A lot of games feature some form of farming and/or grinding (that is, advancing by performing the same repetitive action over and over again). Some series make an effort to hide this, while others openly embrace it . What are your thoughts on it?
My first instinct whenever anyone mentions 'farming' or 'grinding' is to groan in disgust. This is especially true now that I have less free time than I used to before I started full-time work - and so, any game that relies on grinding is going to be a very hard sell for me. However, when I thought about this some more, I realised that perhaps I'm not as anti-grinding as I thought I was. After all, take that circle city I've been building in Cities: Skylines. There has been some challenge involved in building it, but for the most part, it's a very repetitive task of terraforming land and building roads. Isn't that grinding? If so, what keeps me coming back to it? And what about all the time I spent on Farmville when it was popular eight years ago, or all the time I spend mining in Minecraft?
I think, in the case of Cities: Skylines or Minecraft, what keeps me going is the 'building' element. In Cities: Skylines, I'm grinding to build and expand a city; in Minecraft, I'm grinding to build and expand a base. It somehow feels more meaningful, because when I admire my city or my base, I can plainly see the cumulative end result of hours of hard work. I don't get this appeal from, say, grinding in a first-person shooter to unlock a new gun. Besides, there's much more satisfaction in saying "Hey, look at this castle I spent hours building!" than "Hey, look at this gun I spent hours unlocking!". After all, the work involved in unlocking the gun isn't even visible: anyone who isn't familiar with the game isn't going to know you don't start with it. By contrast, even a person who's never played Cities: Skylines can plainly see that I didn't throw my circle city together in five minutes .
As for Farmville, there was a kind of competitive aspect to it: I could see the farms my Facebook friends had built, and the 'challenge' there was to build a bigger, fancier, and more impressive farm. (At least, until I realised that people were just bragging about how much time they'd sunk into the game, and the only way to 'win' that competition was not to participate to begin with. At that point, I abruptly stopped playing Farmville )
So, what are your thoughts on farming and grinding? Do you love them or hate them?
My first instinct whenever anyone mentions 'farming' or 'grinding' is to groan in disgust. This is especially true now that I have less free time than I used to before I started full-time work - and so, any game that relies on grinding is going to be a very hard sell for me. However, when I thought about this some more, I realised that perhaps I'm not as anti-grinding as I thought I was. After all, take that circle city I've been building in Cities: Skylines. There has been some challenge involved in building it, but for the most part, it's a very repetitive task of terraforming land and building roads. Isn't that grinding? If so, what keeps me coming back to it? And what about all the time I spent on Farmville when it was popular eight years ago, or all the time I spend mining in Minecraft?
I think, in the case of Cities: Skylines or Minecraft, what keeps me going is the 'building' element. In Cities: Skylines, I'm grinding to build and expand a city; in Minecraft, I'm grinding to build and expand a base. It somehow feels more meaningful, because when I admire my city or my base, I can plainly see the cumulative end result of hours of hard work. I don't get this appeal from, say, grinding in a first-person shooter to unlock a new gun. Besides, there's much more satisfaction in saying "Hey, look at this castle I spent hours building!" than "Hey, look at this gun I spent hours unlocking!". After all, the work involved in unlocking the gun isn't even visible: anyone who isn't familiar with the game isn't going to know you don't start with it. By contrast, even a person who's never played Cities: Skylines can plainly see that I didn't throw my circle city together in five minutes .
As for Farmville, there was a kind of competitive aspect to it: I could see the farms my Facebook friends had built, and the 'challenge' there was to build a bigger, fancier, and more impressive farm. (At least, until I realised that people were just bragging about how much time they'd sunk into the game, and the only way to 'win' that competition was not to participate to begin with. At that point, I abruptly stopped playing Farmville )
So, what are your thoughts on farming and grinding? Do you love them or hate them?
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