It’s become clear in recent years that game makers prize play time, or rather, “engagement,” over just about everything else. Whether a game is a seasonal online shooter like Apex Legends or a largely solo affair likeSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,companies want players in their games for as long as possible, which usually means making the games last as long as humanly possible. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3 andThe Witcher 3: Wild Huntmake this happen through sheer volume of content, but that’s kind of an uncommon solution (as we all well know).
No, the normal and most simple way to stretch out a game these days is to follow the ol' MMORPG staple: grind. It works too, as even bland games can sustain decently-sized populations for a decently long time with it. Is grind actually any fun, though? Is engaging with these endless treadmills truly enjoyable or is it just habit-forming? Grind-laden games can be found at both ends of the quality scale, so let’s take a look at a few and see what conclusions can be drawn.
Persona 3 Reload
Persona 3 Reload has quite a lot going for it,enough that it’s already claimed the title of fastest-selling ATLUS game ever. Many improvements have been made, with as many quality-of-life improvements given to the combat as to the other aspects. Even so, Persona 3 Reload apparently still suffers from one of the original version’s biggest issues: grind.
It’s not all that much more grind than one would expect from a JRPG, but it’s still enough to prompt complaints. Tartarus Tower and its hundreds of floors seem to be the sorest point for most, with those pursuing Persona 3 Reload’s true ending having little to no choice but to power through it as best they can. Basically, it’s not generally considered a fun part of the game, even though it involves a lot of combat, which many have praised for being fun and interesting.
So, in Persona 3 Reload, fighting itself is fun, but the introduction of grind seems to pull the fun out of it. Perhaps it’s because grind doesn’t compliment any of the mechanics. It doesn’t serve any purpose beyond making players fight more than they otherwise would; it also needlessly stretches out the experience rather than allowing players to stay engaged with the game’s story and characters. Had the grind fed into another, more interesting aspect of the game, there probably wouldn’t be a problem. It doesn’t though, and players are left altogether too exposed to it as a result.
Review: Persona 3 Reload
Persona 3 Reload may not be the definite version but it is an excellent remake of Persona 3
If ever there was a case against grind mechanics in games, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League would be it. Putting aside all the other problems plaguing it, the game suffers from a critical flaw:it’s just plain not fun,and its implementation of grind is a big part of it. Put another way, the game starts out with shallow, repetitive mechanics and doesn’t grow at all from there.
From the very beginning, players engage with the same enemies, mission types, movement options and shooter gameplay. It hardly changes throughout the game, and players are asked to do more and more of it the further in they get. Suicide Squad makes some half-hearted attempts to change things up towards the end via modifiers, but these modifiers only ever apply to damage-dealing and not mission structure. Players are still doing the exact same things; they’re just being forced to favor different weapons and/or builds. The purpose of doing this doesn’t change either: play missions to get better gear, in order to play more missions to get more gear, and so on.
It’s grind, upon grind, upon grind: fighting the same enemies in the same missions to get slightly better versions of the same gear over and over. If that grind fed into deeper gameplay or granted benefits in some sort of PvP mode, then perhaps this wouldn’t be an issue. It’s what games like Destiny 2 do, and fans of those games actually enjoy that kind of gameplay loop. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League doesn’t have that, though; it’s just raw grind for grind’s sake, and it’s a big reason why the game’s been taking such a beating online ever since it launched.
Review: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League works on a surface level, but look beneath the surface and there isn’t enough to enjoy long-term.
At first, Minecraft might seem like an odd choice when talking about grind. After all, it’s primarily a game about building, gathering resources and making things; grind has nothing to do with it. Itdoes, though; grind is actually a key component of MineCraft’s gameplay loop. It’s just so well-integrated that one might just not realize it. This is because, of the games mentioned here and perhaps within the wider gaming space, Minecraft utilizes grind the best. See, in Minecraft, grind (mostly) isn’t a system players engage with directly. Rather, grind is something thatpowersthe actual mechanics fans play with. In other words, it’s a fully-integrated aspect of the gameplay.
Think about the loop of vanilla Minecraft; what is it that players do? They build and make things, right? Doing either requires resources, and resources must be gathered. Gathering resources usually requires digging-out massive tunnels and going through, quite literally, thousands of blocks depending on the project. It’s the same action repeated over and over again in the hope of making some kind of progress, and what is that if not grind? Seriously, making any headway on any project in Minecraft requires grind of some kind, even after one starts automating things. Yet, it doesn’tfeellike grind, does it? At least, not in the way experienced in Persona 3 Reload or Suicide Squad.
It’s because “grind” isn’t a barrier to progress in Minecraft. Rather, the systems that it powers, like mining, all yieldconstantprogress. Players are able to set their own goals, and so long as they engage in activities associated with it, they can constantly draw closer to it at the pace they desire. Progress is never lost, there are no arbitrary milestones to hit before doing what one wants, and the processes themselves often lead to new ideas and/or interesting discoveries. In other words, Minecraft uses grind to facilitate fun rather than asking players to engage with it as if it were fun on its own.
So, is grind fun?
By itself, no, grind isn’t fun. The more directly exposed players are to grind in a game, the less fun that experience becomes. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s structure is entirely grind-based and it’s been heavily criticized for that. Persona 3 Reload, a game that enjoys a lot of praise, also falters the moment players are forced into a grind loop.
It’s only when grind is made an almost invisible part of the gameplay, as something that feeds into deeper systems and mechanics, that it can start to be called fun. Lots of games manage this, but Minecraft might just do it the best. Given the great success of Minecraft and games that use grind similarly, one hopes that AAA developers and publishers will start seeking to craft similar experiences rather than the shallow, Suicide Squad-esque ones gamers have seen so much of lately.
This is just one gamer’s take though. How do you see grind? Can it be fun by itself? If so, how does it have to be implemented?
