Zynga closes Boston office

Yea, that term stood out for me too. I decided to find out if it's some buzzword Zynga themselves coined for the purposes of this merger (to make it seem like there's an actual market segment for whatever they plan to make here), so I looked it up. Results are unclear, but I did find an article dating from April which gives some sort of specific definition at least:

Source.
I have no idea who Newzoo is (the source of the article) beyond their claim of being a market research company for the video gaming market.

We were looking into mid-core development ourselves when the studio shut down. The best definition I heard is that mid-core gamers are hard-core gamers with kids.

There's only one -core that matters in terms of the future of marketing. Or anything, really.

Sounds like the video gaming industry has matured enough to fall into the same trap as most others: over-segmenting. Welcome to the big leagues.

I have friends who used to be more hardcore into gaming and now have more responsibilities and can't put 40 hours a week into mastering hardcore games.

But, amazingly enough, most of the "hardcore" games can still be enjoyed in bits and pieces simply by having modes of play that don't require tremendous practice and memorization to enjoy. This is something that seems to be happening already and has existed since the early days of gaming. I mean, Super Mario Bros. sounds like it would qualify as a "mid-core" game.

This is so me. Wife, kids, full time + job = not so much gaming time these days. I've had Borderlands 2 since shortly after it came out and have managed to get my siren to level 29 through dedicating 115% of available free time to play. While I think "mid core" sounds stupid as a designation I would be delighted if game designers kept people like me in mind when designing games. But it would be totally cool if Zynga forgot about me.

From the "mid-core" link:

Best. Name. Ever.

It's one of the things that have really pissed me off about BL2, the time investment on some of the areas can reach 1-2hrs easily and if you quit - you're screwed & have to start over the next time you spawn in. It is even more frustrating when you know you need to stop and you look at the transport station and see the familiar "no return" symbol on top, meaning that won't be able to start over at that place.

That just seems like an unfortunate design that has nothing to do with whether gamers have families. Is this because you're playing online on servers that can't just save your state? I suppose if mid-core gaming really winds up being secret code for complex single-player games that can be started and stopped at leisure then I suppose I could grit my teeth and bear it.

You know, I think you were complaining about this in the BL2 thread, and at the time I thought I just hadn't encountered some areas of the game where that was a problem. But I've since finished the game once and I'm about 2/3rds through a second playthrough, and this just hasn't been a problem at all. Are you playing the PC version or something? On 360, at least, I haven't gotten screwed by a lack of saves, at all - you see auto save points pretty frequently out in the world.

And I think I've seen like two "no return" fast-travel stations in the entire game, both of them immediately prior to a boss fight.

No, it isn't Diablo 3. If there are technical reasons for the design (there are checkpoints in levels, they just get reset when you quit) then they involve Gearbox being bad at what they do.

Yes, there are savepoints. If you quit and then resume, you do not start at those savepoints, you start at whatever town was nearby. I have more free time than TMan, so I was only bitten by that once, but it was pretty infuriating when it happened.

In BL2, the checkpoints autosave your progress, but the zones respawn. I'm not sure what Tman is talking about, but you don't lose progress or anything.

EDIT: Sorry for the derail, apparently this is the Zynga thread.

You don't lose xp or loot, but you lose literal progress in that you're not physically where you were and have to spend x minutes fighting your way back there through the respawned opponents.

And oh yeah, wrong thread. Whoops.

It's a problem when you're only wanting to play in 15-30 minute chunks, and not wanting to repeat the same exact shit over and over every single time you start the game.

Checkpoints only save your gear and stats, but not your map/quest progress. You're fucked if you're halfway through a map/quest/area when you need to log off, because then you're forced to start all over again from the beginning of the area, with all the monsters and bosses for the area respawned. Then you're pretty much forced to either fight all the same crap over again (and again), or run past it all in order to reach the spot you were at when you quit out previously.

PS: Zynga is the harbinger of sorrow, now this post is on topic.

Huh, yeah, I guess I thought it'd go without saying that any game where you explore large areas filled with critters that respawn is not a game that's playable in 15-minute chunks, unless you don't mind clearing stuff repeatedly.

And to circle back to the topic at hand, I don't think every game needs to be that accessible. I understand the desire for easy-in, easy-out gameplay, but BL2 doesn't need to be one of those games.

I guess I'd find this more persuasive if BL2 wasn't FPS Diablo. Blizzard demonstrated with D3 that this sort of gameplay is perfectly compatible with playing in 20-30 minute chunks. Gearbox already put in those checkpoints, why not let players resume there?

I don't have any fact-based answers for you, and this is obviously a matter of opinion. I just don't think having every checkpoint also serve as a spawn point would really change that much, given that most of the current spawn points are also right next to catch-a-ride stations, so you just spawn, grab a vehicle, and go to wherever you need to be. Having every checkpoint also serve as a spawn point would - within the game's fictional conceit - mean that every checkpoint is also a fast-travel point. Which would mean that you would then just teleport all over the levels rather than traveling from one place to another within the game world. I'm all for player convenience, but beyond a certain point, I think a design like that sacrifices immersion and engagement within the game's world for the sake of just teleporting all over the place.

