After its dramatic layoffs and re-branding last month, 6waves is jumping back into the publishing pool with both feet.

March was a big month for the publisher, which was still going by 6waves Lolapps (and sometimes “6L”) at the time. Two weeks after the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco ended, the company announced developer staff cuts to the Lolapps side of the business, targeted at shifting all operations toward games publishing on social and mobile platforms. Shortly after that, 6waves dropped “Lolapps” from its name entirely and named 32 publishing deals with different developers for a total of 40 published games set to release in the first half of 2012.

That list of games has expanded since the initial announcement, with CEO Rex Ng telling us to expect a new game every two to three days. Of those titles, 20 of them are for mobile and the previously announced 40 are for social networking platforms. Ng believes the mobile game industry is particularly enticing because the social game field is becoming overly crowded by big companies who can pump a lot of money and talent into a title. As a result, it’s increasingly tough for smaller developers to get noticed.

As for the Ravenwood franchise, Ng confirmed what sources previously told us; external teams will continue to maintain the existing games and release the third and final game in the series, Raveshire Castle. Daily and monthly active user traffic to the current games, Ravenskye City and Ravenwood Fair, has steadily declined over the past three months. We may see a surge, however, when Ravenshire Castle launches within the next three to four months.

The timing of the layoffs led to speculation by some media outlets that they were tied to the lawsuit filed against 6waves Lolapps in January by developer Spry Fox over Yeti Town, the iOS clone of Triple Town. This was never confirmed, though Ng tells us 6waves recently moved to have the case dismissed. He declined to go into detail because the suit is still in progress.

By extricating itself from game development, 6waves is returning to the business plan that made the company a success in the first place. When the company launched, it focused on international titles because Facebook was so saturated with English-language titles that didn’t target other regions. 6waves is returning to these roots by actively seeking out foreign developers to work with. Of the 32 announced publishing partners, six are in China and five come from Russia.

Ng explains many studios in countries like these — especially China, where 6waves has two offices —  are approaching the publisher to help them launch on on Facebook. Since Facebook isn’t popular (or even legal) in certain territories, these groups’ games often aren’t initially released on the platform. Instead, the games first launch on services like Vkontakte and Mail.RU in Russia, Nasza-klasa in Poland and Tencent in China. It’s only when a developer wants to reach players in areas like North America that it begins looking to publish their games on Facebook.

Facebook still hasn’t perfected the science of game discovery, though, so it’s easy for new games to get lost in the crowd. Joining with 6waves means a developers has access to a much larger audience than it would if it self-published, and 6waves will work with them on localizing and polishing a title so it stands a better chance of attracting and retaining players in different regions.

The new partnerships are already paying off for some developers. Games like Aviator, Criminal Empires and Township were originally launched on Facebook months ago and saw dwindling MAU numbers after early surges. Since being republished by 6waves, each of these titles appeared on our fastest-growing and emerging Facebook games lists over the past few weeks.

The publisher’s new focus on publishing is also tied to its relationship with Chinese internet giant Tencent. Tencent has over 700 million users and 6waves SVP of Publishing Jim Ying explains the network is so large it needs a constant stream of new content. Ravenwood Fair is already on Tencent and 6waves is working on two other titles for the platform.

6waves returning to publishing is probably the best move it can make at this time, based on its experience and proven track record. It’s already figured out how to succeed at something in which other companies like Rock You (which cut half its staff last year and is continuing to struggle) and Zynga (with only a few developers currently announced for its new platform) are still finding their way.

Though broadly accepted by mainstream consumers, social games have only recently started targeting “hardcore” video game players. EA PopCap made a bold move to reach that audience this week at the Penny Arcade Expo video games festival in Boston, setting up Solitaire Blitz direct marketing campaign.

Inside Social Games spoke to PopCap Director of Editorial and Social Media Jeff Green on the decision to invest in the campaign — especially when no other social games developer had a serious presence at the show (with the exception of Tencent’s Boston studio, which set up a recruiting booth in the expo hall).

Inside Social Games: PAX is a hardcore gamer audience. Solitaire Blitz is a Facebook game — and a casual one, at that. Why bring the game front and center at this show?

