1）据gamasutra报道，社交及手机游戏公司6waves Lolapps近日解散整个开发团队，目前正重新调整业务，打算将重心转向发行领域。

6waves Lolapps(from gamesnews.ca)

该公司并未透露具体裁员人数，但确认了公司已经不存在《Ravenwood Fair》和《Ravenskye City》开发团队的消息。6waves Lolapps打算与“外部团队”合作，继续运营Raven系列游戏。

6waves Lolapps表示，不久前收购的Escalation Studios和Smartron5工作室仍将保持运营，公司将“继续关注针对手机及中国市场的项目开发”。

2）伍斯特大学心理学家Richard Balding针对100名受访者的研究报告显示，频繁使用智能手机登陆Facebook和其他“个人化”社交网络，可能会增加用户的压力。有许多用户使用智能手机来安排自己的工作流程，但添加了Facebook和FourSquare等应用之后，他们会发现自己在虚拟社交生活上消耗了过多时间。

Balding指出，人们使用智能手机的频率正不断增长，社交网络很可能是人们的压力来源之一。他建议人们减少查看手机的频率，适时调整状态，不要因为高度保持注意力而产生压力和紧迫感。

3）据serkantoto报道，日本社交平台GREE近日宣布将采取措施取缔玩家在游戏中用真钱拍卖稀有虚拟道具的行为。

在该平台热门卡牌战斗游戏《doliland》中，玩家可以使用一种glitch技术复制稀有卡牌，然后在线销售这种复制品，GREE警告称参与这种交易的用户帐号将被冻结。

但这种交易并不仅发生于GREE平台，甚至转移到了日本领先的在线拍卖网Yahoo Auctions之上。针对这种情况，GREE更改平台政策，明确告知玩家这种交易行为违背了平台规则，并将与第三方应用开发商合作制止这种行为。

gree-doliland-auction(from serkantoto)

如上图所示，在Yahoo Auctions的一个《doliland》稀有卡牌拍卖页面上，该卡牌目前售价已超过200美元，还剩最后一天，现在已有9个竞标者。

4）在本周MAU增长最快的Facebook游戏榜单上，《愤怒的小鸟》再次居首，它在过去一周中的MAU增幅达33%，目前MAU共达1700万。

Top gainers this week-MAU(from AppData)

在本周榜单上仅有两款游戏MAU增幅超过100%，一款是《Zynga Slingo》（MAU为300万），另一款是《Solitaire Blitz》（MAU为110万），这两者增幅分别为173%和511%。

OMGPOP游戏《Draw My Thing》的MAU增幅达17%，本榜单有7款游戏MAU增幅低于10%，其中有四款低于5%，《Texas HoldEm Poker》和《Diamond Dash》增幅都仅有1%。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）6waves Lolapps lays off dev staff to focus on publishing business

by Tom Curtis

Social gaming company 6waves Lolapps laid off its entire development staff on Monday, and is now restructuring its business to focus entirely on its publishing efforts, Gamasutra has confirmed.

6waves Lolapps did not reveal the number of employees let go, but the confirmed that the dev team behind Ravenwood Fair and Ravenskye City is no longer at the company.

Despite losing its internal developers, the company plans to maintain its Raven franchise by enlisting the help of an “external team.”

Other divisions, such as the recently-acquired Escalation Studios and Smartron5, will remain active in some capacity, and “will continue to operate and focus on mobile development, and China development respectively,” the company told Gamasutra.

“6waves Lolapps will now focus on working with independent developers to launch and grow their mobile and social games,” the company said in a statement.

“As a result we have restructured the company to focus on key functions which include developer outreach, product advisory, user growth initiatives and our publishing platform.”

In addition to publishing games, 6waves Lolapps also owns and develops the Flash-based Fliso engine, and the company said it will detail on the future of this initiative in the coming weeks.（source:gamasutra）

2）One More Smartphone Woe: Social Networking Stress [STUDY]

By Dave Copeland

Go ahead and check those work emails on your smartphone: a new study says it’s time spent checking Facebook and other “personal” social networks that is stressing you out.