And 30 mins is definitely feasible for doing something concrete in BL2. But 15 minutes, no, not so much. Play some Angry Birds instead. Again, not every game has to be consumable in such tiny increments.

I'm sorry, is your argument against a proper checkpoint/savepoint system that it would break immersion for you? Seriously?

No, that.. you know what, never mind. You've got your head so far up your own ass that it's interfering with your reading comprehension. Go fuck yourself.

It's funny that you think you must tag Lum to summon him here... as if he weren't clearly omniscient.

This was the most decisive factor in making me put the game down quickly, along with the rapid enemy respawn. I don't see how making me replay things instantly and constantly makes sense in a loot game, especially one that is so irritating about ammunition, and that goes double when the enemy return rate means anything other than a blitzkrieg approach to combat is a gamble.
The game has no respect for your time, and that's fine if you like it enough. But it does needlessly limit the appeal for this style of game. Separately, you can do all kinds of things with fast travel to avoid making it the default option, such as making your game world worth walking through.

I agree about the respawn rate, especially in instances. That does get obnoxious. Doubly so when you're stuck in one of the areas that doesn't loop back around to the entrance, so you have to fight your way back out the front door after you've already accomplished what you came to do.

On the fast-travel issue, it appears I do like the game more than you guys do (and I enjoy exploring the gameworld), but I understand what you're getting at. Even after I've explored everything, I don't really mind driving through the areas to quickly get from point A to point B.

But I think what this comes down to is that we're all playing the game differently. I've never tried to do anything in BL2 in a 15-minute window other than shop around in town. And I play almost exclusively in co-op, so when traveling the overland zones, I'm usually socializing with friends and don't really experience it as empty padding or frustrating delay. I can see how it would feel that way if you're playing solo, or if you're looking at the clock while trying to squeeze a mission into a short 20-minute window.

There's also the issue that, maybe because of how often I'm fighting the same stuff, I'm seemingly out-leveling every freaking quest I come across. I don't understand how I'm supposed to ever meet/complete these quests at the appropriate levels, unless I'm just expected to skip most of them, cherry pick specific ones that look interesting, and not double up on the huge amount of quest & kill exp I invariably end up with.

I don't know how the mechanics of the loot drops and stuff work, but it seems to me that although I'm going up in levels, the loot isn't. So in addition to having shitty quests all queued up, now I've got no good loot to look forward to whilst trying to complete (and move on from) the same area/monsters/bosses I've been toiling over during several gaming sessions either.

PS: Some Zynga CFO dude just quit and joined Facebook. Totally on topic now.

I completely agree re: out-leveling content. That's been probably my biggest complaint the whole time. I shitted up the BL2 thread bitching about it pretty regularly. I don't think that's due to the respawns, though. (Unless you really are clearing whole zones over and over again, which I don't do - I grab a car and I drive past the enemies, or just sprint through them if it's an area without a Catch-a-Ride.

(Wow, I... just now realized that Catch A Ride = C.A.R. I've only been playing these games for years.)

You're correct that the loot level does not correspond to your level, it corresponds to the level of the main story quest that you're currently on. Which is a pretty dumb way of doing it and a problem for me, because I like doing sidequests, but all the sidequests do is make most of the loot in the game get progressively worse as you complete them. The 'solution' appears to be pushing the main story as far as you can go for a particular level, then doing a few selected sidequests but only until the current story mission is attainable.

One of my former coworkers phrased it thusly:

"I've made all the shitty financial decisions I can. My work here is done. Away!"

I would have thought that Shitty Financial Decision Man would have a shabbier outfit.

He is, at least, in the red.

Zyng(a)!

Mid-core games for me (i.e. can fit them easily into Rest Of Life)

X-Com - a short gaming session can be meaningful
World of Tanks - Jump in and blast away

Mid-core games for me:

DCS: A-10
Distant Worlds
War in the Pacific

Yeah that's right

I want to know what scharmers hardcore games are.

I think this is the beauty of tactical RPGs & squad-based strategy games. Their basic unit of play is a single battle, which you can usually finish in a short session (XCOM is a bit of an exception, since I play veeeeeery sloooooowly and have an excessive tendency to camp). Finish the battle, save up, and put the game down.

Takes months to play, even if you play it on VASSAL.

But actually hyperbole - I haven't been able to stomach rivet-counting sims for many, many moons; Distant Worlds to me is a better screensaver than a game; and WitP is good for keeping folks' OCD under control. I play lots of time sinks, but nothing really HARDE COUER these days.

Of course, now that I have a rig (i5 2570K) that can play ArmA2 and Rise of Flight decently, I might do those. Those are both pretty hard core.

Su-27 Flanker.

Not because the game is fiddly, it's because he has to fend off Papadoc humping his leg while trying to play it.

No one will get that reference.

I get that reference.