Does Japan like Grinding?

[hypothetical fact]

I recently bought a DS and 3 Japanese games. My current library of 360 games is entirely Western and my grindiest game is Fallout 3. So imagine my horror when I play through the games:

Pokemon Platinum: Oh, you only have fire and dragon pokemon against the ice gym; well off you go to get a new pokemon and grind it up to stand a chance before you can continue the game.

Castlevania Order Of Ecclesia: The most powerful rings in the game are powered off grind. One for maximum play time, one for having hundreds of thousands of coins, one for taking a massive amount of damage and one for killing a rediculous number of enemies. The game even includes creatures to summon but if you want to level up something like the owl, the guides tell you to find some respawning zombies and leave the DS on over night. To rub salt in the wound the game also provides medals for beating bosses without getting hit. That requires skill but the medals don't do anything!

Yu-Gi-Oh championship something or other: I complete the entire game and I still only have half the booster packs unlocked. I check online for what I did wrong and it tells me that I have to beat every opponent up to 10 times each!

Each game comes from a different genre so did I just pick badly or is there some Japanese golden rule to game design where all games must be artificially lengthened?

 

[Fireheart2007]

Pretty much.

 

[NeutralDrow]

You picked badly. You want grind? Play a Korean or Chinese game.

 

[Jandau]

It's not just Japanese, asians in general seem to have a thing for grinding. Never could figure it out myself...

 

[Abedeus]

Asia. Not Japan.

Koreans and Chinese have more grinding games... Just any MMO (maybe except for Aion and games like S4 or GunZ) from Asia is grindage.

 

[Nmil-ek]

You want grind son? Ill give you some godamned grind.

[http://img32.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rfonlineqjgenth.jpg]

I had to sit through that crapfest for a week for a review, let me say you have not seen grind until you have played this game go on its freeware I DARE YOU! And I played WoW for 4 years.

 

[KissofKetchup]

It's not just Japanese, asians in general seem to have a thing for grinding. Never could figure it out myself...

You really shouldn't find this surprising, considering the fact that most of the world's manufacturing jobs are in China. It's almost like they're programmed for grinding and grinding it out, wether it be in a video game or putting together our iPods.

 

[Caimekaze]

Oh no, you have to fight an ice-type gym with fire Pokemon. I can see your dilemma right there; I sympathise.
I personally don't have issue with grinding. I can find it fun, sometimes. Seeing the benefits really makes me happy, too.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

To be fair. World of Warcraft, or any MMORPG popular in the west, requires you to endlessly level grind, so it's not limited to Japan. There are also plenty of Japanese RPG's in which you can level grind if you want but really don't need to in order to complete the story. Take Chrono Trigger for instance, all my characters there are at least level 80 and can beat Lavos with ease only because I completed all side quests.

 

[Manji187]

Any game that is an RPG or has implemented some serious RPG elements has grinding. The intensity varies though. Grinding for me has a negative connotation... I associate it with boredom. Then again, I don't know of a game where you can reach say lvl 100 without doing some grinding... can grinding ever be fun? I'm obviously talking about the process, not the end result.

 

[xenus87]

You picked badly. You want grind? Play a Korean or Chinese game.

This.

When the XP bar in the game is divided and counted in 1000ths of a % increments, you can really tell how bad the grinding is going to get.

 

[lukey94]

Near enough every game has grind - even CoD 4 and 5 have you grind multiplayer to get new weapons

 

[Chipperz]

Any game that is an RPG or has implemented some serious RPG elements has grinding. The intensity varies though. Grinding for me has a negative connotation... I associate it with boredom. Then again, I don't know of a game where you can reach say lvl 100 without doing some grinding... can grinding ever be fun? I'm obviously talking about the process, not the end result.

I think a lot of it has to do with state of mind - if you go into Warcraft (and I'm gonna use it because it has the most negative connotations of grinding) thinking "OK, I have to kill 4,186 boars to get to level 10, then yes, you'll hate it. If you go in thinking "I'll do a story arc or two" and end up getting enough XP to get to level 10, you'll get more out of it. If you go in and just think "I'll pillock around for a few hours" and end up getting to level 5 by exploring while talking to your mates, doing some quests and killing the random monster that looked at you funny, you'll really have a good time.

I've never seen the point of grinding, especially XP - that XP will still be there tomorrow, and it's not exactly a race to get to max level...

 

[Closet Superhero]

Well, you can't really say it's something unique to Asian gamers. Considering the success of WoW and the Final Fantasy franchise, there seems to be a universal attraction to grinding among gamers. It's just a whole lot stronger in Asia.

My theory, after considering it for the whole of 30 seconds, is that it has to do with Japan having pioneered the concept, which was reasonable for the historical moment, not to mention immensely successful commercially. I guess gamers in Asia accept it as a part of Asian gaming tradition and identity. Western games are less beholden to that tradition.

That said, I think the universal attraction to it is pretty easy to understand. Grinding is essentially an easy thing to do, it just takes time, and you inevitably get rewarded for it by becoming super-powerful. In other words, you don't feel the pressure of potential failure and competition, things which we all get plenty enough of in school and work. Some people prefer to get away from that in their leisure time.