Jeff Green: PopCap loves PAX. We were going to be at PAX no matter what because we like connecting to players one-on-one. Is a casual Facebook card game the best fit for PAX? We mulled it over… would people laugh at us or throw things at us? But it boiled down to the fact that we really like the game. Yes, it’s a card game on Facebook, but it’s a really good card game on Facebook that we’re proud of. It evolved out of one of our [internal] game jams and the idea was so cool, we wanted to make it a real Facebook game. Once it crosses over into “we’re taking this seriously,” we go all out. Which is why there’s a symphony orchestra playing the [in-game] music instead of a keyboard. Facebook games don’t have to be crappy; they can have a Triple-A presentation within the confines of that platform.

ISG: So how do you bring the game to the PAX audience? We see that you have a booth in the entrance hall of the convention center and you’re passing out goodies — otherwise known as “swag” — to passersby. At the same time, dancers dressed as zombies are promoting an older PopCap game, Plants vs. Zombies, right next to the Solitaire Blitz display.

Green: We know it’s a new IP and no one really knows it yet — not this crowd. Our earliest talks were having the zombies promoting the game. As it talks went on, the Solitaire Blitz team said they wanted the game to stand on its own. So we backed off that and let the zombies dance separately. Every year, we have something that people can wear. So for Solitaire Blitz, we have an arrow-through-the-head [headband] with [Otis the worm] on it. It’s not as easy to get them to wear as [last year's] Plants vs. Zombies traffic cone hat. We also worried it would be too phallic looking, so we added the hook — so it’s a worm on a hook. And then we needed to further incentivize with “we’ll give something cool away if you wear it to one random person.” The other thing we’re doing is handing out packs of playing cards that are branded with PAX East and a redemption for 25,000 coins in Solitaire Blitz.

ISG: But you didn’t set up stations for people to play the game?

Green: No. We thought about setting up a bunch of laptops, but the issue of a hardcore gaming show came up. A bank of laptops with people playing solitaire on them just wouldn’t look cool. It doesn’t translate to a booth presence.

ISG: So how will you measure the impact of this campaign on Solitaire Blitz itself?

Green: One superficial thing would be people wearing the hats. But a bigger one is “does our PAX presence drive daily active users,” for example. Do [players] evangelize it more? Do they get clued in and play it and tell their friends? I like being at these shows because I believe in these one-on-one communications.

ISG: Based on how it’s going so far, on how many people are wearing the Otis hats, would you do this campaign again? Maybe at the PAX Prime show in Seattle this summer?

Green: It depends on the game. I have to know I can represent this game in public and feel OK about it. If the next Facebook game comes along and I’m iffy about it, I wouldn’t bring it here.

ISG: What about other social game developers? Should they be here at PAX to speak to the hardcore gamer audience directly?

Green: It’s stupid not to be here. These are the most passionate gamers and this is who you want evangelizing your product. If you believe in your game, you should be at this show. At E3, you’re talking to the press and retailers. The Game Developers Conference is developers talking to other developers. PAX is gamers. Even if your game isn’t for “gamers,” I would say the best advertisement you could have is even gamers playing your game.

Solitaire Blitz currently has 2.5 million monthly active users and 600,000 daily active users, according to our AppData traffic tracking service. PAX East concludes today at 6pm EST.

Inside Social Games can confirm that RockYou has closed Australian developer 3 Blokes Studios.

“Yes, we wound down the 3 Blokes studio,” Josh Grant, RockYou’s SVP and GM of Studio Partners tells us in an emailed statement. “We have great respect for the team. The focus of our business has changed; our core capabilities are in monetization and distribution, and we reorganized last year to focus on our media business and third party publishing.”

RockYou acquired 3 Blokes last June to work on a real-time space-themed strategy combat game, Galactic Allies. The idea was to attract a hardcore male gamer audience that wasn’t being served by RockYou’s existing female-oriented games like Zoo World 2. Galactic Allies maxed out its traffic in September and October at 200,000 monthly active users and 80,000 daily active users according to our AppData traffic tracking service. RockYou’s only other acquired studio, Playdemic, was sold back to its founders and has since gone on to sign a publishing deal for Zynga’s new games platform.

Live Holdem Poker Pro developer Dragonplay announced a $14 million first round of funding today led by Accel Partners. The money will go toward acquiring smaller developers to work on more card, board game and slot titles for Android, iOS and Facebook.

