Grinding can be fun!

This started out as a reply to Brice Morrison's blog entry A Necessary Evil: Grinding in Games.The thing is, I don't agree that grinding is a "necessary evil" because I don't think it is either necessary or, for that matter, evil. Let me explain.

Brice defines grinding as "when the player needs to do the same thing over and over again in order to progress, seemingly for arbitrary reasons." I'm going to cut out the "seemingly for arbitrary reasons" part of this because that would mean that users are doing the same thing over and over again for random or irrational reasons. The fact is, the players don't do random things over and over again at all; they do very specific sets of actions over and over again. Getting a quest to kill 10 rats then actually going and killing 10 rats is a highly directed and intentional behavior.

So, sticking with the "player doing the same thing over and over again to progress" definition, lets see what kinds of examples of "grind" we can find!

Tetris. Yes, I'm going to talk about the grind in Tetris. Tetris is, by this definition, purely a grind. You do the same thing over and over again (move a block to the bottom of the map to delete "lines") in order to progress (to get more score). You grind to get a score and, once the game is over, that's it! You have your score! Care to do it all over again from the start? There's some parallel here to be made about Tetris "grinding" and WoW "grinding", I'm sure.

Astute observers, however, will note at least one important difference: the grind in Tetris is uncertain: you cannot know for sure what the outcome of your grind will be. The end-point of progression (your score) depends on how good you are at grinding (your play). In WoW, the end-point is the same for everyone, no matter how good or bad they are. Also, it is impossible to "lose" or "fail" at WoW: no matter how many times you die, no matter how badly you suck at the game, you can never go down in levels or permanently fail a quest. You just keep going forever until you get to the end.

WoW is like a Tetris game you cannot lose, where the screen just shifts upwards whenever it is more than half full, and with a defined ending, say one million points. What fun is that?

The thing is, Tetris is already a game you cannot lose. Technically speaking, the game always has the same ending, where you can't drop another block and it says "game over" and shows your score. You can't beat the game, you can't "win" at Tetris. The only thing that changes is where the end point lies.

Civilization is another interesting case study. In Civilization, you also do the same thing over and over again to progress (research tecnologies, found cities, build buildings, conquer territory). And, in the end, the progression goal is usually the same: victory. I can set up a Civ game with the numbers perfectly balanced between me and the AI but, because I'm sufficiently more intelligent than the AI, I'm pretty much guaranteed to win. The outcome of a Civ game is going to be the same every time I play: "you win."

And yet, even though I've researched the Wheel more times than I care to admit, I still have fun every time I play Civilization. That's because every time I play, the experience, while still directed towards the exact same goal and largely following the exact same path, is ever so random as to be interesting. Moreover, there's a narrative I can construct, even if it's just for my own entertainment, describing the turn-by-turn interactions I have with those AI players. Thus, even though I always win, the story of how I got to that victory is significantly different each game.

Dude, where's my grind?

But here's the real key to the whole argument: what about people who only enjoy combat with tanks and planes and nukes in Civilization? What if all the ancient age, all that researching of technologies, all of that is a "boring grind" in order to reach a point when the game is fun? This, I think, is the closer parallel to WoW. If being level 60 is where you have fun in World of Warcraft, then getting to 60 could be seen as a boring "grind."

I think Warhammer Online best exemplifies this. In Warhammer Online, there's this long and arduous and seemingly irrelevant grind to level 40, after which the main core of the game, the PvP, takes place. It's like booting up Counterstrike and having it pop up Final Fantasy and saying "once you beat this game, you can connect to a server." It just doesn't make any sense.

On the other hand, the level progression in WoW is largely seen as the core content of the game itself. The "end game" content was largely added later. To many, many people, playing WoW means leveling up. When you get to the max level, you "beat" the game and you can start it again by leveling up an alt. Many players have months and months of having fun with WoW and never actually get a character to the max level. So what gives?

The problem is when games try to do too many things. WoW tries to be both a progression game and a PVP game and a Raiding game. So for people who want to play PvP and Raiding, the whole progression aspect is an unnecessary uphill climb preventing them from getting to where they want to be.

Don't hate the game, hate the player.

The problem with grind isn't a problem with the game design, it's a problem with the player's expectations. If a player expects to play the "end game" of a game and doesn't particularly enjoy the voyage there, then that voyage is a "grind."

The thing is, this is entirely subjective. The exact same experience can be seen as positive or negative by different people. It's like the difference between a pleasant hike in the mountains versus a tedious walk to get to a cabin. The path walked might be the exact same, but how the person choses to experience the voyage is entirely up to their own interpretation of it. To the person who wants to go on the hike, arriving at the cabin is a somewhat sad end; to the person who just wants to be at the cabin, every step is unpleasant and they just want it to be over.

It seems to me that the only real solution is for games to offer both experiences. Imagine if WoW had "non-progression" servers where you could log in and instantly create a character at max level, you could pop straight into PvP or Raiding without ever having to do any of that "grind". Of course, you don't want to ONLY do this and remove the "progression experience" for the players who enjoy it.

Consider, for example, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which eliminated level-based grind by always matching monsters everywhere in the world to he player's current level. Many players hated this, because it meant that there was no sense of progression or achivement: you weren't limited in going to dangerous players by not being strong enough to venture forth. If you went everywhere in the entire game at level 1, you'd face nothing but level 1 foes. Conversely, there was never a sense of becoming more powerful because all the areas you completed early in the game would also level up with you, so when you were level 20 even those first few dungeons were now populated with level 20 monsters. The experience of progression was gone. Grind-haters may have rejoyced, but "hardcore" RPG gamers were not as happy.

Neither Necessary Nor Evil

So, grind isn't necessary, because a non-progression WoW server makes perfect sense in my mind. It also isn't evil because that sort of gameplay comprises the "fun" nature of a great many games, both online and off. So where's the problem?

The biggest problem with "grind"-like progression is how it artificially separates players from each other. If you're level 50 and your friend starts playing, there isn't much you can do together because of this artificial level gap. Many MMORPGs circumvent their own grind-like progression by allowing high level players "mentor" down to low levels, or some even let low level players "sidekick" up to high levels. Still, these are just temporary work-arounds for short-term grouping.

Consider, instead, Planetside, which has a grind-like progression, but at the same time brand new players are just as strong and powerful as the most powerful players. What you get for your grind in Planetside is more options rather than more power. But brand new players and seasoned vets can play side by side and still have fun.

Anyways, now I'm starting to go off message. The point is: "grind" isn't bad. Just because some people dislike it doesn't mean that everyone dislikes it. Just because the progression is delayed or slowed and the actions are repetitive doesn't mean the progressions or actions are any less fun. Granted, it can be un-fun if the game is designed poorly, but that's not an intrinsic consequence of grind-like design.