Why Grind?
Almost all computer games with “role-playing elements”¹ force the player to spend a lot of time on boring, non-challenging, repetitive tasks. These tasks, called grind, translate play time into in-game power. Often, they are disguised as something vaguely heroic — killing ten orcs, for example — but sometimes, especially in online multiplayer games, designers seem determined to rub new players’ faces in the fact that they are worthless nothings by sending them off to collect ten balls of lint instead. In either case, the question is “why deliberately include grind?”
The advantages for the game developers are clear:
1. Grind slows content consumption. You can have a pretty small world and still write “50 hours of excitement” on the package if the player has to spend ten hours in each new region walking back and forth between the lint orchards and the marketplace.²
2. In an online game whose income is based on advertising or monthly subscriptions, grind ties player success to developer income. The more powerful a player wants to become, the longer she must play — and hence, the more money she generates for the developers.
Why do the players accept this?
For one thing, grind often comes packaged in fancy visuals and perhaps a new world to explore, so it doesn’t feel like work until the novely wears off. But there’s more to it:
3. Steady progress is seductive. In real life, achievement involves hard work and often risk. Computer games offer an easy sense of accomplishment; their challenges are designed to be overcome. Grind distills this: if you put in the time, you are guaranteed the reward, which is the way we’re taught as children that life is supposed to work.
4. Competition motivates. If there’s a chart somewhere that says that I’m better than you, I get a satisfying feeling of superiority, even if the chart only measures our respective willingness to have our time wasted.
5. People will put up with a lot of crap to feel cool. Games with grind are often designed so that increasing power means prettier equipment, fancier special effects, etc. This also explains the humiliating newbie lint-quests: increasing the coolness gap between new and experienced players increases the incentive to level up.
So grind is tempting… but it has dangers:
- Grind at the beginning of a game, before a player becomes hooked, can cause her to stop playing before “getting to the good stuff”. And if there is no “good stuff”, those who do stick it out will be very disappointed.
- Grind consumes bandwidth and server resources for online games, and these cost money, so it actually reduces profits for games with a flat monthly fee.
- Grind plagues the game designer’s conscience — or should.
Is it possible to get the good parts of grind without the bad?
I’m not sure, but I’m doing my best in our game. My approach is two-pronged:
a) Grind is optional. Our game can be played, even at a high level, in a few minutes a day. However, to satisfy those who crave grind, or who simply would like to invest more of their time, there will be special, grind-based tasks and rankings that interact only weakly with the core gameplay
b) Grind isn’t too boring. I don’t think it’s possible to make grind really interesting, because interest arises either through challenge (which would void benefit 3) or appealing content (which contradicts 1). Still, there’s a world of difference between an entertaining mini-game and just clicking a button repeatedly.
I don’t want to bore my players unless they insist. Time will tell if I can avoid it.
¹ Unfortunately, “role-playing” in the context of computer games just means “you have a game token or tokens that becomes more powerful the longer it is used”. (back)
² And if you’re willing to lie about the “excitement” part. (back)
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I think „grinding“ is a pretty charged term. There is only a fine line between grinding and playing. Solitaire is not very challenging and it surely is repetitive. Yet, people relax playing it.
Although I didn’t yet play any MMORPG, I found it to be fun and exciting to battle monsters in The Bard’s Tale, just to get enough experience to gain a level. The trick is to have the right balance. In most RPG I played, the experience needed for the next level increased exponentially. So although you sometimes had to hunt monsters to advance, after rising to the next level it didn’t get you anywhere to kill the same simple monster again and again. And when you went to the next dungeon, the monsters there were a real challenge. I just now play Gran Turissmo 3 and it’s the same principle: I have to do the same races for quite some time, to collect the money for pimping my car, so I’m ready for the tougher matches.
And gamers are easy to please. They will accept some experience as a reward. They will be excited to see a new monster. And they will be completely enthrilled to get in a new dungeon. The joy of opening a formerly locked door is the main reason I play games. But it has to be “work” to get the key.
Hi there,
I feel very addressed by your words “plagues the game designers conscience. And I’d like to add some more aspects.