Dragonplay’s Live Holdem Poker Pro is currently the top grossing title on Android, but its Farm Slots title has also seen significant traction on the platform. The idea, it seems, is to touch on as many sub-categories of the casino genre as possible — like other companies entering the casino space on social and mobile platforms. Additionally, Dragonplay started early on cross-platform play with Facebook. Live Holdem Poker currently boasts over 12 million installs between Android and Facebook alone and only just recently arrived on iOS. The game currently see 2 to 2.5 percent conversion rates on Android; counting incentivized installs from Tapjoy, that goes up to 4 percent — which is slightly better than average for most games apps.

Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.

Adobe announced Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2 versions today along with a set of premium APIs for PC and mobile games. The software giant is also collaborating with Unity to create a unified workflow that can deliver Unity games via Flash.

The premium APIs are a combination of the GPU accelerated Stage3D APIs Adobe first announced with Flash Player 11 last fall and fast memory op codes. On mobile via Adobe AIR, developers can use the APIs for free — but on Flash Player 11, the software company takes a 9 percent cut of revenues after the first $50,000. These terms go into effect August 1, 2012, giving developers between now and then to determine if the APIs are suitable for their games. Adobe acknowledges that the majority of gaming content currently created in Flash probably won’t need to use the premium features. Developers do not have to pay royalties on each of the APIs if used alone or on software rendering of Stage3D with or without the op codes.

The Unity collaboration is born of Unity’s own efforts to tap into the Flash audience without players needing to download a plugin. In September of last year, Unity announced that it would support Flash in future versions — which is what prompted Adobe to reach out and work with the company to create a unified workflow that better serves developers. The Unity 3.5 Flash export functionality is currently in preview mode, but beyond that release, Adobe says it’s also working on integrating future Adobe gaming services into Unity. At some point, we may see Adobe partner with other engine creators on similar projects — in October last year, we saw Epic Games’ Unreal Engine running Unreal Tournament on Flash.

Both moves seem like solid ones for Adobe. By introducing APIs as a service, rather than giving them away with a one-time purchases of its authoring software, the company can take a slice of the virtual goods revenues social and mobile game developers enjoy. At the same time, Adobe is also building bridges to console video game developers, providing a way for non-Flash developers to tap into Flash’s broad reach on PCs in the social and casual games space. The Unity collaboration reinforces the approach, and Adobe tells us it’s working with a number of 3rd party frameworks to help developers to reach 2D or 3D content markets.

Interestingly, Adobe is pushing a monetization angle in Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2. By creating a unified platform for desktop and mobile, it hopes to reduce fragmentation in those markets. Adobe also plans to offer analytics and revenue optimization features as part of its game services in the near future — not unlike what we see from Kontagent or Flurry.

While Unity isn’t that common in social games, it definitely has traction in mobile games. CEO and co-founder David Helgason told Inside Mobile Apps earlier this month that mobile developers account for over half of the company’s total business. On Facebook, the healthiest Unity game we’ve seen so far is CMUNE’s UberStrike, which requires a plugin.

You can find out more about the premium APIs and the Unity collaboration on Adobe’s Digital Media blog.

With today’s OMGPOP acquisition, Zynga New York is split firmly into two studios: Zynga New York Social and Zynga New York Mobile. OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter now heads up the latter as vice president and general manager.

The Zynga New York Mobile studio is made up of both OMGPOP and Astro Ape, which Zynga acquired late last year to work on Dream PetHouse. The OMGPOP team will continue to work on Draw Something for mobile and other future projects — one of which Business Insider confirms as crime-themed game The Street. Draw Something will also officially arrive on Facebook as a playable game sometime “soon,” though it’s clear the developer is waiting for fan feedback before making the complete cross-platform jump.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if it’s going to be Draw SomethingWithFriendsVille?” Porter demanded during a 10-minute follow-up call scheduled after today’s media briefing. “I’m going to answer you anyway — if you don’t like the direction of the game as a player, then hit me up on Twitter and tell me what you think. I read every single thing people write about the game. We want to make games people want to play.”

OMGPOP has a history of trying various game types on different platforms to see what gets traction. On Facebook, its games have ranged from restaurant sim Cupcake Corner to the more arcade-y Pool World Champ. On mobile, it’s been pet sim Puppy World, puzzle game Boom Friends and now, most recently, Draw Something. The developer even has a true cross-platform HTML5 game, Gem Rush. Though each of these titles may have achieved traction in their respective markets at one time or another, only Draw Something stands out as a real hit.

Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.

