Zenonia [99�] dropped to a buck in anticipation. We had a great time with the game when we reviewed it back in 2009, although admittedly the original Zenonia is a little old and busted by today's standards. The sequel, Zenonia 2 [$2.99] is also worth checking out in anticipation.

Last December, MacRumors reported on survey results showing that users of portable games are increasingly defecting from dedicated devices such as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP to smartphones such as the iPhone.

New data from analytics firm Flurry comparing overall video game market share in 2009 and 2010 reveals a similar trend, with iOS and Android combining to take 8% of the overall market and a full 34% of the portable gaming market as measure by revenue. In the overall market, console games continue to dominate, growing from 71% to 76% on only a slight increase in total video game revenue.

From 2009 to 2010, iOS and Android game sales increased from 5% to 8% market share within the U.S. video game market. Specifically, we estimate that iOS and Android game revenue increased from $500 million in 2009 to more $800 million in 2010. Of this, the significant majority of revenue was generated by iPhone games.

But setting aside the console market, the success of iOS and Android (primarily iOS according to Flurry's data) as gaming platforms is more obvious in the portable market, where the smartphone platforms have increased their share of revenue from 19% in 2009 to 34% in 2010 at the expense of Nintendo's and Sony's offerings.

From 2009 to 2010, iOS and Android game sales have spiked significantly, resulting in nearly a doubling of their market share. With both Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable shrinking in sales, while smart-device game sales simultaneously grew by more than 60%, iOS and Android games now represent more than one third of the portable game category.

It is also important to note that the surge in revenue share for smartphone platforms comes at a significantly lower average price point than for dedicated devices, meaning that even the strong growth from those platforms has eaten into the total portable gaming market, which dropped from $2.7 billion in 2009 to $2.4 billion in 2010. The "race to the bottom" has long been one of the main concerns for smartphone application developers, particularly traditional game developers who have been accustomed to the pricing model for dedicated gaming devices. But users are clearly shifting toward more casual gaming at lower price points on their smartphones, and developers that have embraced that market are in many cases seeing solid results.

Originally posted on our sister site MacRumors!