A Necessary Evil: Grinding in Games

“I hate World of Warcraft.”

“What?  Have you ever even played it?”

“Yes.”

“How far did you get?”

“I got to about level 60.”

“And you didn’t like it?”

“No.  I hated it.”

I was amazed to find that a friend of mine had put in weeks of time into Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, and yet he felt like he didn’t have any fun.  He described the experience as though he was being tricked into playing, that he was “grinding” all the time.  He kept on playing, but for some reason, had an internal struggle that pulled him forward without providing excitement or enjoyment.  He was miserable.

Most gamers know the term “grinding”.  Grinding can and has been called many things, but generally it is defined as when the player needs to do the same thing over and over again in order to progress, seemingly for arbitrary reasons.  Dragon Quest was one of the classic RPG’s that seemed to be defined by grinding.  Enemies would suddenly appear that required the player be at Level 15 in order to beat, when currently the player was probably around Level 12.  The result?  In order to go further, the player needed to go back and fight the same old monsters over and over again, until their Level was high enough.

Grind is generally viewed as a bad thing.  But rather than just complain about it, how can a grind be understood from a game developer’s perspective?  Is there ever a time a grind should be used, and how can it be avoided? WAIT! There is more to read… read on »