Collectible card game developer 5th Planet Games has acquired New York-based game design consulting company To Be Continued. The buy nets 5th Planet all of To Be Continued’s current and future projects — which include CCGs based on Twilight, The Walking Dead and two unnamed Hollywood properties.

5th Planet Games first partnered with To Be Continued on its 2011 hardcore Facebook CCG Clash of the Dragons. Based on that experience and To Be Continued’s history with the broader CCG community, 5th Planet Games decided to make the acquisition to bolster its position as the top hardcore CCG developer in the social games space.

“They are experts in their domain and they bring a ton of intellectual horsepower to the team,” 5th Planet Games Chief Business Officer Braden Moulton tells Inside Social Games. “[Co-founder] Brian David-Marshall is the official Magic: The Gathering historian and announcer of the Magic Pro Tour. [Co-founder] Matthew Wang has a depth of financial and entertainment industry experience. With that background comes networking and reaching new partnerships — we’ll be announcing a major new IP very soon that is a direct result of working with the TBC team.”

Aside from Clash of the Dragons and said unannounced new project, the To Be Continued team will also focus on growing its existing design and development business for core IPs. The developer’s experience also lends itself toward pushing 5th Planet Games into new markets. 5th Planet Games already hosts games on its own site and on hardcore gamer-focused network Kongregate. Beyond those platforms, 5th Planet hopes to launch games on Chinese networks later this year and is prepping Clash of the Dragons and Dawn of the Dragons for mobile launches in July.

“I know Facebook is working to improve the experience for mid and small size developers, but right now we’re experiencing exponential success outside of their ecosystem,” Moulton says. “We’re aggressively pivoting to other platforms and markets that are more favorable to our business. Acquiring TBC strengthens our push to these markets by increasing our product velocity and improving game design for our demographic of core players.”

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

6waves Lolapps — the developer sometimes known as 6L — laid off all of its development staff today, Inside Social Games can confirm. The company is now focused entirely on games publishing.

“6waves Lolapps will now focus on working with independent developers to launch and grow their mobile and social games,” CEO Rex Ng 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. The re-structuring means that we will have more resources to continue our leadership in the social and mobile game publishing space.”

6waves Lolapps came into being eight months ago with a merger between Ravenwood Fair developer Lolapps and Facebook game publisher 6waves. Shortly after, the company secured $35 million in funding from Nexon and Insight Venture Partners, expanded into mobile publishing and acquired Smartron5 and Escalation Studios to beef up development in China and on mobile platforms.

It is unclear what will happen to Smartron5, Escalation Studios and the Ravenwood franchise at this time. We’ll update this story as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: A 6waves Lolapps spokesperson tells us that the Ravenwood franchise will continue to operate under an external team. Smartron5 and Escalation Studios will also continue to operate on China-based games and mobile games, respectively.

An additional source with knowledge of the Ravenwood franchise says that two of Lolapps’ founders — Brian Rue and Kavin Stewart — and former Lolapps CEO Arjun Sethi will continue to fund the upcoming Ravenshire Castle “to the finish,” which is likely to be three or four months from now.

Zynga setting up shop in Victoria, BC – Zynga is setting up a new Canadian office in Victoria, BC. It will be lead by Canadian Clayton Stark, who joined Zynga after his company, Flock, was acquired last year. Zynga’s Canadian office will be mainly responsible for working on Zynga’s platform, reports the Victoria Times Colonist. Zynga is the third gaming company to set up in Victoria in the last six months, following the lead of Microsoft and GameHouse.

GDC attendance up 17 percent — The 2012 Game Developer’s Conference set a new attendance record, attracting more than 22,500 attendees, up 17 percent year-on-year. Unlike previous years, mobile and social developers were a large presence at the event, with companies like GREE and Wooga well represented with prominent sponsorships.

Former Hi5 president launches Magi.com — Alex St. John, the former president of the now mostly defunct social network Hi5, has launched a new social gaming portal called Magi.com. The site, which is currently in beta, bases its programming interface on Facebook’s in order to make it easy for developers to bring their games to Magi.com, reports Gamasutra.

Wooga looking to mobile, but not IPO – Wooga is expecting more of its business to come from smartphones and tablets in the future. “I believe that playing on smartphones and tablets currently comes on top” of playing on a desktop or laptop computer,” the company’s co-founder and CEO Jens Begemann said to Reuters. Begemann also ruled out the possibility of an IPO, instead stating his company is concentrating on growth.

