The Same Old Grind

I sat up for quite a while the other night trying to figure out what to write as a blog post for this week. The more that I pondered on the subject, the more my mind seemed to want to wander. It is difficult to write an active blog on RPGs, given their long, involved narratives and work intensive battle systems, and I was wondering how I was ever going to keep up. Then it struck me. I don’t always need to talk about the games themselves. And my problem had just become my solution for this week. After all, wasn’t what was making my life so difficult the all-important grind? So why not write a piece about that, and why rational human beings subject themselves to such a thing in the first place. You would think that we would have better things to do with our time than to stare at a screen while pushing the same buttons over and over again, after all. What could possess us to do such a thing, in such numbers, and for so many years? While my story is rather silly, I’m certain it’s not unique, and that people can relate to it. And if you can’t, maybe it will give you a laugh and an insight into the mind of a very odd gamer.

It will probably come as a surprise to many of my readers to learn that I came to the RPG circuit rather late in my gaming life. I was a teenager when I played my first RPG, having been weaned on the Atari 2600 and raised on platformers. I attacked RPGs much like I did any other game, a kid throwing herself full throttle into the mix as though I could beat it through sheer force of will. I had no idea what I was doing. It took a classic game, Final Fantasy VII in fact, to teach me some home truths about RPGs. Final Fantasy VII is not a difficult RPG in any sense, but I was a newbie and so I was taught a lesson in humility in a rather painful way. No, not by Sephiroth, Jenova, or any other major plotline boss, but by a minor boss monster called Materia Keeper.

Materia Keeper arrives in all its dubious glory.

The first time I met it, it handed my hindquarters to me so skillfully that I didn’t quite grasp what had happened. Then it did it a second time. And then a third. I limped away from Materia Keeper in a rage filled haze. My mother walked into my gaming room to find my teenage self punching a throw pillow and snarling unrepeatable things under my breath. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time that she questioned my sanity. A crossroads was reached that day. I could turn away from RPGs forever, or I could embrace the anger that filled me, turn it into something productive, and throw myself into what RPG fans know as the grind.

Given the nature of this blog, my choice is obvious. By the time I returned to Materia Keeper, I felt much older and wiser, although scant time had passed. I had toiled in an obsessive manner that only RPG players can understand, killing the same monsters over and over again and watching as my stats oh so slowly rose to a more acceptable level. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted revenge. There is something to be said about the fact that over fifteen years later, I still have a ritual to defeat a monster that I know to be an afterthought at best. It exists purely as a test of your level of skill and perhaps to teach you the spell Trine. I take the latter part to heart. I wanted to kill this boss in the most humiliating way possible, and I wanted an audience while I did it. So with both of my incredibly confused parents watching, I fought Materia Keeper, stole Trine from it, and proceeded to kill it with its own spell. It was a glorious moment of achievement and a validation of all my hard work. It is still the only acceptable way for me to kill that boss today, even though I look at it with pitying amusement now instead of virulent loathing.

But my reason for telling this story, besides being yet more documented proof of my insanity, is simple. I remember that day as being the day something clicked in me as a gamer, and I began to learn how to play RPGs properly. What motivates everyone is different, of course, but there has to be a reason that a normally rational human being will sit around staring at a screen doing the same thing over and over for hours on end just to up a few numbers in their status menu. My reason is that every now and then, there is an enemy that truly vexes me. Perhaps they just rubbed me the wrong way, kicking me when I was down. Perhaps they hurt children. Perhaps they let my character live, just to watch him suffer. Whatever the reason, every now and then there is one enemy, often not even the final boss, that I want to make pay. I am a rational adult, I know that these characters are fictional, that they don’t know what I’m doing, but I think that I speak for most gamers when I say that that is not the point. I suppose when it comes down to it, gaming is all about validation, whether it is private or public. For me, it’s all about that elusive boss. I will level grind for however long is necessary to make sure he or she not only loses, but is thoroughly schooled for the suffering they have caused. It’s not so different from the MMO player who is continually looking for that elusive drop, or the trophy collector who has to collect ‘just one more’ so that his collection is better than his friend’s.

Whatever your reasoning is, bragging rights, validation, or just good old fashioned boredom, the grind is an intrinsic part of what makes every successful RPG gamer tick. I still haven’t quite figured out what the allure is, even after having sat at my computer and pondered over this very subject for several hours. There are some mysteries that are better left unsolved, and perhaps this is one of them. In the end, I suppose understanding the nature of the grind comes down to knowing the human mind itself and what drives each of us as a person. I know I haven’t granted us any solid understanding of the subject at hand, but I’ve managed to give my brain a workout, and perhaps made you think of what drives you as a gamer. Hopefully that will be enough to keep your thoughts churning for a little while.

On learning of the existence of this post, my friend Julian Hill over at Boxed Pixels pointed me toward his own level grinding experiences in the cult classic Shadow Run. It’s worth checking out for the perspective of another gamer on this topic and hey, it’s a post about Shadow Run. I shouldn’t have to tell you to read it.

Next week will be the beginning of a rather experimental journey for this blog, as we take a look at another Japan only RPG release in an entirely new style. Hope to see you then!

If you feel like hearing more of my gaming prattle, feel free to follow me on Twitter. You can find me at @bejiita_buruma