Is Grinding Fun?

This is probably going to end up being an odd post because I am essentially going down a rabbit hole that was inspired by a comment I received from yesterday’s blog post. In it long time reader and regular commenter Mailvaltar noticed something about my post.

I can’t help but notice that you used the word ‘grind’ an awful lot in this post.
In contrast, there’s only one instance where you speak of enjoyment, and that’s the last paragraph where you talk about the fact that the boost kinda ruins said enjoyment (of leveling characters).

I don’t know…maybe just let it all go and play something else entirely…?

Mailvaltar

This has lead me to think about it probably more than was intended, but I guess at the end of the day I find grinding to be enjoyable. Sure I didn’t specifically talk about the enjoyment I was having, because for me at least grinding can be relaxing and enjoyable. Like I said at the beginning of this recent string of posts about World of Warcraft, I started playing it again because I needed a game I could more or less shut my brain off while playing it. Living in the time of pandemic has been an extremely stressful thing for me on a personal level. Not only have we not left the house much in the last six weeks, but we have had to figure out how to both be fully functional working adults without stepping on each others toes all the while trying to juggle a completely new skill. I’ve had to learn how to manage a team of sixteen people efficiently without actually having any face to face interaction with them, and my wife has had to figure out how to teach a classroom to a group of students that may or may not have stable internet connections.

The stress has made it to the point where I just really need something soothing to play at night, and in many ways a familiar grind offers an awful lot of solace. You have to realize I am also the guy who gleefully starts a brand new seasonal character in Diablo 3 effectively every three months to grind from scratch and ultimately throw that character away later when I “rebirth” it in another season. There are certain kinds of grinds that just set my mind in order, because I am effectively working entirely on muscle memory. There are kinds of grinds however that I do not find enjoyable, and probably part of the confusion is that I rarely give much effort to explaining what makes one fun and another not so fun.

I think the mindset I have at the time ultimately is what changes things for me. If I feel like I am forced to do something that I don’t really enjoy… see PVP requirements in games like Destiny 2 gating some weapon that I want or grinding for faction in a zone I hate like Nazjatar or even the relatively frustrating methods of leveling alternate jobs in Final Fantasy XIV. Those are grinds that can wear me down and make me want to walk away from a game for an indefinite period of time. Leveling a brand new character through questing and roaming around the world doing bite sized world quests for faction… those are both the sort of grind that sets my mind at ease and allows me to just go with the flow of the game ultimately relaxing me.

My favorite activity in Destiny is doing public events and patrol missions, because it is the sort of bite sized repeatable entertainment that allows me to just zone out and enjoy myself. Similarly I think the main reason why I have never gotten into Warframe is that there isn’t really any equivalent to that sort of self directed engagement. Everything in the game is mission focused with an objective, and I seem to always avoid doing things that put me on someone else’s schedule. I hate anything that happens on a timer, or anything that involves leading or following another NPC away, because it forces me into a rhythm of game play that is not my own. Those kind of grinds are ones that I am forced into and not one that I choose on my own.

The problem for me at least is that I find it extremely hard to predict ahead of time if a grind is going to be one that I find personally fulfilling. On some level there needs to be some goal that I am working towards to keep me engaged. The goal needs to feel reachable, so like 2000 kills instead of 20,000 kills, but there also needs to be a chance of me having something interesting happen in the process. There needs to be enough friction to keep me interested, but not so much that it knocks me out of a flow state while grinding. Like I said before it needs to be an activity that I am participating in mostly from muscle memory and not really requiring much in higher order thinking. Finally and most importantly I need to find the moment to moment game play mechanically enjoyable. It needs to feel good for example when I charge into a new pack of mobs and drop my first few attacks on them. Charging in as a Warrior and dropping a Thunderclap just feels good, and is probably never going to reach a point where it feels stale.

The games that filled this niche for me growing up were the various JRPGs that I obsessed about, probably none more than Final Fantasy VI. This is not my screenshot because I played on the Super Nintendo and don’t have any images from 1994. However I spent countless hours roaming around aimlessly killing whatever monsters I happened to encounter. I spent weeks trying various things in the Colosseum in the World of Ruin, or trying to steal stuff with the Genji Glove. It allows me to play for a very short amount of time or hours at a time. I think I put off beating the game for as long as I possibly could, because I have always hated when something I am super into ends. I am not sure if I have ever beaten any RPG, without grossly over-leveling and out-gearing the content. I guess you have to understand that I am never chasing “challenge” but instead a mindless state of blissful escape where I turn off my brain for awhile and just become one with the experience. This is what the grind is for me.