It gets worse: the more times you check your smartphone, the higher your stress levels. The study also suggested people who are used to getting lots of text messages and push notifications on their phones will feel stress levels rise if they hit a stretch where their phones are silent. In the worst cases, study subjects experienced “phantom” vibrations when, in fact, they had not received an alert.

Results of the study by University of Worcester psychologist Richard Balding were presented last week. The sample was relatively small – only 100 people, including students and employees in a wide range of occupations – but do demonstrate a link between compulsive behaviors and increased smartphone use.
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The problem is also a self-created one. Many people get smart phones to help manage workflow and not be tied to an office or a desk. But as they add apps like Facebook and FourSquare, they find they have an increased and more consuming virtual social life.

Balding, the study’s author, recommended that companies help employees address the problem.

“Smartphone use is increasing at a rapid rate and we are likely to see an associated increase in stress from social networking,” he told the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology Conference in Chester, England last week. “Organisations will not flourish if their employees are stressed, irrespective of the source of stress, so it is in their interest to encourage their employees to switch their phones off; cut the number of work emails sent out of hours, reduce people’s temptation to check their devices.”

While other researchers stressed more studies are needed, they agreed the advice that Balding and other experts give is reasonable.

“Now, certainly it’s good to keep connected,” Balding told USA Today. “But everyone needs a break. Some time on your own. Otherwise there’s a risk that the stress and tension that builds up from keeping engaged can end up having a negative impact on relationships.”（source:readwriteweb）

3）GREE Announces Countermeasures Against Off-Platform Virtual Item Trading [Social Games]

by Dr. Serkan Toto

It’s not only about “protecting” younger players and e-mail reminders when users hit a certain payment cap: GREE also announced a number of countermeasures against “real money trading”, a phenomenon that came to light when users started auctioning off rare virtual items from a GREE game in masses.

The phenomenon is by no means new. But in the case of said GREE game, the super-popular card battle game doliland, users were able to copy rare cards due to a technical glitch and started selling the copies online (it’s possible to trade cards in-game after the deal is closed).

GREE now says it established an internal task force to look into real money trading on its platform. The company warns that users taking part in this kind of deals will get their accounts suspended.

However, a lot of these deals happen off-platform, for example on Yahoo Auctions, Japan’s leading online auction site. GREE says that in these cases, the task force is screening popular sites and is ready to take action – if it can (as an external company).

In other words, GREE has no say in these cases and can only indicate cases to external site operators like Yahoo Japan.

GREE also changed its terms of service, explicitly warning users that real money trading violates the rules of the platform. The company also says it will work together with its third-party developers to stop these activities in the future.

I just checked Yahoo Auctions for users trading virtual items from GREE games for real money, and there are still quite a few running (March 18, 2pm JST).

This link, for example, will lead you to a “double super rare” doliland card auction that currently stands at over US$200, with one day to go and nine bidders.（source:serkantoto）

4）Angry Birds still leading flock of fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU

Mike Thompson

Rovio’s Angry Birds continues to top our list of fastest-growing Facebook games by monthly active users. Over the past week, the game brought in a total of 4.2 million MAU for a gain of 33 percent.

Only two games this week had gains of over 100 percent: recently-launched titles Zynga Slingo and Solitaire Blitz. Zynga Slingo saw a gain of 173 percent while Solitaire Blitz’s gain was an impressive 511 percent.

This week marks the debut of Soul Crash from Gaia Online. The action RPG launched at the beginning of March; over the past week, the game’s MAU increased by 130,000 for a 59 percent gain.

OMGPOP’s Draw My Thing had a gain of 17 percent. OMGPOP has received a lot of recent attention  for its popular iOS game Draw Something (Zynga is reportedly in talks to acquire the developer), which has likely created more potential players for Draw My Thing.

Seven of the games on the list saw gains of less than 10 percent; four of those had gains of less than 5 percent. Bubble Witch Saga’s MAU gain this week was 4 percent, Slotomania – Slot Machines’ was 3 percent, while Texas HoldEm Poker and Diamond Dash both had gains of 1 percent.（source:insidesocialgames）