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So tonight we're looking at the role of the Kickstarter website in helping to fund video games. Kickstarter started in America but they've recently launched in this country.

Although you can try and fund any idea you like through the website it is interesting to see how it works when it comes to video games. In many ways the key to successful fundraising is reminiscent of good game design.

In creating a project on the site you need to attract people in, give them goals and a sense of progress and involvement. That's pretty much what a good video game should set out to do.

Our report tonight touches on two Kickstarter game projects underway in the Midlands. One for a game being created by in Stoke-on-Trent and one for a new game based on a 1980's character called from a major studio in Leamington Spa.

Ross was looking to create every aspect of his nostalgic RPG himself with the exception of the music so he used Kickstarter to ask for three hundred pounds to hire a composer. In fact he achieved twice the target so he'll be adding extra content.

At the other end of the scale is the Dizzy remake with a request for £350,000 from the Oliver brother of Blitz Games Studios. Although a healthy £25,000 has been pledged that's a long way short of the goal and time is running out. The gaming press has plenty of thoughts about what's gone .

Personally I think it's probably early days for such a large scale kickstarter project in the UK. The website has only just launched here and many of those who visit are Americans who will be unfamiliar with Dizzy's oevre (or oeuf-re?) It's not the only large scale British project that may not achieve its goal .

But overall it's hard not to be impressed by the potential of crowd funding websites like Kickstarter. It's already helped Ross achieve what he wanted and will hopefully allow him to work full-time on creating his games.

Well Sonic is over twenty years old now and in his twenties he's branching out in a whole new direction. No longer do his creators SEGA see him as a character in games you go out and buy from a shop on the high street. Instead he's being giving a new life on smartphones and tablet computers.

The people helping him make this change work at a small games studio near Coventry. Hardlight Studio is a team of about twenty people looking to push Sonic in new directions. The first and biggest change is phones don't have a controller like a traditional console and the team at Hardlight even avoid having virtual buttons on screen.

Instead you use the tilt function of the smartphone to direct Sonic from platform to platform as he climbs ever higher. Now if you enjoy playing games on your smartphone you might think this sounds very familiar. The hot game of about three years ago was a title called "Doodle Jump" where your little character leapt from platform to platform with the score climbing as he did.

Except Sonic was here . Back in 2006 there was a Sonic game where you leapt from platform to platform, climbing ever higher in the sky. Sadly that game was a bit ahead of it's time. This time around for this fresh game the reviews are looking and 350,000 people have already bought the game.

Many of the team at Hardlight have come from a console world and it's fascinating to hear them talk about the feedback they get from Sonic on a smartphone. In the old days on a console once the game is out the door that was pretty much it. But with a smartphone game that's just the start. The team can see just how far gamers get in the game, how often they restart a level and when they stop playing. They can then tweak the games in small or even major ways to make sure they keep on playing. And hopefully even decide to spend a bit more money on purchasing extra content for the game such as new characters.

There are several new studios and small teams in the Midlands now focussing on this market and it's possible we may well see one of them create the very next "Angry Birds" a game that has sold over thirty million copies worldwide. As I said even Sonic would like to be an angry bird these days.