View From the Road: An Axe to Grind, Part 1

[tetron]

That has always been how I defined grinding. Going to some corner of the world and killing the same mobs over and over. I will never understand how people can find that fun as opposed to questing. I'm aware that in both cases you're still just running around killing monsters but a big factor in it is that when questing you don't have to go find the optimal place to grind and then sit there for hours on end. You go to the quest area, get the job done, and go back for your reward.

Although tbh I wish I could just skip it all and start out at endgame, because that's where I think the game really gets interesting.

 

[dante brevity]

You'll probably deal with ideas like this in the next article, but in certain circumstances, I love grinding. I get this feeling on older games, ones that I am very familiar with. There's a Zen-like peace that comes from running back and forth in a single area, killing the same monsters in the same way. It's not entirely the reason I play games, but it's a kind of meditative repetition that gets me very relaxed and takes away stress.

Example: dusting off my old SNES and popping in The Secret of Mana, I know I'll need to do a lot of grinding, running back and forth between Pandora and Gaia's Navel in order to get enough XP to max out each weapon for each player. I enjoy advancing the story, but in between those events I will, sometimes for hours, grind for the pleasure of it all. My muscle memory still knows that game, and I can perform the kills almost without thinking. This sounds boring, and, in truth it's not terribly exciting, but it gives me a transcendent feeling that prayer beads or chanting must give to others.

Psychologists talk about "flow state," athletes talk about "the zone," and religious folks meditate, and my gaming experience with grinding is similar to all of these: my reflexes and reactions become automatic, leaving my higher awareness free to work things out or just rest.

I don't think you could sell a game on these ideas, but they're part of games, I think for a lot of people. How else could games that involve so much repetition feel neither boring nor exciting, but still generally good enough for people to continue spending so much time and money on them?

Then again, these might just be excuses to keep me playing Secret of Mana...

 

[erethizon]

I would say a game becomes a grind the moment you start thinking in terms of how many more opponents you have to kill to get to your next milestone. A good game keeps you entertained enough that it takes you a long time to think in those terms. A bad game causes you to think in those terms almost right away (I have played some MMORPG?s where I felt like I was grinding on day one).