First of all, the pure grinding lures professional grinders like the gold farmers in WoW. Because if it is work, time wasting and boring, of course some people offer you to do it for you. This aspect drives especially hard, if your games grinding is so simple, that even a bot can do it. This way, it destroys your game if you run it subscriptions based, and your business if you run it micropayment (which I guess you do according to which big companies affiliate you are
Another aspect I like to put the spotlight on is, like the first comment adresses: it works. Everytime I look at copies of Monstersgames, like bitefight, gladiatus, legend, gondal or the newest one, artyria, I wonder how much money they make with how many players with such a “bad” principal. The game developer in me still scratches his head about it and winks “I press a button for work, and than I can’t do anything else? Come back tomorrow to play again? Hello?!” But: it works.
Although, I think if you make it any bit better, you can drag all the players away to your game. So making it more interesting, less uninteractive, less repetive, really works. Even the tiny change of showing your fight, work, whatever with a little animation makes a signifant difference.
At all, I think with online games today and tomorrow, Game Designers are challenged to beat themselves in a competitive race for the best balance of the different player types. Not wasting time and making it simple for players who dont have time, like “Push this button to grind for 10 hours.” Also offering senseful game action at anytime for every player who whenever likes to spend more time “You already hunted for ten hours. Your basic hunting grounds are empty. Go and look yourself for additional bounty” (which maybe makes 100% of what you got by the automatic grind if you do it till you can push the button again. Hence a small bonus but still a reward.)
In summary, I am very confident that you find a way to at least improve the meaningful play of grinding. I doubt you can get any way around it.
Thanks to both of you for your thoughtful comments!
Bob: you raise two points that are so good that I wish I’d put them in the article. I’ll add them now:
6. Simple, repetitive tasks can be soothing. And you’re right that the line between soothing and boring is fine (and not the same for all players) — but there is a line, as mentioned in “isn’t too boring” in the original post.
7. Grind can improve pacing. This is closely related to #1 (slows content consumption), but from an important new perspective.
Indeed! If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be gamers. But I propose that there would be more gamers if games had less (bad) grind.
I disagree that these two examples refer to the same phenomenon: unlike classic RPG uplevelling, repeating tracks in Gran Turismo improves your skills, not your character’s. Therefore, Gran Turismo forces you to train, not just grind. As you say, forced training is often good in twitch games, because otherwise later, harder levels would be frustrating… but that’s beyond the scope of this post.
Sirko: Your points on gold farming, etc. are well taken. “If people would rather use a bot than play your game themselves, it isn’t a good game” sounds like a good motto to me.
As to the success of games that seem to us to be terrible: I don’t really understand it either. That makes me nervous — maybe what I think is a better game is actually not what all of those millions of players want!But I hope, as you do, that, while they are satisfied with what they have, they would appreciate something more interesting, as long as it doesn’t require too much of their time.
[...] I mentioned in my last post, games offer an easy sense of accomplishment. They are deliberately balanced: the best are [...]
Rafael: Of course your’re right that skill is far more important in a racing game than in a classic rpg. However, in Gran Turissmo 3 it’s far more important to improve your car (by spending money = experience points) than to have skill. Actually, that’s one of the things I like most about the game: I can compensate my lack of skill by grinding my way through easy races until I have enough money to upgrade my car.
Bob
Bob: Ah, I see. Ok, another good point (you should be writing this blog!):
8. Grind can provide an optional alternative to skill: A game (such as Deus Ex oder Gran Turismo) in which success arises from the combination of player and character skill can use grind as a manual dynamic difficulty adjustment.
On the other hand, why should less skilled players be forced to grind? Sounds like punishment to me.
Rafael: Yeah, I sure know games where it feels like punishment, too
And I guess for a game designer it’s mostly the wise choice to deal with differently skilled players by offering different difficulty levels. But I accept that there still are games which require more skill than I have. If the alternative is, not to be able to finish the game, I like to have at least the option to grind.
(Actually I’m more likely to cheat than to grind, but I guess that’s besides the point)
Bob