Unreal Engine now runs in Flash — Epic Games’ high-end Unreal Engine 3 now runs in Flash 11.2. Epic showed off a demo of the engine running in Flash during GDC. The latest version of Unreal Engine 3 rival Unity also outputs to Flash.

Digital Chocolate teams with Pokki to release Galaxy Life as desktop app — Digital Chocolate is the latest social game developer to take its games to the desktop, teaming with Pokki to turn Galaxy Life into a free-to-download desktop app.

TeePee Games partners with Nektan – UK-based gaming portal TeePee Games has signed a deal with Nektan to bring the startup studio’s first game, Click & Clear to TeePee’s platform.

[Launch] SELF magazine launches social game – Condé Nast published magazine SELF has announced it is releasing its own social game. Called SELF Workout in the Park, the game is based on the real-world event of the same name. The game will launch on Mar. 19.

Wall Street Game is a new Facebook offering from Enders Fund, Inc. It’s a competitive business simulation that places players in the role of a wrongly-disgraced CEO who must work his way back up the business ladder and clear his name. This is primarily achieved by buying and selling stocks, with market data drawn from the real-world stock market in real time, but there is also a news quiz element to the game.

Upon starting the game, players are introduced to the scenario which forms the basis for the game’s story. The player character, an employee at his father’s company, was accused of fraud, and the judge at his trial was paid off by a member of the board who wanted to seize control of the company and its assets. After three years in prison, the player character is let loose and has to start again with practically nothing — nothing apart from the $10 million nest egg the character’s father left them “in case anything happened,” that is.

Players are then provided with a dilapidated-looking office building to explore, and have a number of possible actions they can take. Viewing the News channel on the television provides players with a series of headlines with the pertinent company names removed, and players must choose the correct company to fill in the blank in order to receive experience point rewards. Leveling up, in turn, unlocks a wider variety of avatar customization options.

Players also have the option of engaging in trades. It’s possible to invest in publicly-traded stocks as well as private funds held by the player’s friends. Players can either purchase when the market opens, or use a Power Trade token (available via Facebook Credits) to automatically purchase stock when the price reaches a certain lower boundary.

A wealth of financial information is provided for the player to make their decision, but the game does assume a working knowledge of how the stock exchange operates — to anyone not well-versed in life on the trading floor, the array of information available will likely seem somewhat bewildering. Players initially choose a single “field” in which to focus their trading, such as technology, basic materials or consumer products, and further fields are unlocked through continued play. Players may also level up their “mastery” of a field by answering trivia questions about companies in that field after seeing three facts presented to them. Increasing mastery of a field causes the room in the player’s office building representing that field to become decorated more elaborately.

Once players complete certain objectives, they are able to battle the bosses of the story. These battles take the form of a time-limited competition to see whether the player or the boss will make the biggest percentage return on their investment. Victory in these battles allows the storyline to proceed, while failure requires that the battle be repeated.

The game makes use of an energy system, but unfortunately the flawed implementation of this at the time of writing makes the game practically unplayable. It’s not made clear to the player that every single action — including making trades, answering news quiz questions, engaging in meetings and battling bosses — requires at least one point of energy, and the pool of energy available to players is just 8 points. This would not be so bad were it not for the fact that no indication is given of how much energy certain tasks require, leading to the situation depicted in the screenshot below, where the player appears to have energy in their bar but is still locked out of being able to perform an action. In the scenario shown below, the “meeting” action the player is trying to perform costs 3 energy — more than the 2 they currently have available — but this is not indicated anywhere on the interface.

The game is also riddled with technical issues — some graphics simply don’t load at times, while on other occasions performance is very sluggish. Characters frequently also walk into walls and present ugly clipping issues.

It’s a shame that there are so many problems with this title, as there’s a good game struggling to get out underneath, and the use of real-life market data and business news gives players the opportunity to learn more about the stock market and how world events affect share prices. Not only this, but there’s a huge amount of scope for social competition between friends.

At this time, though, the flawed, miserly energy system combined with the lack of interface feedback on energy costs and the technical problems the game suffers make it hard to recommend. There’s potential here, and it’s an original concept, but it needs a lot of work before being ready for the primetime.

Wall Street Game currently has 7,000 monthly active users and 800 daily active users. You can follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Wait

There’s a good, original concept for a game in there somewhere, but flawed implementation and technical issues hide it a little too well at the moment.